Interview (Part 2): Tasia Valenza, Voice-Over Artist

From TV series to videogames, voice-over acting to commercials, Tasia Valenza has had a long and successful career in the entertainment business. In that time, there have been many changes, but one thing has remained constant: Movie trailers almost always feature male voice-overs. In fact, Tasia is one of a handful of women to have had her voice used for a movie commercial.

I recently interviewed Tasia about her career, what is involved in her job as a voice over artist, and some of the unique challenges women face in her line of work.

Today in Part 2, Tasia talks about how competitive the field of voice over artistry is and how gender issues play a part in that competition:

Scott: How competitive is the whole voice‑over acting world?

Tasia: When I got into it, I thought it was competitive. That was in the early nineties. I would guess there were maybe 2,000 to 5,000 people doing it at the time. Now it’s probably 20,000 to 30,000. Needless to say the competition has grown extensively. That’s partly due to the fact that the media has made the country more aware of it. “The cat is out of the bag.”

Technology has changed the landscape significantly. For years, I’ve had some very expensive cutting edge equipment in my studio… which is actually my closet, albeit a nice big closet (laughs). That sounds quite novel to “work in a closet” and it used to be.

Now, because of new relatively inexpensive technology, you can have “a closet” anywhere. It used to be New York, Chicago, and LA was the main hub for the advertising industry. The Technology to cast projects was clumsy and expensive, because you had to get auditions first on DATS, and send them via Federal Express. Now with Voice Bank, an online casting service, and mp3s, you can have a casting done in an hour that used to take you at least twenty-four. Add in the talent using the Internet to learn, and Mp3’s and other forms of technology, and “the world” is doing voice-overs literally. I’ve been hired by clients in Germany, Dubai, and beyond. But other talent from all over the world is getting in on those same auditions. It’s incredibly competitive. On top of that now, there’s more non‑union, work that started after the last commercial strike.

So technology has been a big contributor to increasing competition. but the positives definitely out way the negatives. I just started using a fairly new technology recently, which called Source Connect, This will allow me as a voice‑over artist to go anywhere in the world, and use technology that I would never have been able to use comfortably, even five years ago.

Scott: I know that there are celebrities who do these voice‑overs, not only in movies, but commercials. I’m just curious what your thoughts are about that.

Tasia: [jokingly] How dare they! [laughs] Again, there are positives and negatives. It’s true that nowadays, it’s a very cool thing to do voice-overs, and celebrities are cashing in on this fact. Which of course, makes it more challenging, because there’s literally a piece of the best paying pie is going to celebrities. It used to be a lot easier for “scale” talent had a much better shot at getting a car campaign, or some of these other high profile campaigns that really are “hitting the jackpot” in the sense of the coveted multiple network spots on television.

On the upside, the desire for celebrities, has helped my agents at DPN create many new relationships with advertising agencies seeking out there celebrity talent, which in turn has made more opportunity for their scale clients. So even though it can be challenging, the influx of celebrities into the market, there’s a lot of positives to it.

Scott: Speaking of challenges, there is In A World…, a wonderful movie that came out last year, directed and starring Lake Bell as Carol. In the movie, Carol’s father is this legendary movie trailer voice guy, and Carol goes up against this prejudice that exists where pretty much everybody in the business thinks a movie trailer’s voice‑over has to be a male. What did you think of the movie, and is that an accurate appraisal of the situation?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuxApRnekWc

Tasia: Well, first of all, props to Lake Bell for making a very fun, entertaining, and fairly accurate depiction of the voice-over screenplay. It took some licenses, but she did a great job with it. I would have to say she’s pretty much on the nail in respect to the disparity in the Trailer World. In the last ten years, women have definitely gotten a much bigger share of the pie in commercials, promos, narration and all the other mediums, but we have barely made a dent in trailers.

I thought it was a very interesting perspective because even in the movie Lake Bell’s character wins this big Trailer campaign for a “Hunger Games”-esque movie against two males voice over artists including her legendary father and she runs into the client played by Geena Davis. Carol (Lake’s character) is going on about how excited she is at getting the coveted gig, and Gina’s character gives her this smack down in terms of just saying it’s not really because she was any better than her male counterparts, or that it was a sign of things to come. It was a sobering part of the film and it’s indicative of the fact that we as women, still have a long road ahead in making “inroads” in the trailer arena.

Scott: We can look at gender inequity in the film and TV business. Writing, directing, acting, you see these numbers, nine percent women, twelve percent women. I just saw another stat today actually. The highest percentage of female nominees for Academy Awards was 1994. It was 26 percent, then the next year it dropped to 16 percent, which I think is more indicative of the norm. Yet if there is any area in the business in which this bias is so pronounced, it’s movie trailers.

Let’s run through some of that conventional wisdom. One is this idea that male voices somehow cut through sound better than female voices, especially like trailers filled with all sorts of actions and noise. How do you respond to that?

Tasia: Well, being a female I would say, to be objective… if I can be (laughs) that would depend on the movie. It’s not across the board any more. I think that if you have an action movie, where you’re going to literally have big sound effects and you’re going for a male audience primarily, that would certainly be true.

There have been some romantic comedies, and kid movies, and softer, more independent movies that I think a woman’s voice would not only cut through, it would be appropriate.. Women’s voices not appropriate for every trailer just like they’re not appropriate on every promo, but there definitely should be more opportunities to mix it up and hear them in a movie theater along side the males, depending on the audience and the sell.

And I’ve noticed that campaigns usually are more specifically targeted and aren’t a “One size fits all” marketing strategy. It would be great if a woman would get 20 percent of the campaign, and a man would get the 80 percent, or 50/50.

Scott: What about this point, again we’re talking about supposed conventional wisdom… that women trust men’s voices, and men trust men’s voices, but men don’t trust women’s voices. What do you think about that?

Tasia: I haven’t done the studies, but I don’t think that’s true, because that would go in the face of all the other advertising, which women are representing banks, cars and insurance companies that all require “trustworthy” reads. When I’m auditioning nowadays, I would say over 60 percent of the time when I’m reading, for the Announcer the specs says male or female.

I think it’s an antiquated idea that men don’t trust women’s voices. It’s really a matter of someone in marketing taking risks and some trial and error until a new trend is born. The audience might resist it at first, but I believe that the paying public would enjoy hearing women trailers, that are, of course, appropriate for the genre of the movie.

Thirty years ago, it was mostly men doing commercials, very few women. You had the Sally Kellerman’s who was one of the rare women. And then in the eighties and nineties it grew into the last decade women are on major brands. I was one of the voices of a Turbo Tax campaign last year in what would have been considered a very male oriented “read’ years ago. It was definitely “The Voice of Reason” kind of a feel.

Then in promos, it was all males up till the late nineties. Then more women started to break in to them. At ABC I started doing daytime promos for Soaps. Then little by little I got to do some nighttime shows, from comedies to dramas. I ultimately replaced a male announcer for the nightly talk show, “Politically Incorrect” with Bill Maher, which I did for two years until it was canceled. That was unprecedented for a female to read a daily late night talk show and I don’t think has happened since.

That was due in large part to Mike Benson who was I believe was VP of marketing at ABC at the time. He was always “Thinking outside the box” and was extremely forward thinking. I thought that was a very bold gesture on his part, and I was very grateful for the opportunity.

Tomorrow in Part 3, we discuss a movie trailer Tasia voiced, one of a handful featuring a woman, and get some insights from Tasia for writers based on her experience as a voice-over artist.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

You may find Tasia’s website here.

You may find Tasia’s YouTube channel here.

Twitter: @TasiaValenza.

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