Who does the voice for the Adelaide trams? Find out here
THERE is a real woman behind that voice on the tram. And yes, she lives in Adelaide. Here we reveal who she is ... from the tram, of course.
THIS one has been a long time coming. Finally, after two years of being interrupted by her soothing stop announcements during these On the Tram interviews, Sophie Perri came face-to-face with the Tram Lady herself.
Yes, the woman who does the voiceover for the tram lives in Adelaide (the hills, specifically) and does all her voiceover work from Telemall in Stepney. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Melissa Virgara.
Does this feel weird to you?
It is a bit odd when I get on the tram, and I don’t take it very often but there was a period a couple of years ago when I was working in the city, so I was catching the tram. I decided to ignore myself.
What do you feel when you hear yourself?
I’ve done voiceovers for about 19 years now so the strangest thing was, I was in Melbourne at the beginning of the year and my daughters and I hopped on a train, and I completely forgot I had done the voice for the trains in Victoria years ago — you do so much stuff you forget. So we were sitting there and got to one stop and my daughter said, ‘is that you?’.
I did the trains here in Adelaide many years ago but they’ve started to change a few of them. I have friends ringing up saying, ‘your voice isn’t on the train anymore’ and I go, ‘it’s OK, you can still ring me up and I can talk to you’.
Do your family and friends ever say to you, ‘can you just do the Rundle Mall announcement?’
Yeah, my family is over it. But the occasional friend will say, ‘go on’.
What’s the reaction when you tell people you’re the tram voice?
The first question always is, ‘how did you get into that?’
And do people say, ‘that’s not how I pictured you, or, you’re exactly how I pictured you?’
People don’t really mention the whole ‘picturing the tram lady’ thing. There was one time when I was working in the city and we were stuck in a bit of a traffic jam and the tram was stopped and I was talking to the driver. I thought, ‘should I tell him? No. Yeah, I’ll tell him’. I think he didn’t believe me, thought I was a nutter.
You have to put on a voice, don’t you, because the way you sound now is quite different.
Yes. Years ago I recorded these and your voice gets recorded, debreathed and compressed, all the hisses and the pops are taken out, then my voice got sent over to Germany where they actually made the trams and put into the speakers there, so by the time it gets back here it’s me, but it’s not me.
So how did you get the job?
I do a lot of work for Telemall and that’s probably the majority of the voiceover work that I do. So yeah, they just give voices to the client and ask, ‘what do you like?’
What do you think it is about your voice?
I don’t know, I’m probably quite corporate.
How many other voices would they have heard before choosing?
At Telemall on file they have about 10 to 12 female voices, the same for males, but I presume Transport SA or whoever it was decided they wanted a female.
How long did the recordings take?
It was done in two sessions. A normal session for voiceovers can be two hours. I remember doing a four hour session for the tram, because it’s not just the announcements for the stops, it’s each word individually as well, just in case they need to put messages together.
So voiceover is a fulltime job?
No, so back when my kids were little and I was a stay-at-home mum, that was what I did. I part-own and run a medical practice so that’s my fulltime job, and I take Thursdays off to go into the studio.
What did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to act — on stage. Now it’s just in front of a microphone.
Where else can people hear you?
I do a lot of the IVR stuff where you ring a company and it’s ‘press 1 for this’ so I do Origin Energy and Bendigo Bank, those sorts of places.
Do you enjoy the job?
I absolutely love it.
Why?
To be honest, it’s just having fun. It’s getting paid to have a chat.
How did you know you could do it, what made you get into it?
It’s one of those things, I don’t think anybody likes the sound of their own voice. And people say, ‘I could never do that’, but we’re all the same. Doing voiceovers is more about being able to listen. That’s more important than the way you speak. You need to be able to listen to tones and expression.
Do you like the sound of your voice then?
Not particularly, no. Quite often at work I’ll have to call someone and be on hold, and often it’s me talking to myself.
How do you prepare for a session?
I sing very loudly in the car.
Can you sing?
No, I’m not a singer at all. But it just warms me up if I haven’t yelled at the kids in the morning.
So people have said to you that you have a nice voice?
Years ago I did lots of reception work, so people would say that. But it was more the fact that I was into drama. I used to do a lot of amateur theatre. I had a friend who said, ‘why don’t you do voiceovers, I have a friend who does it’. So I looked into it and back in the day there were two or three agencies to register with, and it involved making a cassette tape of me reading something out of the paper.
What’s your favourite stop to say?
Victoria Square/Tarndanyangga. It took some time. I think there were about 10 versions of it and everybody had their own opinion on what was right.
Do you ever crank out the voice in everyday life?
Sometimes, just to get a bit of a laugh.
How was it the first time you heard yourself as a voiceover?
Great. The very first voiceover I ever did was narrating a set of teaching and training CDs for the Federal Department of Education, of all things. It was the most dry and horrible content with words like ‘key competencies’.
What’s Telemall like?
Back in 1986 they started. They were groundbreaking in that they were the first to do messages on hold. Because the South Australian accent is not as harsh as the eastern states, we do messages on hold Australia-wide and internationally as well.
Do you think a lot of people believe your job is easy?
Yes. It’s not rocket science, but there is skill to it. It’s more about listening than about speaking. The worst thing is the giggles. It doesn’t happen often but when it does, the guy in the studio takes a 20 minute break and makes a cup of tea. I did a Westfield script once when Kenny Rogers franchised a chicken roasting business and it was called, unfortunately, Kenny Rogers Chickens. Given that the word rogers can have other connotations to it, my God, did I laugh.
(the tram announcement for Entertainment Centre comes on)
That one is definitely deeper. I may have recorded that one the next day.
How’s mine? ‘To stop at Bonython Park, please request now.’
Beautiful. Honestly. You just need a bit of confidence.