Press Stories

From commercials to light-rail reminders, voice-over jobs draw DJs, actors and others into a fiercely competitive market

By Sam McManis - Bee Staff Writer
September 26, 2006

You might think that Cammie Winston had faded slowly into local-media obscurity. It has been, after all, 10 years since she left the air as afternoon DJ on Mix 96, the soothing soundtrack for scores of Sacramento dental offices.

Truth is, though, you're likely hearing more of Winston than ever.

If you're one of the 30,000 daily riders of Regional Transit's light-rail trains, hers is the pleasant voice telling you that the next stop is Power Inn Road. And if you're one of 51.3 million Verizon Wireless cell-phone customers, it is Winston's efficient voice that tells you to press 1 for billing questions, 2 for service calls.

Oh, and she's gone international, too.

If you find yourself in Europe and needing to make a long-distance call using an English- language recorded voice, that's right -- that's an automated Winston translating for you.

"It just goes to show," Winston says, "how voice-overs are all around us. But I never care how many people are hearing me. That's not why I do it."

No, she's says, she's doing it, as are so many other voice-over artists in Sacramento, to pay the bills.

It's why local actress and singer Rachel Songer hustles to recording studios each weekday to portray every character from a Valley Girl teen to a kindly grandma. It's why Tom Buck, another former radio DJ, uses his burnished baritone to hawk products such as the Clapper and the Ove Glove as well as record the numbers heard on TV for California Lottery drawings. And it's why Elisabeth Nunziato, who by night stars in the B Street Theatre's "Lune, Pronounced Loony," spends mornings reading copy for anything from car ads to PBS documentaries.

Rare, however, is the set of vocal cords that can make a living solely by voice-overs. At least in Sacramento. If that's your goal, say those who work here, move to Los Angeles or New York or, in some cases, San Francisco.

Still, for a medium-size media market, Sacramento boasts enough voice-over work to supplement incomes. The pay is $75 to $200 per recording session, which can last from 10 minutes to an hour. (Artists here don't get residuals -- payment for every time an ad airs -- because voice actors in Sacramento are not unionized.)

So, actors such as Songer, Nunziato and her husband, Jason Kuykendall, cobble together several jobs so they can afford to act. As Songer says, only slightly apologetically, "On my taxes at the end of the year, the bulk of my income is voice-overs."

Winston combines her voice work with a marketing and public relations firm that she and her husband run. Other prominent Sacramento voices, such as Paul Kinney and Michael Brunswick, run audio production studios that record commercials locally and nationally. Kinney heads RadioFilms Productions, which produces radio ads and TV spots. Brunswick is with Nakamoto Productions, whose co-founders, Ray Nakamoto and Marni Webb, are perhaps the most successful voice-over artists in the area.

The only hired voice in Sacramento who does nothing else professionally is Buck, whose authoritative work is heard nationwide.

He's the voice of WXXA, a Fox TV affiliate in Albany, N.Y., and WSRE, a PBS station in Pensacola, Fla. He just recently ended a 21-year affiliation with the Nugget casino near Reno.

You've also heard him provide dialogue for the staples of late-night TV -- ads for the Clapper and other products, such as anti-itch lotion, sunburn medication and dental hygiene devices. And, yes, he can go highbrow, too, voicing spots for wineries and Martha Stewart Living.

"I really love doing this, but it's not easy to get enough work," Buck says. "You've really got to hustle. Now, with the technology the way it is, a lot of people can do it from anywhere in the country."

Buck says that only 10 percent of the voice work he does airs in Sacramento. He's got a Mac-based home studio (Pro Tools using 24-bit processing, for the tech-savvy) in which he can record and send voice-overs at the press of a few buttons. He also has a "phone patch" that links directors, clients and ad agencies into sessions from remote locations.

Winston also has a home studio but often does work at local production companies. And several Sacramento actors say they've taken fully loaded laptops with them to the sets of movies so they can record commercials between scenes.

The key to success is being available, says Jack Barry, a veteran voice-over artist who lives in Chico. He rarely strays from the phone in his home studio, which cost $5,000 to install.

