23. Removing the Voice Over

Something in my mind felt that having a voice over is going to be bad and give off too much information to the audience. 

I decided to ask my teacher, "Should I include context for the film, since the topic I'm doing is quite niche?"

In his true fashion, he said, "Art doesn't work if you have to explain it."

Something about the way he said it made me think and realize that movies rarely give context on what is happening. Midsommar: when I watched it, I had no idea what was happening and had absolutely no knowledge about Sweden, but a little bit on cults. There was information given to the audience slowly in the beginning but not everything at once, which is what I was trying to do. I feel that I am undermining the audience itself and that they have to be spoon-fed all the information, but they will gain information just slowly with visuals and audio (coughing), rather than saying exactly what it is. 

Midsommar is one of the movies that left me confused, but in a way that slowly gives information and when you think back on it after you have watched the movie, it makes sense. 

Another movie is Us. It's similar to the idea I had with the letter at the end explaining everything, which I also decided to get rid of. All the information was dumped out near the end to give the audience an understanding for what had happened between the two characters and why the way the "real" one is like that. 

Us is a movie that spoon-fed the viewers on what was happening between the two families all at the end. The overload of information and the fact that I couldn't come up with theories on my own made me dislike this idea.

Removing the voice over can also allow for the film to not be in V's perspective, but in 3rd person. It will still heavily focus on V, but having the audience not know what is going to happen with her allows me to keep the ending a surprise. I don't think removing it make my entire film fall apart.