MASTER a Morgan Freeman voice impression in under 7 minutes!

Possibly the longest awaited video on this channel... 5 years, but it's here!
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Beginner resource:    • Видео  
Finisher resource:    • MOTIVATION - Morgan Freeman  

This is a video on how to do a Morgan Freeman impression. It is fairly in depth though a little adhoc to be honest. suitable for beginners to people who have been doing impressions for years and really want to perfect their impressions.

Transcript

How to sound like Morgan Freeman | Impression tutorial

‘Out of the night that cover me, black is the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul’

Now then, welcome back, so as voted by yourselves, todays tutorial is the very long awaited Morgan Freeman impression. If you haven’t seen the first two videos in this series, make sure you go check them first as they will be referenced here. In this video I will go through some hints and tips. The area I am going to do a specific case study on, using Morgan Freeman is the idea of completing an impression so that it is multi layered. Please drop a like on the video and vote for whatever impression tutorial you would like next in the comment section.

Resources

There are two videos that I recommend, first for getting started is the well known Joshua Robert Thompson impressions reel, which is the first Morgan Freeman impression I ever heard. It’s great because it is original dialogue, and really captures that narrator Morgan Freeman mode.

First I’m going to give you some pointers for a caricature Morgan Freeman impression from the Shawshank Redemption.

Pitch/ Tone
I don’t think it will come as a huge surprise when I tell you that Morgan Freeman has a very deep voice. A lot of people ask how can I make my voice deeper, and this is the secret, you have to concentrate your energy on to the vagus nerve, that way you can vibrate the mucous membrane, or Vocal chords, modulating the flow of air coming from the lungs during phonation.
Obviously that’s a joke, there is no easy answer, all I can say is try tilting your head foward slightly and focus on producing the noise from far down the throat as you can, almost the chest as you can. As I pointed out in the first video, my voice wasn’t always this deep, it is something that comes very slowly with practice. Every time you do it you will increase your range just a little bit and eventually. Apparently yawning helps as well.

Most deep voices have a croaky quality to it, which is something that really defines the Morgan Freeman voice, once you start reaching that depth it will come naturally, but also try to constrict the throat to add to that croaky sound.


Words to hit when learning
The best thing to do in the beginning is to go for the standard Shawshank narration when starting out, this is the most recognisable, heres a few starter phrases I recommend.
Andy Dufresne
Damn Near worn down to the nub
Get busy living or get busy dying, and that’s god damn right.
z
Rhythm

It’s a slow, measured voice, when narrating, it flows, with peaks and troughs, when acting or conversational it’s a bit more jumpy, with considered pauses for thought.

Case study: Completing an impression

When I talk about completing an impression, what I mean is being able to switch between modes fluidly.
Morgan Freeman, like most actors has several different styles of talking, whether it be

Caricature (Shawshank narration)…
When he is Acting in a role
Or in a normal Conversational

If you want to have a really spot on impression, you have to master all the different ways that that person speaks. This takes a long long time and is only worth doing for impressions that have a lot of longevity, for me Morgan Freeman took about 3-4 years to perfect.

But as a general idea I’m going to take you through the process I took to perfect Morgan Freeman