"A client will send out an audition request by e-mail to 200 people to read the same copy," Barry says. "If I don't respond within an hour, they'll pass me by because there's 200 others who'll gladly respond. And then they'll pick what they like from there."

What agencies like is anyone's guess; it's mostly at the director's whim.

At one time, the so-called "voice of God" -- deep and male -- reigned in commercials. Barry did parlay his basso profundo imitation of the late NFL Films narrator John Facenda into voicing a spoof on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno."

But that's the exception rather than the rule. Larry Moss, creative director for the Sacramento advertising behemoth Runyon, Saltzman & Einhorn, says the state of the voice-over art has changed in recent years.

"The call now is for younger, more real-sounding people," Moss says. "It heightens credibility and authenticity."

Voice-overs for radio and TV spots are divided almost equally into what those in the business call "straight reads" and those featuring characters playing to a script. (A third type is the "screamer," that high-pitched, hard-sell genre almost the exclusive domain of local TV car dealership ads.)

Radio personalities often get work narrating straight spots. But local actors are coveted by ad agencies because they can do all types. Nunziato, for instance, says most of her voice-over work is in "storytelling," and she has made a name for herself by changing characters and voices as often as she changes clothes.

She's done a lot of work with Kinney. Some spots, such as her work for a local supermarket chain, is read straight and often nailed in one take. Then there's that recent radio ad for a San Francisco Mercedes-Benz dealer.

In it, Nunziato played a woman in heavy labor ("screaming, wretched-pain labor," she corrects) and her husband, played by Kinney, was obsessing over the performance and safety of the luxury car. Nunziato was called upon to act crazed but still deliver lines with precise enunciation. Not easy.

"We had a lot of fun with that one," she says.

Actors are the best "talent" with whom to work, Kinney says, because they can take direction.

"Rachel and Elisabeth are excellent examples," Kinney says. "They add intangibles. I, as a writer, may write a line, but actors like them deliver it in such a way I didn't anticipate and not necessarily had in mind. But it works. That's why they get so much work."

Songer works four days a week voicing copy, sometimes as many as four studio sessions a day. What began as just a day job to help fund her acting has become something of a labor of love.

"I have fallen in love with the mike," she says. "There's something about hearing yourself immediately that's satisfying. That, and you can wear wear sweats and flip-flops and no makeup.

"Being on stage and getting people to laugh, yeah, that's pretty awesome. But, all in all, if someone said you can do one thing for the rest of your life and make a living at it, I'd say, voice-overs."

That's surprising, considering that Songer has performed at Carnegie Hall and the Lincoln Center, had supporting roles in the Hallmark Channel TV movie "Out of the Woods" and the independent feature film "Her Minor Thing," and starred for five years in the Studio Theatre production of "Six Women With Brain Death."

"Some of this (voice-over) stuff is really fun," she says. "I do Future Nissan ads, where I have a sexy (character) thing going on. I've done Mattress Discounters, where I'm screaming. Now, I'm doing an old woman trying to get her grandson to buy a house. I don't necessarily buy me as a grandma, but the client loves it."

That's a key to voice-over success: faking it. As Buck says, with a chuckle, "You've got to show a lot of interest in the Ove Glove."

Sometimes, for the sake of a paycheck, voice-over artists hold their noses and forge ahead.

"I was hired to be a voice for a strip club in Reno once," says Susan Hayward, who since 1985 has written, produced and voiced commercials and teaches a voice-over class at the Learning Exchange.

"I'm thinking, 'I don't really believe in this.' But then again, it's only going to play in Reno and no one will know it's me. I was rationalizing the whole thing."

When it comes to political ads, many voice-over artists say that they have strict ethics: Don't voice something you don't believe in.

Hayward has done ads in New York for Sen. Hillary Clinton. But she won't do ads for most Republican candidates. Likewise, Barry, a Republican, says he wouldn't voice spots for Democrats or ads for what he believes are morally suspect products, "like prophylactics." But he has done a spot for a "natural Viagra supplement."

But Songer, who just finished voicing a campaign ad for state Sen. Jeff Denham, R-Salinas, says, "I've done ads where I cross party lines. I'm pretty much an independent -- and, you know, it's a job."