{"id":200,"date":"2014-06-09T11:19:29","date_gmt":"2014-06-09T11:19:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amazingvoiceovers.com\/in-a-world-without-voiceovers-what-happened-to-the-movie-trailer-voice\/"},"modified":"2014-06-09T11:19:29","modified_gmt":"2014-06-09T11:19:29","slug":"in-a-world-without-voiceovers-what-happened-to-the-movie-trailer-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.amazingvoiceovers.com\/index.php\/2014\/06\/09\/in-a-world-without-voiceovers-what-happened-to-the-movie-trailer-voice\/","title":{"rendered":"In a world without voiceovers: What happened to the movie trailer voice?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The voiceover artist held the limelight for decades, reaching their peak in 1994 \u2013 the last time when all top-10 films at the box office used a narrator in their trailer, from the critically praised The Lion King<\/a><\/em> to the panned Dumb and Dumber<\/a><\/em>.\n<\/p>\n

Then things started to change. Fewer trailers were using the gimmick, and the popular ones that still did were schlocky summer fare like 1995\u2019s Die Hard With A Vengeance<\/a><\/em> and 1996\u2019s Independence Day<\/a><\/em>.\n<\/p>\n

By 1997, the voiceover was a favoured companion for films like Con Air<\/a><\/em>, a Nicholas Cage action-adventure production that hired voiceover legend Hal Douglas to deliver the trailer\u2019s cringeworthy tag-line: \u201cThis summer, check your weapons, take your seat, and say your prayers.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Douglas, who died earlier this year, might have seen the coming sea change a decade earlier when he parodied himself in the trailer for the 2002 documentary Comedian<\/a><\/em>.\n<\/p>\n

In it, Douglas reads a litany of tired trailer catchphrases like \u201din a world\u201d and \u201cwhen your life is no longer your own,\u201d over the protests of the sound mixer. Then he\u2019s fired.\n<\/p>\n

It was the clearest sign yet that the voiceover had become a punchline.\n<\/p>\n

Overuse may not be the only reason for the voiceover\u2019s decline. Today, the highest-grossing movies are multibillion-dollar epics with built-in fanbases, such as the Harry Potter<\/em> series and myriad comic-book adaptations. Audiences are already experts on the story, so they don\u2019t need a narrator to communicate those details.\n<\/p>\n

Gone, too, are the days when a trailer is viewed a single time inside a movie theatre. Parsons, whose Trailer Addict website serves 40-million pageviews a month, says today\u2019s marketers use dozens of previews and featurettes, on top of other marketing vehicles, to capture attention. With such ubiquitous marketing, a narrator isn\u2019t necessary.\n<\/p>\n

By the 2000s, a few box-office performers still used a voiceover in their marketing. However, most were animated pictures, like last year\u2019s Frozen<\/em> and Pixar\u2019s 2011 film Cars 2<\/a><\/em> \u2013 a sign that family films might be immune to the negative association that hangs over it.\n<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s at least one more voiceover mainstay: the parody. Seth McFarlane\u2019s comedy Ted<\/a><\/em> used the voiceover as a bait-and-switch, employing actor Patrick Stewart\u2019s wholesome British timbre to imbue the film with a sense of whimsy, describing the power of \u201ca young boy\u2019s wish.\u201d Then, the switch: The movie is actually about a foul-mouthed, pot-smoking stuffed bear.\n<\/p>\n

While the narrator himself might be used sparingly these days, marketers actually haven\u2019t changed the basic structure of the trailer in years. To impart key information like tag-lines and release dates, voiceovers have been usurped by new trailer trends that follow the same format.\n<\/p>\n

Many modern trailers use what are called title cards: text that appears on screen with familiar phrases like \u201cthis summer the rules have changed,\u201d for example, in a recent Transformers trailer.\n<\/p>\n

Marketers have also turned to actors, either using dialogue from the film or writing entirely new scripts. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles<\/a><\/em> reboot, released later this summer, used a monologue from actor William Fichtner that includes a classic trailer tag-line: \u201cHeroes are not born, they\u2019re created.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Even this could be waning in the face digital media and shorter attention spans. Last year, The Wolverine<\/em> became the first big movie to release a trailer on Vine<\/a>, Twitter\u2019s viral video-sharing platform. The trailer used a flurry of 21 different cuts in six seconds. No character narration, no trailer voiceover.\n<\/p>\n

In a world with that kind of marketing, what hope does the voiceover artist have?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The voiceover artist held the limelight for decades, reaching their peak in 1994 \u2013 the last time when all top-10 films at the box office used a narrator in their trailer, from the critically praised The Lion King to the panned Dumb and Dumber. Then things started to change. Fewer trailers were using the gimmick, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[4,5,6],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amazingvoiceovers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amazingvoiceovers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amazingvoiceovers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amazingvoiceovers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amazingvoiceovers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.amazingvoiceovers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amazingvoiceovers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amazingvoiceovers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amazingvoiceovers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}