If you’re going to take production seriously, set your sights on creating solid production value that takes your audience on a journey through varying sounds. Refer to the chapters in Part V for help with the specific aspects of production.
Despite what some people may think, there is still value associated with having a CD with your voice-over demos to send to clients or agents. As a result, make sure to have a number of promotional CDs available for those who request them.
Figuring out what to record
Make sure to map out what parts of your demo you’re best equipped to handle on your own. If you’re a technical mind, focus on the length of each spot, ways that you can quickly indicate where you may need to edit the session, and prepare for additional tracks, such as music or sound effects. You also want to pay attention to the ordering of each spot to ensure that it flows well from one spot to the next.
If you’re more artistic, creating the demo can be a lot of fun for you. Focus on the roles you’re interested in playing, and how you wish to differentiate those segments from each other through characterization, vocal range, mood, and so on. You may also want to think about what kind of music you’ll have under your voice-overs and customize the music for each spot or part of the demo. (Refer to the later section, “Using Music in Your Demo: Yes or No?” for help.) Set the mood for your performance and use visual aids, such as photographs or physicality, if it helps you with your reads.
Producing specific elements
A voice-over demo has more to it than just your voice-over recording. Additional tracks for music, sound effects, and additional voices can come in handy during post-production. If you’re good at the technical side, you can enjoy producing the demo and have fun with the bells and whistles. On the other hand, you may want to partner with a studio or a friend who’s a proficient audio engineer to help you with the technical recording aspects.
You may even want to try creating your own sounds instead of relying on premade sound effects. As with all things, use good judgment when deciding whether you should purchase professional sound effects, music beds, and so on versus creating them yourself.
Checking your work
Regardless of your producing skill and abilities, make sure you run your demo by a few seasoned sets of ears before sharing it with the world. Getting feedback to check your work in these ways is helpful:
Ask your peers for their opinion. This option may be good if your peers have experience in the field. This option is free.
Receive a demo review from a voice coach. This option is probably better, especially if the voice coach has a strong casting or agency background. These people have their fingers on the pulse of the industry and know what sounds good and what doesn’t, and how you can make your demo offering even better. You don’t want to send out demos that fail to meet contemporary standards or present a diluted version of you and your abilities.
Join a voice-over forum or networking group. This option is free, and you may find a thread set aside specifically for demo reviews. In such cases, members are invited to share their demos to gain feedback through peer reviews. One caveat is that not everyone sharing his or her opinion is listening with the ears of a casting director or someone who genuinely wants to help you.
Don’t take the feedback personally. Whichever route you choose to take, be sure to keep in mind that any feedback, good or bad, is simply someone’s opinion. Don’t be discouraged if someone rips your demo to shreds. View the feedback as a way to improve your voice-over and your voice acting business.
Budgeting your production money
If you’re recording your own demo, you need to have a proper studio set-up and the right software and editing tools to get the job done. You also need to find music that you can use, which has an associated cost unless you’re able to compose and or perform your own music. Refer to Chapter 17 about setting up your own in-home studio.
Think also about your time as a factor in cost. How long do you anticipate spending on the process? Remember that it takes twice as long to edit a recording as it did to record it. Your time is valuable so you also need to budget for it. The average cost of recording your own demo, when you factor in your time spent on copywriting, music, voice-over recording, editing, mixing, and mastering can be up to $1,000.
Although the DIY method may appear to save you money, don’t forget the extra time, resources, and energy necessary to get the job done right. It may cost you more in the long run.
Working with a professional producer
Many producers help you to create a demo that is uniquely you. They want to use fresh scripts, music, and ideas that highlight your brand. Working with professional demo producers can be an exhilarating experience. They can make you sound your absolute best and help shape your brand as a voice actor. If you work with someone professionally on your demo, realize that it will cost more than doing it yourself, but your demo is well worth the investment. Your demo, after all, is what helps you to get work.
If you’re working with someone in Los Angeles on a demo, you can expect to pay in the neighborhood of $1,000 or more, which may include a couple hours of rehearsal and coaching, a couple hours in the studio, and the producer’s private editing and production time. If someone is charging less than $600 to do your demo, take caution. Most demo producers advise you to look elsewhere because anyone charging less than $1,000 probably isn’t devoting enough time to give you a real professional demo that you can market.
Using Music in Your Demo: Yes or No?
Is music necessary to include in a voice-over demo? The answer varies. Music can either be a good thing or completely inappropriate depending on the type of work that’s being represented in the demo. One example of a demo that needs music is a commercial demo. On the flip side, a demo that shouldn’t have music is an audiobook narration demo.
