Balance of the perspective: How to use the narration

Citation:

Rosenthal, A., & Eckhardt, N. (2016). Writing, directing, and producing documentary films and digital videos (Fifth ed.). Southern Illinois University Press.

Annotation:

In the fourth part of the book, the author talks about the use of narration in documentaries

First-person or second-person narration helps to engage the viewer and better brings the viewer into the situation of the documentary (first person is mostly active voice).
Third person narration will be more objective (third person is mostly passive voice)

In personal documentaries, filmmakers often want the audience to feel better about themselves, so using the active voice can make the whole film more dynamic.
Here the author mentions the idea that changing the first person narration to second person - changing "I" to "you". It would better place the viewer in the context of the documentary and align their perspective with that of the filmmaker. By changing the audience's perspective from objective to subjective, they are able to think deeply about the filmmaker's life.
This method allows the audience to become the protagonist as well, avoiding the impact on the audience's objective analysis due to the filmmaker's personal subjective behaviour, and at the same time, when the audience compares their own decision with the filmmaker's decision after making a reflection, it can bring the audience closer to the filmmaker and achieve emotional resonance, which will help the audience to understand the filmmaker's behaviour in the subsequent documentaries and increase the audience's attraction.
在这本书的第四部分，作者讲述了纪录片中旁白的运用

在个人纪录片中，电影创作者往往希望观众能更好的感受到自己的感觉，所以使用主动语态会让整部影片更有活力。
在这里作者提到了一个想法，把第一人称的叙述改成第二人称-把"我”改成“你”，可以更好的将观众置身于纪录片当时的情境中，是他们的视角与电影制作人的视角保持一致。观众的视角从客观转变为主观，他们得以深入思考的体验电影制作人的生活。
这种方法可以让观众也成为主人公，避免因为制作人的个人主观行为对观众的客观分析造成影响，同时当观众在做出思考后将自己的决定与电影制作人的决定进行对比时，可以拉近观众与电影制作人的距离，达到情感共鸣，有助于观众理解后续纪录片中电影制作人的行为，增加观众对影片的吸引力和粘性。

The film deals with the social issue of bigamy, and the director begins the film with a second-person voiceover, "How would you feel if your husband was somebody else's husband? husband?"
Although this is a second-person narration that poses two questions. When the audience hears this question, they will be put themselves into the role of the bigamist. Bringing the audience into the current situation of the documentary, putting the filmmaker and the audience in the same space, and letting the audience participate in it, completing the same frequency of perspectives.
电影中关于重婚这一社会问题，导演在开始时采用了第二人称的旁白”How would you feel if your husband was somebody else's husband?How would you feel if you were that husband?"
这虽然是用第二人称旁白模式提出的2个问题，但在观众听到这个问题的时会将自己带入到重婚者这个角色上，把观众带进纪录片当下的情景，让电影制作人和观众处于同一空间，让观众参入其中，完成视角同频。

Test in my film:

My current idea is to start my documentary in the mode of a second-person voice-over narration.
Here's my narration:

As you stand on the street, looking at pairs of happy fathers and sons passing you by, you begin to remember your parting eleven years ago, and an inexplicable emotion wells up in your heart. Your parents' divorce and your father's unceremonious departure have always been a thorn in your heart. You are determined to find out if your father still loves you. But, when you set off to find out, the first response you hear is unexpectedly like this:
当你站在街边，望着一对对开心的父子从你身边经过，你开始回忆起十一年前的离别，心中涌起一股莫名的情感。父母的离异，父亲的不辞而别，一直是你心头的一根刺。你下定决心要寻找答案，你要知道父亲是否还爱你。但当你启程去探寻时，你听到的第一个回答竟是这样的:

In the final test, I found that if using second-person narration to interact with the audience, it would overly emphasize the intentions and viewpoints of the film creators. Consequently, I decided to transform the second-person narration into a dialogue with my 13-year-old self. This way, it can express both the passage of time and the shift in perspective without excessively compromising the objectivity of the film.
在最终测试中我发现如果用第二人称的旁白与观众互动的话会过分强调电影制作者想表达的的意图和观点。于是，我将第二人称的旁白转换成与13岁自己的对话，这样即可以表达出时间的跨度和自我视角的转换，也不会过分的损害影片的客观性。

Test:

Haoran Zhang