A story film has two voice layers. The narrator tells the story; the characters speak their own lines. Keeping the two apart is what makes the result sound like a film rather than an audiobook with pictures. This guide explains how the director separates them, how each is voiced and mixed, and what you can change.

The rule

The director writes dialogue as spoken lines attached to a character on screen, and narration as short bridges between events. If the story has a line, the narrator does not paraphrase it. If a scene has a line, its narration is short or absent. Narration never repeats a line that a character already said. The rule sounds obvious, but it is exactly what one-voice tools get wrong, and it is enforced in the director's contract rather than left to taste.

Lines

The director keeps your dialogue verbatim, one spoken line per scene, always assigned to a cast member who is on screen. If a paragraph has two lines, the director splits it into two scenes. Lines are capped at 120 characters; a longer speech is split across scenes rather than rushed. Each line is lip-synced onto the scene video with a voice chosen from the character's gender and age profile.

Because a line needs a speaker, dialogue with no clear speaker in the text is the most common source of mistakes. Put the speaker near the quotation ("Come down," said the owl) and the director assigns it correctly.

Narration

Narration is written per scene and budgeted to the scene's duration, about nine characters per second, so it never runs over the picture. A 10-second scene gets at most ninety characters, which is one clear sentence. It is recorded with the narrator voice you picked (or an automatic one) and placed at the start of its own scene during the edit. Narration is written in the story's language and keeps the story's tense and tone; if you write in the past tense, the narrator speaks in the past tense.

Casting voices

Each cast member carries a voice profile from the director: gender, age and a tone in words. The studio matches the profile against the voice catalogue by its labels and avoids giving two characters the same voice, so a conversation between two characters is audible as two people even with the picture off. The narrator is your choice from the list in the wizard, or an automatic default.

Changing voices

  • Narrator: choose any voice from the list in the wizard before creating the film. The narrator is fixed per film; to change it after creation, create a new film from the same text.
  • A character's line: open the scene card, edit the spoken text or pick another voice, regenerate the scene. Only that scene is charged again.
  • Removing a line: empty the spoken line field on the card and regenerate; the scene keeps its animation and narration.

If lip-sync is unavailable

Lip-sync depends on a video provider. When it fails, the film is still finished: the scene keeps its animation and the line is voiced with the character's voice in the audio track. You lose the mouth movement, not the words. The failed lip-sync charge is refunded by the nightly job. Lip-sync is only attempted for scenes with a spoken line; on wide shots where mouths are not visible, losing it makes no visible difference.

Music under speech

The music track is generated once from the director's music brief (instruments, tempo, mood, no vocals) and mixed at a fixed lower level. It dips under narration and dialogue, so speech stays clear without manual mixing. Choose a music style in the wizard or let the director pick from the story's mood; a note in the text such as "a quiet lullaby plays" reaches the brief.

Writing for the best sound

  • Write dialogue in quotation marks with the speaker nearby.
  • Keep narration in the past tense and let each paragraph carry one event; the director maps paragraphs to scenes.
  • Give speaking characters a stated age or role; the voice profile is derived from the text.
  • Avoid long speeches. One line per scene is the model; a monologue becomes several scenes.

Frequently asked

Can two characters speak in the same scene? No. Each scene carries at most one spoken line, so a two-line exchange becomes two scenes. This keeps every line attached to a visible speaker.

Can I write a film with no narration? Yes. If the text is all dialogue the director writes little or no narration; you can also empty the narration on scene cards before production.

Which language do the voices speak? The story's language. Narration and lines are recorded in the language you wrote in.

Does the narrator ever read the dialogue? No. Narration never repeats a line a character says; the director's contract forbids it.