You can often deduce which demos should or should not have music by considering whether work in this category has music or not. For instance, do you hear a voice-over in the elevator that tells you which floor you are on? No, that doesn’t usually happen. However, because you generally do hear music on radio commercials, the expectation would be that a radio demo has music and is fully produced.
Music can set the tone and immediately distinguish your voice-over demo from other demos. A musical underscore performs three basic functions:
Sets the theme of the audio/video presentation
Prepares the listener for individual segments or features within the demo
Entertains the listener by introducing and promoting new music
Music, just like any other element in a production, enhances the copy and adds to the overall presentation in a relevant and aesthetically pleasing way. In this section, you get a feel for the role music plays in a demo and how to best include it and know when not to use it.
Including music in your demo
Although music seems to be everywhere, there’s a time and place for it in terms of how you present yourself as a professional voice actor. Many producers find that music is a wonderful addition to a demo.
Demos that typically have some kind of music in them include commercials, animations, promos, telephony, trailers, imaging, and jingles. Music can relax people, get them excited, carry them to far off places, and stick in their heads. Music is just as much a voice in the production as anything else.
Next time you’re listening to a voice-over, take note of what music accompanies it and how it affects you positively or negatively, and apply that research to your own demo. For specific information on selecting the right music, see the later section “Selecting Music for Your Recording.”
If you include music, use musical backgrounds (known as jingles or music beds) or other non-music interludes (referred to as bumpers, stagers, sweeps, and IDs) to transition between topics. These topic breaks are typical
ly described as bumpers or sweepers to help listeners digest the content you just presented.
Steering clear of music in your demo
Music generally isn’t used in demos for audiobooks and narration. Exceptions to this rule, outside of audiobooks for children and preschool audiences, are few and far between. Other markets of voice-over work that don’t necessarily include music are interactive and talking toys. Typically it’s just the voice that’s required so as not to hinder someone’s ability to hear the message being delivered.
Selecting Music for Your Recording
How do you pick the right kind of music, or maybe even sound effects, for your demo? What should you consider and why does it matter? Music and sound effects help to brand a demo, making it easy to recognize and differentiating it from the recordings of other voice actors. Your voice-over is the key element that your listeners will identify with, which is why it’s important to provide your audience with the best performance possible, including complementary music.
When selecting music, keep the theme of the demo and your target audience in mind. Each voice actor is different and has a unique instrument, so the music used should reflect both, in a complementary fashion.
In this section, you consider different styles and sound effects and how to acquire music that you can use that doesn’t require permission. You can also get a good idea for when it is and isn’t appropriate to use it.
Considering different styles of music
Many different genres of music exist that you can consider when selecting music for your audio recording. You can contemplate adding a multitude of different styles of music, depending on what your spots are about. Most importantly, use music as a tool to enhance your voice-over recording and not to compete with it. If the audio recording is about agriculture, for example, the music and sound effects can mimic the farming industry, or include country western sound effects, such as the sounds of a horse, rooster, pig, and so on. Your voice can also be more laid back and down to earth.
If the demo serves the financial industry, specifically the stock market, the music may be more energetic and riveting. Sound effects may include the opening bell of the stock exchange, heartbeats, clocks ticking, background noise, people talking, and other related sounds. The host may be authoritative and exciting, keeping the audience on the edge of its seat.
If you have the monetary resources, you may consider hiring a composer to provide you with customized theme music. This idea is great for branding.
Finding royalty-free music
Royalty-free music is music that is sold relatively inexpensively, which freelance voice actors and producers can license for use for their productions. You can use this type of music in your productions without having to pay recurring fees (paying money each time the music is played). Music beds are great for using underneath your voice-over to accompany the read. You can purchase them either as a single track or as a package with variations on a theme. You can also purchase royalty-free sound effects to use in your demo.
As with anything, purchase the music from a trusted source with licensing agreements, which you can refer to and save for your records after purchase. Visit sites such as www.audiojungle.net and www.istockaudio.com.
Adding sound effects in your demo
You can intersperse sound effects throughout the demo while you’re speaking, or you can nestle them into the musical theme and variations. When selecting sound effects, make sure that they’re appropriate to your voice-over and are used sporadically to complement your voice.
Sound effects function as another voice in the recording, and you need to be careful about how the sound effect is used in conjunction with your vocal. You don’t want the sound effect to overpower your voice or distract from what you’re saying. Make sure that you position sound effects in places where they don’t interfere with your voice and what is being said.
