Lake Bell’s ‘In A World…’ Explores Why Women Aren’t Used To Narrate Trailers

Actress Lake Bell is making her directorial debut with In A World…, which examines why more women aren’t used to do voice-overs in movies.

This is just one of the many areas in showbiz that is ruled by men. When have you ever heard a movie trailer being narrated by a woman? Almost never.

Men are king in this aspect of the industry and Lake Bell is trying to bring attention to that.

In A World…opens on Friday with Bell, playing Carol, a vocal coach with aspirations of becoming a voice-over actress and a father who is a celebrated voice-over actor.

The reality is that there is a clear lack of female voice-over actors in movie trailers.

Cathy Kalmenson, co-president of a voice-over company says that more action roles are given to females than ever before, but when looking at movie trailers, 99 percent of actors are male.

Some argue that male voices carry better over the often loud trailers, like in the case of action movies. Lake Bell is attempting to at least make the point that there could be more of a balance.

A female voice could work well with a romantic comedy for example, but studios do away with a narrator altogether in many of these cases.

Bell has considered all the theories and agrees, somewhat, that a male voice carries better over all the action sequences of a trailer, and it’s easier to understand than a female voice.

To the director, it more a feminist issue and she is trying to change that, or at least plant the seed. She thinks the industry could be ready for a change. “There’s an opportunity to hire women to do movie trailer voice-overs.” she says, pitching herself for the job.

Melissa Disney is one such woman, who did the voice-over for Gone In 60 Seconds in 2000, which is credited as one of the first movies to use a female voice.

Disney went on to do trailers for Bridesmaids, Unstoppable, and Extremely Loud, Extremely Close among others. She has also done work for the Academy Awards, Emmys, and Billboard Music Awards.

She thinks audiences and studios are evolving right now but there is still resistance from certain quarters, mainly marketing strategists, film studios, and even audience members that don’t want the change to take place.

Lake Bell is hoping to change that, or like we said, at least make people, audiences and executives alike, think.

Would you like to see more female voices doing movie trailers voice-overs? Will you watch Lake Bell’s film In A World…?