movie voiceovers.

  • Thread starter Thread starter BRIEFCASEMANX
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BRIEFCASEMANX

BRIEFCASEMANX

Winner chicken dinner!
How do they get the movie voiceover guys' voices to be so thick and powerful sounding? Like that guy in the geico commercial standing in the kitchen. That kind of voiceover, like action movies and shit. Just big time compression? What kind of attack and release settings would they use when compressionizing the vocals to make that thick and commanding voiceover sound? short attack and release? What compressorizer is common for this type of voiceover. Help me Farview, you're my only hope.
 
A full voice to start off with is immensely helpful. After that, AFAIK, it's EQ and a lot of dynamics processing.
 
BRIEFCASEMANX said:
How do they get the movie voiceover guys' voices to be so thick and powerful sounding? Like that guy in the geico commercial standing in the kitchen.
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That's one of my fav! That guy rules!
 
These voiceover guys just naturally have a resonant voice. No amount of processing or signal chain can replicate or otherwise enhance it. If you were to talk to the guy in person or on the phone ... that's what they sound like - no shit.

Guys like that will generally be asked by people "Do you do voiceovers?" Kind of like how 7-feet tall guys will often get asked if they play basketball.
 
That guys voice just sounds like that. He would sound like that through a 57, 58, 421, 414, u87, etc... It doesn't matter, that's why that guy does 95% of all the movie trailers.
 
Yeah, it's also damn near dry. With dialog, the vox usually remains dry and in the center. Especially narration
 
Raises an interesting point... since voice-overs aren't really a multi-tracked affair (for Don, anyway), with a single excellent recording channel, he can do voice-overs at his home and send them to whomever needs them, probably in many cases.

Ah, the wonders of home recording... in his case, perhaps, professional equipment and space, but still - in his home :)
 
cusebassman said:
Raises an interesting point... since voice-overs aren't really a multi-tracked affair (for Don, anyway), with a single excellent recording channel, he can do voice-overs at his home and send them to whomever needs them, probably in many cases.

Ah, the wonders of home recording... in his case, perhaps, professional equipment and space, but still - in his home :)
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From the Wikipedia entry ...

"Famous for being driven to voice-over jobs in a personalized limo with a full time driver, so as not to waste time parking and going from job to job, more recently he has begun recording many promotions from his own palatial estate in the Hollywood Hills, saving the time from traveling to many high-profile recording studios. This is mainly due to the advent of the Internet where a file can be recorded and e-mailed to a studio within seconds."

Another interesting tidbit ...

"His history begins as a recording engineer at the National Recording Studios ..."
 
Farview said:
That guys voice just sounds like that. He would sound like that through a 57, 58, 421, 414, u87, etc... It doesn't matter, that's why that guy does 95% of all the movie trailers.
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So what is he actually using? Anybody recognize the mic?
 
That kind of stuff is getting pretty common these days. Ken Nordeen - of "Word Jazz" fame and more radio and TV commercial voiceover credits that could fit on a page - has done most of his work from his home studio in the sticks of Wisconsin for a while now. S

Same with Dick Buckley with his famous jazz programming and commercial voiceover work on NPR; his classic jazz programs are all self-recorded in the den of his home (where is extensive record collection is) and he just mails (or FedExes) his tapes to WBEZ, who broadcasts and distributes the tapes from there.

A more extreme and familiar example is the sound mixing and editing for the TV show "The Simpsons". I'm not sure if this is still true to this day, but as of a couple of years ago when I read the article, all the audio for the Simpsons was actually mixed on a Mackie d8b at the engineer's home in Arizona with all the files just transferred via Internet.

"It's only Home Recording" my ass! :D
7string said:
So what is he actually using? Anybody recognize the mic?
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What shows in the TV commercial and what is actually being used are not necessarily the same thing.

G.
 
the first thing that came to my mind when i saw that mic in the commercial was AKG Perception. but i didn't really get a good look at it. cool commercial haha.
 
SouthSIDE Glen said:
What shows in the TV commercial and what is actually being used are not necessarily the same thing.
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true...could just be a shotgun mic picking up all the audio and the mic in front of him may not even be plugged in.
guys, voice actors are usually very very talented. I work with talent like him every day and very little processing is needed on any of their voices. Maybe a little compression or EQ to roll off the lows and that's it. These guys just have a knack for it.
 
bblackwood said:
For fun...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQRtuxdfQHw
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Thanks Brad, that video was a lot of fun!

As far the original question, 99% of it is the sound of the voice of the talent. You can't fake that.

Maybe you could take somebody's voice and pitch shift it down a little bit to try and get it a little lower and richer. But ultimately, if you want that sound you hire that voice.
 
In a previous job I produced hands-on training for computer programmers and operators that included narration on audio cassette tape. I would write the script, hire a narrator and take it to a studio. All the narrators we worked with had the deep full voice and were smokers or former-smokers.

We would hear most of them in radio commercials. For the most part, there was no difference between how they sounded on tape and how they sounded in everyday conversation. One exception was a narrator that needed a de-esser afterwards. Could have been the mic or EQ though. I wish I'd been more curious at the time to learn what mics and boards they used, but none of the mics were LDCs.

We usually had about 3 to 4 hours of technical material so I had to be there listening and following the script to make sure certain words or acronyms were pronounced or emphasized correctly and do "pick ups" for mistakes. Otherwise they probably could have done it without us being present.

One thing I learned: say "it isn't" instead of "it's snot". :D
 
bennychico11 said:
true...could just be a shotgun mic picking up all the audio and the mic in front of him may not even be plugged in.
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Or possibly even ADR'd.

It reminds me of two different stories of fake equipment on film that I love:

- The current cell phone company commercial (I forget which company) that tests the number of available minutes by having a long-winded test subject like the bratty cheerleader or the real-estate salesperson talk and talk and talk while surrounded by a gaggle of scientists in lab coats measuring the results. The "test equipment" that they show the scientists obstensively using on one of those commercials appear to be a bank of Avalon mic preamps :)

- The Rob Thomas/Santana video of "Smooth" that has Rob Thomas singing into an AKG microphone that's actually facing the audience. :)

bennychico11 said:
guys, voice actors are usually very very talented. I work with talent like him every day and very little processing is needed on any of their voices. Maybe a little compression or EQ to roll off the lows and that's it. These guys just have a knack for it.
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Yep, and that's why they get paid the big bucks. That's what they sound like.

Some of them, in fact, have a preference list of microphones they specifically desire or suggest for their specific voice or sound style. What gives a signature sound to one voice is not necessarily the same model that will give the signature sound to another voice.

G.
 
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