Communication and the various voices of the screenplay text

The aim of this article is to examine how the writer, through the means of the screenplay text, communicates the potential film to the reader. The article argues that the screenplay text’s reason for existing is to communicate the potential film, and that analysing a screenplay text through a communicational approach therefore is suitable. The author will ask what type of information is communicated, who it is that communicates and how the communication appears in the text. The article will propose a model that displays the different narrating voices that can be found in screenplay texts, and a set terminology for the narrating voices that clearly position them in relation to the text and the information they provide will be proposed. The examination of extracts from published screenplays further enables the author to identify how the use of the different narrating voices situates the reader at a certain distance from the story.