EVER wondered who owns the voice behind that sultry bunny telling us to "take it easy with Cadbury's Caramel"? Or just what the fresh-voiced lass who tells us Fairy washing-powder gets our clothes "not just fairly soft, but Fairy soft" looks like? What about the chatty bloke amasing plamasing us about the virtues of the Fiat Punto car with the "Spirito di Punto"?
The faces behind the voices behind the ads. Chances are you haven't given them much thought. Chances are the actors' suspension of your disbelief is so successful that you really do think it's a cartoon bunny with a luscious way of telling you to relax with a gooey chocolate fix.
Put several 30-second snatches of such pulpfiction marketing together and you have an adbreak. Punctuating our every foray into TV- and radio-land, they are frequently slicker, more imaginative, and more entertaining than the actual programmes we tune in for.
Behind them is a cohort of actors with particular skills in breathing, enunciation and mimicry, and an aptitude for reading a 30-second script, judging the speed at which to speak it, deciding the words to stress and getting it right - in 30 minutes or less. "Studio time is very expensive," explains Deborah Pearce, co-founder of Voicebank. With 40 actors on its books, Voicebank is the only voiceover agency in the Republic.
"If someone is struggling with a script, if they don't get it within an hour, that person probably won't get booked again," she says. Deborah has been doing voice-overs herself since she graduated from the Gaiety School of Acting in 1994.
"As a matter of course really, I made a voiceover tape and sent it out to about 75 agencies. The first ad I did was for the Galway races," she laughs. "I played the 12-year-old boy who was bored, and his mother who suggested they go the races."
On the Voicebank brochure, her voice is described as having a range "from the sexy to the serious . . . all delivered in a relaxed and unaffected style." Just the thing to promote minced beef and sliced pan. Hers is the voice that tells the nation about Dunnes Stores - with its special offers and "triple-points weekends" - on radio and TV. She has also extolled the virtues of breast expanders - "They're just sugar and water" - and Kittensoft toilet tissue.
Her voice is her fortune, and so must be cared for. "If you smoke, the studio mikes will pick it up in your breathing. Men can get away with a lot more than women. Your voice tends to be better at different times of the day," she continues. "When the voice has been used for a while, it and the mouth are warmed up. If there's a morning session, some will try to put it off until the afternoon, or do the usual voice exercises. There are different tongue-twisters to limber up the mouth. If you had a hangover? You just wouldn't go. You'd call in sick."
Most of the sound studios are around the Merrion Square/Fitzwilliam Square area of Dublin. Typical would be the Moynihan Russell studio on Herbert Street - a grand old Georgian townhouse converted, like its neighbours, into office space. At number eight, as well as the usual reception area, are three large rooms, each adapted with a border wall separating it into two spaces. A large window looks from one half, with its digital mixing desk, into the sound-proofed recording room, where microphones overhang a table at which the actors sit, and headphones lie on the table. In the first room, with the mixing desk, there's a couch where clients and copywriters sit, overseeing the fruits of their commercial creativity. There are also three walls of CDs - with every background sound, from kids crying to taps dripping, and every musical genre accounted for.
Despite requests to several ad agencies that The Irish Times be allowed to sit in on a voice-over recording, none would let an outsider in. Such is the level of secrecy surrounding the agencies' strategies, says Deborah, that the actor might even be told to tear up the script as soon as they have finished.
Conor Lambert, who Voicebank describes as having "a wonderfully mellow, deep, natural voice", says he is doing about three ads a week at the moment. He sees himself primarily as a stand-up comic, with the ad industry as a lucrative side-line. Among others, he has done a series of ads for Fiat Punto and an ad for Cadbury's Roses.
"When you get into this you never listen to an ad break in the same way again. I'm always listening to see who's working, who's doing what. Morgan Jones is forever working. He does the hard-sell stuff. Lots of shouting. He does the Crunchie ads. You know: `That Friday feeling! You just can't keep it in!' ", he laughs.
Typically, actors will get the call to come in for a voice-over session about a day in advance. When they show up at the studio, they will get the script for the first time, have a few minutes to read through it and then they're into studio. The actor, says Deborah, should know instinctively, by looking at the amount of text in the script, how fast or slow it should be read. They should know what aspects of the product need to be stressed, and they will probably be told what tone of voice to take - whether they should be bubbly, caring, sexy, fresh and lively, outraged or whatever.
"They'd need to feel okay about being silly, and not take it too seriously if they mess up the first time. You can't be easily insulted. Some of those best suited to the work are comedians."
Aoife Maloney is unusual says Deborah, being a young actor. Good young voices are difficult to find, and Aoife is getting a lot of work. You've possibly heard her "young, vibrant and exceptionally clear" voice waxing about McDonald's, St Ivel Shape yoghurts, Fairy non-bio washing powder, the Peugeot Meridien car, Knorr Taste Breaks and Pond's face creams. "It's gas really, being so many different characters," she says. "I'd like to keep doing this work - it's quick and quite lucrative."
Deborah says however, that it's not a business that will make actors rich. For a 30-second commercial for television, the actor may be paid about £300, regardless of whether it's shown once, twice or 300 times.
"On our books there are probably just three or four who make a full-time living from the work. For most it's a way of making bread and butter to support the other projects where they actually get seen."