The insular and often farcical world of Hollywood voice-over artists that actor Lake Bell fashions in her debut directorial feature, In a World … is one of hilarious self-regard. In non-descript Los Angeles sound studios a handful of entitled men each treats their throat like a concert violinist with a Stradivarius, their liquid velvet syllables and booming emphasis hawking movie trailers, with the best celebrated at the Golden Trailer Awards.

Bell's work is a comic satire situated at the point where over the top becomes enjoyably ludicrous, but there's just one problem. It's all true.

''I actually presented at the Golden Trailer Awards this year and they were pretty jazzed I was there, because they thought I'd made their industry look cool, or at least relevant,'' admits Bell, who was the writer, director and star of In a World…. ''There are tropes and archetypes within that community that I had to layer with fiction, because the real life version of some of those characters is too broad for an audience's believability.''

The success of In a World… – beginning at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2013, where Bell won the prestigious Waldo Salt Screenwriting award, followed by its cinema release in the US, where it has garnered positive reviews – has been the making of the 35-year-old comedic actor. What began as a risky personal project has become a successful, if unlikely, calling card.

Bell's character, Carol Solomon, reflects several of her own vocal obsessions. Carol records the accents of strangers, as Bell did as a drama student in London, and obsesses about the competitive voice-over industry. But while Carol is struggling to make ends meet, Bell has built a career as a comedienne playing the best friend to Cameron Diaz in What Happens in Vegas and Ashton Kutcher's neurotic boss in No Strings Attached.

When Carol gets a lucky break because the arrogant golden boy of the Hollywood voice-over game, Gustav Warner (Ken Marino), skips a recording session, her career unexpectedly gains traction, upsetting the male apple cart that is presided over by her father, legendary trailer talker Sam Sotto (Fred Melamed).

As humorous as In a World … is, the movie's underlying strength is the lived-in poignancy of the relationship between Bell and Melamed's daughter and father, where support and rivalry are intertwined, and the close sibling bond between Bell's Carol and Michaela Watkins' uneasy Dani Solomon. Cliches are avoided: instead of being petty, Sam's younger girlfriend, Jamie (Alexandra Holden), turns out to be a voice of reason.

''That all comes from a real place within me, as I had an interesting but rich relationship with my dad. I definitely wanted to respect the reality of the relationships that matter in our lives,'' explains Bell. ''They're the ones that I find funny and heart-wrenching to watch. I took my time to figure out how to depict these lovely but nonetheless flawed characters.''

Carol also suffers from Bell's aversion to what she has coined Sexy Baby Vocal Virus, a vocal condition where a woman's helium-high vocal pitch and reality television affectations combine for a talking voice that sounds cartoonish and ineffectual. Bell does the voice at the drop of a hat and it has entered the popular culture vernacular.

''I'm so happy that girls around America, and now the world, can reference it,'' notes Bell. ''I get a lot of tweets now, saying something like, 'Hey, I'm sitting next to a group of Sexy Babies and it's a real issue', or 'Hey, I've decided I need to sound like a woman'.''

The struggle to make In a World…, shot in 20 days with a budget of less than $US1 million and colleagues who'd become friends in many of the roles, is fading. However, Bell is still mindful of the lessons, both business and personal, she learnt.

''Financial limitations, and limitations in general, often breed creativity. The second you have too much money productions become fear-based and any original thought becomes clouded.

"But if you're going to ask your friends to take a chance on you, and donate their free time, it really needs to be good.''