I was on Voiceover Universe today and found this article that was posted today about female voices doing movie trailers. I found it compelling for a number of reasons.
It was pulled from Variety magazine.
Movie trailers lack female narrators
Void left by 'Voice of God' could open field to women
By CAROLINE RYDER
Don LaFontaine, the so-called "Voice of God" who held a virtual monopoly over the narration of bigtime movie trailers until his death Sept. 1, had a clear idea of who his successor should be -- God's voice, he said, should belong to a woman.
"I think women are vastly underrepresented in this area," LaFontaine told me in 2006. "You'd think that for films directly aimed at women, chick flicks, the logical choice would be for a woman to narrate the trailer. But studios hold focus groups and the people in them, women included, seem to prefer the male voice."
Two years later, little has changed. Movie trailers remain largely unaffected by feminism's march, with growly baritones like those of Andy Geller and Ashton Smith seeming the likely replacements for LaFontaine's wizened authority. Women, who make up a small fraction of the trailer voice talent pool (William Morris reps three female trailer voices compared with 33 males, according to its website), remain almost exclusively confined to TV, radio and DVD trailer spots. The reason isn't so much gender equality, apparently, as it is resistance to change among the moviegoing public -- male and female.
"Audiences, including females, are so used to hearing a male voice that when they hear a female voice they think something is wrong," says Michael Camp, creative advertising executive at 20th Century Fox. He, like many interviewed for this article, is in favor of hearing more female voices in movie theaters. But he says it's "always a fight" trying to get a female voice approved for a trailer, even for more female-friendly TV spots. "The public is finicky, and it takes them a while to trust voices they aren't used to hearing," says Camp. "And the voice they were used to for many years was Don's."
On the rare occasion that trailer houses suggest using a female voice, studios often nix the idea. "A female voice might take away from the content of the trailer," says producer Christine Peters ("How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days"). "If the industry does transition to more frequently using female voiceovers, I imagine it will take the audience awhile to get used to it."
A notable exception to the rule was the trailer for Jerry Bruckheimer's high-octane "Gone in Sixty Seconds" (2000). Voiced by the sultry-toned Melissa Disney (widely regarded as the most successful female voice artist working today), the trailer is cited as the one example of where a feminine intonation actually worked.
"The few movies that women have worked on tend to be the high-testosterone movies," notes Jason Marks of Jason Marks Talent Management, who specializes in representing trailer and promo voiceover artists. Marks thinks action movies, not chick flicks or romantic comedies, present more fertile ground for his female talent.
Even though the odds seem against them, voice actresses are optimistically chipping away at the glass ceiling. Debi Mae West, whose voice has been heard on NBC, Starz and AMC, recalls that after Disney's "Sixty Seconds" work, she found herself being invited to "scratch" more trailers. Scratching is industry lingo for when trailer houses invite voiceover artists to voice a spec trailer, which is then submitted to the studio. The winning submission is then "finished" by the trailer house.
The competitive nature of pitching means trailer houses are often pressured to present safe, salable options, which means female voices are risky. "There might be three other trailer houses trying to get the same job, so often it's a matter of staying within the comfort zone," says West. "But people are starting to realize that women can really sell the sexiness of a film. Women are a lot softer and less showy, and trailers seem to be moving in that more conversational, less in-your-face read anyway."
And even if women still aren't actually getting the bigtime jobs (LaFontaine was said to earn $10 million per year), "scratching, at the very least, means you're on the radar," says voice actress Sylvia Villagran, whose voice is regularly heard on MTV, NBC and Mundos. "Of course, the ideal would be to go from scratching to finishing -- but I guess it's one step at a time."
Ok I posted a comment on VU about this article. First, I am compelled to inquire about the actual research done to verify that the public does not respond well to female voices. Is it really "the public" or the decision makers in the industry? I am reminded of my experience in radio, where I was to co-host a morning show and my male counterpart didn't want me to crack the mic (start talking first when the mic was on) because, he said "Women didn't respond well to women." As a woman who has dealt with lots of other women, I felt like this was the most out of touch ridiculous insecure comment I had ever heard. At that gig, I was also encouraged to play the sterotypical traditional role in a morning show as an entertainment news/gossip maven, giggle box and the one that reels the men in when they have stepped out of bounds. Needless to say I didn't last too long, I was going to be myself, afterall that is what they CLEARLY told me to be when they gave me the assignment (So I laughed only when it was funny, was naughty like the fellas if I felt like it, did not necessarily assume the role of gossip queen, etc...) so they switched me back to my own shift where, by the way, I did quite well with women and I was the ONLY one cracking the mic... I am also reminded of my time working for XM Satellite radio where my boss and I at the time were programming an urban station. She decided to give it a more female "neo-soul" leaning approach, a method that had not been tested out on regular FM commercial radio. It was risky, but guess what? It took off, so much so that XM split the channel into two -- one for mainstream commerical urban (The City) and one that focused on "neo-soul" (The Flow). Not only did they realized there was a very responsive market they were unaware of, but that the maket was large enough for both channels to co-exist and be profitable.
I use these examples because I find that the public may be more open than we realize. I think gatekeepers/decision makers are more scared of change than the actual public. Their representation of the public is always interesting to me anyway. I think some of the resistance comes from their own attachment to tradition. I find that many people state opinions as facts when change is involved, or when they think it may work in thier best interest. Now I am not saying there isn't some resistance to change and in this case female "voices of God" verses male ones. I am sure there is, but enough to dismiss systematically female talent as ineffective? I wonder...
From talent like Don LaFontaine and Melissa Disney, to agents, production houses and every entity that ultimately can help determine and influence if a woman/girl voices a trailer, I say cheers and thanks for your willingness to take risks and help open future doors for fellow female talent like myself.
I decided to pass. Again the workshop would have provided me with an idea if I wanted to work with him one on one. Now there are great things I have heard about John Burr and I know I could learn tons from him, still I am not convinced that he is for ME. Not now anyway. Later on I may indulge. But for now I said to myself "Forget it! Who did I initially want to study with in the first place?" Since I will be in NY the weekend of the 5th, I decided to reach out to Peter Rofe. I went to his website and found his rates to be reasonable. I shot him an email yesterday.
Ilene Russell
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