Movie trailer work is a very specific type of work for a voiceover artist. There’s narration of many kinds - radio commercials, TV commercials, commercial animation, feature films — but movie trailers require a very specific skill.
Think about the kind of feeling they are trying to communicate.
Find out if it’s a comedy or if it’s an action adventure, a love story, a thriller (which is always fun), and start playing around with the copy. Read it to see what the feeling is.
Pacing is crucial. Not going too fast is important. Every word needs to be sold. For a scary movie, you want to build unbearable tension. Love stories require a hopeful, upbeat sound. A trailer for a Disney film will be sound VERY happy. There are all those levels when doing movie trailer work.
Quick text analysis is vital — identifying the kind of film it is and how you might approach it.
The next thing you need to do is become comfortable with it. Read the copy several times and try out a number of different approaches.
If there’s a sentence that says, “if there’s one film you’ll see this year,” play with that line. Give it a slow, deliberate read: “If there’s ONE film you’ll see this year…Or you might try a casual approach.
Just “get to know it” by reading it a few times.
Then you need to be able to deliver it. You can’t waste their time, so if there’s no voiceover direction given you need to have a specific idea in mind of what you’re going to do.
Be sure to SELL it, but be sure not to “sell” it. You’ll want to give them EVERYTHING, but give them nothing. That’s not always easy!
That’s one of the directions I was given by one trailer house: “Give me everything, but give me nothing.I didn’t understand that immediately, but now I always think about then when voicing movie trailers..
Movie trailers are very competitive. But if you can break through, it’s a lot of fun.
I hope this has been helpful for anyone who casts movie trailers or voices (or auditions for) movie trailers.
Just remember those three things:
1. Find out what the copy is saying.
2. Get comfortable with the copy.
3. Try it from all sorts of different ways… and remember to SELL it without selling it.
Tags: animation voice overs, David Kaye, film movie trailers, narration voices, video games, voice acting, voice actors, voiceover artist