DIY Voice Over Demos – DON’T DO IT!!!
There are a lot of coaches, one in particular, and even Voices dot com who will tell you how to make your own DIY voice over demo.
And I'm here to tell you in your best interest, especially as a beginner, do not do your own demo.
Today, I'm going to tell you in no uncertain terms why it's an absolutely awful idea to make your own DIY voice over demo reel and why it can significantly damage your career before it ever gets started.
Now I'm a voiceover marketing business coach and a voice actor myself, so why, dear god, am I talking about demos? For this reason: If you don't have a set of solid, competent, competitive voice over demos, then you don't have anything to market.
Your demos and your website are the two primary ways you present yourself and your mastery of the craft, especially when you're reaching out to new prospects.
If your demos suck, all the great marketing in the world isn't going to get you hired.
Now, if you're doing voiceover just as a as a hobby for something fun to do, maybe make a few extra bucks and you have no intention of ever being a pro or going pro or making a business out of this and asking other businesses for money. Then, great, go ahead, watch the other videos, have fun learning how to make a demo and truly the best of luck to you.
But if you ever want to go pro or you don't know and you just might want to leave that possible city open, do not, and I repeat, DO NOT make your own voiceover demo reel. Why?
Today I'm going to break down the anatomy of a great voiceover demo and we're going to look at all the elements that go into a great demo, elements that producers and casting directors, and corporate people are looking for in a great demo. And why you don't ever want to bite this off on your own.
Number one, great performances
The number one factor in the quality of a great voiceover demo is the quality of the performance. Now, the problem with that is if you're considering making your own video demo, especially because the best reason to do is it's cheap or free, well then chances are 99% that you probably haven't invested in proper training in your career and you're undertrained and not yet capable of giving a quality performance consistently.
You can't have a solid demo without really good performances and you can't have good performances without a solid foundation of professional training.
What's a solid base? For most people, it's several months, oftentimes over a year, to come to a baseline competency in voice acting. Now, in my day-to-day career, I hear a lot of voice over demo reels, not as many as casting directors, but still a lot here on my own.
And the single biggest issue with most video demos is not audio production or audio quality, it's the quality of the performance. Most of the time when a demo sucks, it's because the actor is undertrained and the performance chops just aren't there yet. I can tell in the first 5 seconds, and so can the people who hire voice actors.
The solution? Get a solid base of consistent coaching over several months with a reputable voice over performance coach.
And the object of the training is not the demo. The object of the training is to get really, really good and then get a demo produced that demonstrates that mastery.
Number two, great audio quality
The second biggest indication that a demo is from Sucktown is the quality of the audio.
Now, the biggest factor in the quality of your audio is the quality of your recording space. And here's the thing if you're new enough to voiceover to attempt your own voiceover demo, then you're new enough to voiceover to not know how to properly treat your space to mitigate things like echo and reverb and reflection and outside noise and achieve a proper noise floor of -65 DB or less, and it will show up in your homemade demo.
Now, I literally work out of a converted john. It's converted with mattress toppers and moving blankets, but I hired the right people to help me treat the room properly with those inexpensive materials and to dial in my processing, which we'll talk about in a minute.
How's my audio? Well, I recently landed a small, tiny little role in a major motion picture, major feature film for a major studio. My agent called and said, "They're going to use your audition as the final audio." So I think my audio is in pretty decent shape.
Now, the second biggest factor in audio quality is the mic itself and your mic technique. And if you don't have a basic foundation of training, you don't even know how to address the mic. And different mikes have different addresses and different techniques.
Now, we're not going there. We're not going down the rabbit hole of which mic to choose and all of the myriad of considerations that go into that. But generally in an overarching way, UCB microphones that plug directly into your computer are not for pros, they're for podcasters and hobbyists.
The third factor in audio quality is processing. And here's where most people know just enough to be dangerous.
Often, badly processed audio means it's over-compressed. Somebody's found the compressor and just beat the crap out of it. Sometimes it's funky gating, sometimes it's bad EQ or a host of other processing no-nos. Now, I studied audio production all the way back in college, and I've been producing broadcast-quality audio for over 35 years and I still do not design my own processing.
That's what pro engineers are for guys like Dan Lenard and George Whittem and Uncle Roy Yokelson and Jordan Reynolds. They have the ears to dial in my room and my processing and make it all work together and sound good for my voice. I do not have those years. You do not have those years. Now, if you were a trained voiceover audio engineer before you ever got into voice acting, of course, this does not apply to you.