Living Up to Your Demos
Your voice-over demo is truly your calling card. The demo, while not necessarily representative of work you have actually done, is representative of what you’re capable of doing.
Although many voice acting talents have professionally produced demos, not nearly as many are able to replicate every subtlety or element on their samples when called on to do so. What happens when the voice-over demo promises more than what a voice actor can actually do on his own, unassisted by producers, directors, or coaches?
So you can replicate what you produce, keep the following tips in mind when recording your demo:
When recording a voice-over demo with a coach or studio, keep the production elements minimal depending on the demo type, especially if you aren’t particularly skilled in this area.
Present your abilities with dry voice samples (no production elements, only the voice). Dry voice is typical of narration and audiobook demos as well as GPS, telephone, and other types of voice-over work. Another benefit of dry voice is that people can immediately hear the quality of the recording and also focus on your voice as the sole instrument in the mix.
Invest time in the art of direction. Study, watch others, and make choices, not guesses.
Be consistent with your vocal regime. This includes warming up, maintaining dental hygiene (the last thing you want is food stuck in your teeth, which can produce excess saliva and impact the way you speak), being well-hydrated, and allowing your voice to act as a vehicle for the written word. (Maintaining good dental hygiene is also important to avoid the extreme where you may lose some teeth and need dentures or implants, which can affect your voice’s sound.)
Evaluating Demos for Updating
Your demo, especially if someone produced it in a professional recording studio, is a thing of beauty and deserves to be shined up every now and then. But when is that time? If your demo represents what you can do and only needs a bit of tweaking here and there, just remove spots that aren’t working anymore and replace them with some new spots or a sample from a more recent job you’ve done.
In this section, we explore the telltale signs that your voice-over demo, or a given spot on a voice-over demo, has reached its expiration date.
Avoiding dates and times
Dates and times, particularly as they concern cars, concert tours, and political campaigns drastically limit the potential for your demo to endure. Marking a date will almost always give your demo a shorter shelf life unless the date is referring to an historical event, such as the reenactment of the Battle of 1812.
Generally, if a product is mentioned to be older than two years, try to edit out the date or leave the dates out altogether when recording initially. For instance, if you have a commercial read in your demo about a model of a car that was new in 2005, take some time to update that demo.
Being careful about music selections
Music often sets the tone for a voice-over demo and helps to establish your personal branding style. But don’t let styles of music that have been shelved for too long give clients the wrong impression of your production or music selection skills.
Ask yourself the following questions:
Does the music sound retro in a bad way? Is the music from the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, or early 2000s?
Are the sound effects in line with what you would expect to hear today?
Are there cheesy synthesizers in the background?
Does the music selection support the essence of the spot?
Is the spot supposed to sound retro as in a parody spot or throwback?
There may be exceptions to the rule where certain spots need to have an aged or vintage sound. You may find these sounds to apply to game show spots, old time radio drama, or the stereotypical announcer read from decades ago. In those instances, you can get away with using those elements because they support the spot in general and contribute to its authenticity and overall effectiveness.
/> Recognizing your voice age
If you recorded your commercial demo in the 1980s or even the early- to mid-1990s, the demo itself may not only sound aged, but your voice may have matured since that recording, too. Voices age, just like bodies do.
Men’s and women’s voices age differently as well. Although the vocal aging process isn’t as noticeable in men after they pass puberty, the voices of women continue to mature until they’re 40 years old. That’s a lot of changing and readjusting for a voice and vocal technique in the span of a voice-over career.
Maybe you’re in your twenties and have done some growing up. You may find that your voice doesn’t have that youthful ring to it anymore. Unless your voice is pliable and can reach into those spaces where your performance is still within the realm of believability, your days of voicing roles for children and or teenagers may be over.
If you know that your voice has changed and you’re no longer able to do certain reads believably, consider passing on the audition or removing voice ages that you can no longer do from your demo.
Making references to pop culture
If you have a mention of something in the ad copy on your demo, make sure that it’s still relevant or at least accurate. For example, if you have a spot that mentions a Beatles reunion with Paul, George, and Ringo, it may be time to cut that bit.
Perhaps it isn’t something in the popular realm but a political campaign advertisement. If the candidate mentioned in the spot isn’t currently running for office or didn’t succeed in her attempt, strongly consider removing that spot. It may confuse people who are listening to your demo, and of course, reveal the age of the demo.
Don’t forget that when you make references to pop culture, you may also be including popular or trendy music from that time. That’s a double no-no!
Voice Acting For Dummies Page 16
