The Invisible Art of VoiceOver

I spent years producing these wizards of breath. Here’s one story.

Denizens of the Voiceover Booth

This is a story of a city night in late October, years ago now, and a time of particular pleasure, brought by the best work. Selling pizza, or beer, or burgers, or perhaps a train trip. I do not remember which, and it doesn’t matter.

What does matter is the location, a recording studio in midtown Manhattan, and the people, engineers and producers and the stars of the show, the corp of actors, both women and men that made up the professional ranks of the VoiceOvers.

Close your eyes.

The important instruction in these stories, because this is a world often grandly, perhaps unfairly weighted by cliché, called Theater of the Mind. It takes place beyond the eye, so to say, beyond every physical thing, in a world forged in inner imagination, dreams almost. I mean, it is a boundless world and one I’ve always had an affinity for.

Our story of this night begins in the most mundane of places; a commuter train to New Jersey, the car stale and pale in the florescent air.

A man sits on the train. I don’t mean to peg this story to a man. It could have been a woman, and these days gender being…