It’s 1982, and I am 9 years old, sitting in the waiting room at a voiceover audition for South Carolina National Bank. It’s my first voiceover audition, and I am super excited. My new manager likes my textured voice and thinks I’m a natural for this area. There are a few other girls my age for my role and dozens of older men around me, all reading for the announcer role. The script was simple and sweet: My line was “Daddy, am I a deduction?” followed by the announcer’s tag line about the bank. I eavesdropped on the men practicing their announcer lines, each man sounding more and more like the authoritative voice from the movie trailers. You could trust these voices—they conveyed authority, intelligence. The voices were firm, confident. You believed what they said, therefore you could trust the bank.
Back in those days, a voiceover agent couldn’t sign enough announcer-type men with big booming voices that conveyed authority and held weight. Today, the trend has changed.
During a recent casting search for a female announcer for a store, the client requested we find an “announcer who doesn’t sound like an announcer.” We used to want the suburban
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