In a world where voiceover artists received acclaim and attention commensurate with the reach of their voice, Don LaFontaine probably would have had his own voice-over lab years ago.
But even the most famous voice-over actors in the business tend to spend most of their careers in the shadows, so the Don LaFontaine Voice-Over Lab was not established until this month. The unveiling came almost two years after the death of LaFontaine, the voice of more than 5,000 movie trailers and the man whose resonant tones made the phrase “in a world … ” a movie trailer cliché of the first order.
The lab, which is located at the Screen Actors Guild Foundation’s Actors Center in Los Angeles, is a resource facility of the SAG Foundation. It includes a sound studio, as well as classroom space for workshops, seminars and demonstrations.
LaFontaine’s personal engineer, George Whittam, supervised the facility.
Over a near 50-year career, LaFontaine recorded hundreds of thousands of television and radio commercials, in addition to his 5,000 trailers and his work as the voice of numerous television networks, as well as awards shows like the SAG Awards and the Oscars.
Called everything from "the voice of God" to "the Jack Nicholson of promo," LaFontaine spoofed himself in a Geico commercial and a "Five Guys in a Limo" spot with other voice-over artists that opened the 26th Hollywood Reporter's Key Art Awards.
In the “Ask Don” section of LaFontaine’s website, his response to a question about getting started in the business was “remember that it’s not the quality of the voice that counts, it’s the quality of the delivery.” The key, he said, is to find good voice-over classes.
And in a world where bloggers feel compelled to overuse the phrase “in a world” when they’re writing about the man, it makes perfect sense that those classes may now take place in a center named for LaFontaine himself.
