The myth has fallen. A new category of advertising voice talents was born: the “everyday heroes” one.
With the Amazon series “the Boys”, the tear has finally been completed: it is no longer a frustration for us mere mortals to feel imperfect or to aim unnecessarily at perfection. No one is perfect, so we are all approachable to divinity. It is true for digital citizens as well as for us professional italian voice over artists now serving the “everymen” cause, trying to follow their everyday dream.
For several years now, the media have put on the stage another category of actors. Electricians, office workers, lifeguards, consultants, drivers, nurses, etc., etc. “Very normal people” are exalted, convincing us that “you are the protagonist”. And indeed it is really so. I was called, as a “historic” italian advertising voiceover of the Nivea brand, to interpret the new adv campaign dedicated to the daily heroes of soccer. On this occasion, being an italian voiceover talent was even more difficult, if possible. Why? Well, being asked to a voiceover in a context in which all of us could identify, that of the weekly soccer game, using a dramatic voice delivery , just like in a set of an epic movie, gave life to a fun game of contrasts. Basically this is how it works: we normal people are the “movement” that brings to the top a few hundred outstanding players. We, with our mini-matches, changing ourselves inside moldy locker rooms, that if the ball ends up on the roof, ends the game …
Being an italian voiceover means putting yourself at the service of the creative idea, willing to become the instrument of an idea.
Inside the recording studio, the atmosphere is really exciting: a new agency had developed a truly unique creative project; the testimonials, normally athletes of renowned Serie A teams, gave way to real people, selected with the street casting technique. In the frames of the advertising spot I am the italian official voice over, I no longer saw any muscular and statuesque physicists, but little sculpted legs, sturdy pancetta and ordinary peoplephysiognomies, which for the hour and a half of Thursday evening turn into champions.
In the recording studio I find myself in front of the client, at least three people, the agency (creative director and copy and producer), Margherita, my favorite sound designer and, as usual, at the end I remain alone, behind the glass, in front of the microphone.
Slowly the dance begins searching the right delivery that best suits the light and ironic spirit of the campaign. Shall I play it “serious”, which means epic, muscular … or more credibly normal, easy, to make everything harmonious in line with the empathic effect we wanted to generate? Today there is no longer need to choose, let’s bring everything home and possibly quickly: we’re doing it in both ways. In these cases the importance of the italian voice over artist in an advertising spot, is palpable in the air. Everyone inside the studio is focused on the final result, that one effect that must be generated for everyone: agency, client. The only “veteran” was me and, believe me or not, for this reason facing a task that you may call difficult as an euphemism: too easy to rely on the usual delivery and pace that I have always offered to Nivea in recent years as the italian voice over. Maybe the client, the agency, does not want this. And I, do not have the slightest intention to be quoted, as an advertising italian mother tongue voice talent, like Sergio Leone did about Eastwood’s expressions: with a hat or without. Then the grade merry-go-round of takes began, considering there were a “manifesto” script and different product scripts to decline in different ways.
The italian voiceover talent is the last survivor of an adv epic age, the ideal bridge between heroes and new everyday people.
At the end this Everyday Football Heroes campaign by Nivea fills the hard disks with gigabytes of files of my italian advertising voice talent, less advertising, more epic, more normal, more ironic and so on: “italian advertising voice over wanted“, it would seem the title of this movie. But this time it’s “my movie”. Tired but amused: it is not often finding yourself in front of an audience willing to be amazed, taking nothing for granted. My voice delivery ultimately chosen, I leave you to judge, readers and, I hope soon, listeners.
Once again halfway between the ironic and the epic, the serious and the facetious, as it had to be.
I like the idea of being the italian advertising voice actor of great Nivea campaign, being directed by a creative team guided by a director who knows what she wants but who is willing to listen to the client and honestly discuss the result (in short, I liked her because she dislikes the saying “the customer is always right”, which distinguishes a large advertising medium from a mediocre one). I like the idea of still being in the saddle, as the italian voice talent of Nivea’s advertising, even at the end of a 2019 seeming like the end of the world.