Number three, great scripts
One of the biggest tip-offs that a demo is homemade is scripts ripped right off the Internet. Oftentimes these come from Edge Studio or other online databases. You have to understand that the people that hire voice actors listen to hundreds and thousands of demos and they know exactly when a stock script has been pulled off of the Internet.
Any reputable demo producer will write you custom scripts to suit you and your personality and your voice and what you bring to the table as an actor. They often have a custom copywriter on staff whose sole job is to do just that.
"Well, Paulie," you say, "I can write my own scripts." Sure you could. You could also cut your own hair, sweep your own chimney, paint your own car, and do your own at-home vasectomy.
Doesn't mean you should.
(But if you do, cut your own hair and do your own vasectomy, you could open a place called Great Snips)
Number four, great audio production
Now, this one is especially deceiving, especially if you've been in voiceover for a little while. You think to yourself, "Well, heck, I've been trained in my audio software. I've spent time learning how to edit and I can churn out a competent and well-edited and professional audio product for my clients.
Well, heck, I can do this myself."
Nope.
In the vast majority of cases you have come into voiceover with, this is most people, no real experience in audio production and what you have been trained in is exactly that. You've been trained how to produce a very competent, dry, edited, polished, professional voice track. You haven't been trained in mixing, mastering and putting together all of the elements, the music beds, the sound effects, all the production elements, along with that dry voice track that make a demo great.
Even if you're trained and experienced in audio production... and again, I've been doing this 35 years and I still don't do my own demos. Why?
Number five, the art of the demo
Am I a competent, experienced audio producer? Absolutely. Can I produce spots and other projects from soup to nuts with multiple production elements and mix and master those and make them sound great for my clients?
Absolutely I can. That's what I'm trained for and that's what I'm experienced in.
Am I a competent, experienced voiceover demo producer? Do I know how to show an actor's range through the production of a demo? Do I know how to capture and hold a casting director's attention throughout the length of the demo? Do I have a keen sense of flow and contrast and exactly when to interrupt those for maximum effect? Do I know how to showcase the talent properly without overproducing a demo and taking or distracting attention away from the actor?
Nope. I don't have the foggiest.
There's a difference between great spots and great voiceover demos. The purpose of a great spot is to compel you to buy a product or service and often in the best spots, you don't even notice the performance.
The purpose of a great voiceover demo though is exactly, it's precisely to make the listener notice the performance of the voice actor.
A professional demo producer is a master at the art of the demo. You and I, we are not.
Number six, great collaboration
The best voiceover projects come from collaboration. When you're in the studio or even in your home studio, maybe doing a live session and you're collaborating with a great director, that's where you get your best performances from. There's a chemistry in there that brings out the best in the voice actor and the best in the director.
So why would you not want your authentically best performances on your demo?
Working with a great director, ideally your performance coach or a reputable experienced demo producer and director, will be a collaborative experience that will pull out from you your authentically best performance.
This is something you can't do on your own. It's like trying to bite your own teeth.
Now, I used the word authentically twice. Why? Because a great voiceover demo should be an accurate reflection of your best work. A great demo director won't coach you up so much that you could never reproduce that performance on your own. They won't try to dazzle the listener with great production to make up for your so-so read.
A great demo that makes you sound significantly better than you really are serves no one. It doesn't serve the casting director, doesn't serve the producer, it doesn't serve the agents, and it certainly doesn't serve you because if you do get hired off of that demo and you can't deliver the goods that are on that demo, you'll never get hired back.
You never get a second chance to make a first impression. And that's absolutely true in voiceover. Casting directors, agents, producers, prospects have long memories and there is nothing that will get you thrown in the hack bin faster than a homemade demo.
And often you won't get a second chance.
Now, if you've taken the time to get trained properly, you've got a good foundation of training, you've got solid professional demos, you've got a solid professional website and you're still booking and consistently, making part-time money, it's often because you haven't trained in how to find the work that you've gone through all this trouble to learn how to do so well in the first place.
You haven't trained in how to market your services and get those really good demos into the hands of people that can hire you directly. I said earlier, all the marketing in the world can't make up for a bad demo, and a great demo will never get you hired unless it's heard by enough of the people who are responsible for making that decision.
The VO Freedom Master Plan teaches you specifically how to market your services and get those demos into the hands of the people responsible for making that decision, people that hire voiceovers, at scale, which leads to more consistent, often recurring booking, business, revenue, and income. For more information on how to enroll, click the link here, and to get my Thursday Move Touch Inspire free newsletter for voice actors that comes out every Thursday, click this link.
As always, I could not possibly be more grateful for your support, for your kind words, for the comments, and for the conversation that we're starting here around this channel and in the voiceover community at large.
Thank you so much and we'll see you back here again next week.