Sound breathy
Batman has a breathy voice which means he’s pushing extra air which doesn’t vibrate the vocal cords. This effect is done by not fully closing vocal cords also known as decompressing them.
The hard part of creating a breathy tone is maintaining the same breathiness. Practice a breathy voice in long sentences and make sure you keep it consistent to be able to perform Batman’s voice impression consistently good.
Speak from the throat
Batman mostly speaks from his throat, hence the throaty voice we all know. To replicate it you should push your voice down to the throat and constrict it there, you should feel a vibration in that area.
It may help if you tilted your head down. By positioning it like that you naturally make your voice deeper and force it to come more from a throat area.
Diaphragm breathing
Batman’s voice is super breathy and requires a lot of air to maintain it, especially for longer sentences. You can notice how in the movies when he goes all-in the scary Batman voice he barely ever speaks in long sentences, rather he shouts quick phrases. One of the reasons for that could be because of how much air you need to maintain such a breathy voice.
To help with the lack of air it helps to use diaphragm breathing which will allow you to expand your lung capacity and maintain the voice longer.
To perform diaphragm breathing focus on not raising your chest and shoulders as much when breathing. It should feel as if your tummy is filling in. That feeling is created by your diaphragm going down and giving more space in the lungs to inhale air.
You can strengthen your diaphragm muscles by putting a book on your belly while laying down and breathing using a diaphragm breathing.
Extend vowels
Batman sometimes tends to extend his vowels. Notice how he says “If I get them to you, can you get them to talk?” and prolongs the ‘a’ in ‘talk’. He doesn’t do it all the time but if you can incorporate that once in a while it’ll help with the Batman’s voice impression.
Choppy and fast-paced pattern
Batman doesn’t speak in long sentences, rather they are fast-paced and choppy. As I’ve mentioned already, it’s most likely due to the fact that he needs a lot of the air to get that voice.
When doing Batman’s voice, stick to shorter phrases and pronounce them in quick bursts of energy to mimic the pacing of Batman’s speech.
Get angry
Batman is often angry and looking for revenge, which naturally makes him quite angry a lot of the time. When he is the angriest you get the typical voice of Batman that we have in our head. It’s choppy angry shouting bursts that are extremely breathy.
Therefore, don’t shy away from involving angry facial expressions and shout a bit to get in the mood for Batman’s voice impression.
Lower the pitch
Batman has a lower pitch voice. To do an accurate impression of his voice try to get your voice as low as possible.
There’re a couple of exercises and tips that may help to do that:
- Use your morning voice which is naturally deeper
- Yawn a lot
- Stretch and relax your upper body
- Drink lots of water
You can read more about getting a deeper voice here.
You can also try lowering your voice using EQ in audio editing software.
You can learn more about doing impressions here and if you’re interested in a home recording studio then here’s a complete guide to recording gear.