Bring on August & Creating your Demo

Hello again!! And welcome back to a glimpse of my life. I sometimes forget I started this blog, but it is something I enjoy doing, and hopefully it can be a help to someone out there, or at least a bit of entertainment.

Since May, I have done extensive work on my Commercial Voice Over Reel, gone out on 3 Voice Over auditions, and sent 6 auditions from my home studio. All the feedback I have received has been positive but each time they went with another voice. A few times they wanted a deeper voice, and one time, they wanted a "name". Which to me, always stinks a little. I can't become a "name" until I've booked some reputable gigs, and it's hard to book those gigs unless your a "name", oh, and have an AGENT! The ol' Hollywood Catch 42. (And I've upped the usual "Catch 22", because Hollywood has soo many more ridiculous catches!)

As far as the VO demo reel goes. It sure is a lot of work. And I have to say, as usual, everyone has their own opinions on what you SHOULD and SHOULDN'T do. I've learned to listen to people out here, and get multiple opinions before just jumping on the first thing someone says, even if they are reputable. My advice is to listen to many people and take from them the underlying consensus that is common throughout all advice. If something sticks out to more than one person, or the same advice pops up more than once, Then that is the advice you need. Now understand, that doesn't mean throw out any other valuable advice, it just means be careful and choose wisely. The next part of this blog is a good example.

The Commercial Demo

I was told by a few people that the demo should be no more than 2 minutes and it should be done professionally for it is your calling card. I looked around and the cheapest demo production in California is anywhere from $1,300 to $2,000 and can even be more expensive.  That was very disheartening. Taking the VO classes was already hard enough being from $4 to $500 a pop. Not having an agent, not booking extra work, and only waiting tables along with all the bills, There is no way to afford it for someone like me. So, like the home studio, I had to find another way.

I listened to countless demo reels online from various agency websites, (the agencies I wanted to be represented by) and got a great feel for how one should sound. There are a couple rules for your demo.

1) Do not use someone Else's material. Do not re-do commercials you hear on the radio or TV. Someone else already booked that job, and chances are you will submit your demo to an agency that represents the person that did it. And you will not be given a chance.
2) Don't fool with your voice in post. Don't speed up or slow down your voice in your demo electronically. If you fool someone on your demo, you won't be able to re-create that in real life. Big no no.

So with that knowledge, my home studio, and Adobe Audition. I started writing my own commercial spots. Things that I wanted to get booked for. I thought, what do I love? What am I most passionate about? And I wrote commercials for it. But I needed variety, You can't have your demo be all the same sort of commercials, you need a hard sell, a soft sell, and for me, I wanted to showcase the relaxed everyday guy, your friend, humor, my personal "signature" voice. I began recording and re-recording and RE-RECORDING. When all was said and done I had recorded 7 commercials, all about 20 seconds long. I then had to edit them all together and cut them down to under 2 minutes. THEN, I had to find music for each piece. I searched two fantastic free databases; Incompetech and Auditionautix. You can find them both under the links section of JayPreston.com. I spent probably 2 hours listening for the perfect jingles and songs, importing them and cutting them to fit the spots. After alll that was done, I had cut it down to 1 minute and 57 seconds. And I was pretty excited. This is what it sounded like.

My first Demo Take 1

So I sent this out to many people, teachers from my classes, friends, family and reputable VO actors. From friends and family I got great responses, they loved it, from the teachers and VO industry folks, it was quite different. Here is part of an e-mail from a very successful source.

"Reels are no more than 60 seconds at this time - that is the trend - fast and furious - yours is 2 minutes.
Take out the character spot, the spot with the accent and the legal tag - this is a commercial demo not an animation demo. If they want a Brit they will call a Brit not you. And if you want them to know you do legal tags - make a demo with just that - there are people who make that their primary work so you must compete with them.

My favorite spots were the Old Spice and the Hair spot - all of the spots sounds great though - the quality is fabulous - you just need to edit this right down and take out the stuff that shouldn't be in there. Then just use smaller sections of the spots - they are all too long - you need one or two lines at most.

You can't throw all the genres in there to show them how great you are (Animation, Accents, Legal) - it will just show them how inexperienced you are okay? so save them for the appropriate demo (they are good - except the legal which I didn't think was clean or fast enough, sorry)
The advice I am giving you is not my opinion it is the way things are done in vo right now" 

So with that and similar replies from industry, I went back into editing and cut it down to 1 minute exactly. And it sounded like this.

 

My First Demo Take 2

 

I added two new spots and removed a few others. I thought it was great. Sent it back to everyone and the one who wrote that email said it was fantastic. I then heard back from some sound engineers and another actor in the VO world that I hold in very high regards. He said,

 

"I'm a little concerned about the audio quality. The music doesn't feel integrated with the spots. It feels like the voice track is just laid down on top of it and not mixed."

 

So, I started to ask around, to figure out what it was that I was doing wrong. It took some time before I got any sort of response from anyone, and then finally I realized, with the help of my good friend Mike, that I was recording in Mono, AND without the use of monitor headphones. I was editing everything to the crappy laptop speakers that I had. So when people heard it on better speakers or different computers it sounded awful. This meant that I had to go back, buy a good pair of headphones, set it all up, and re-record all the spots, and re-mix all the music. I figured while doing this, I'll take into account a few more notes from people, and re-do it all. The headphones are amazing by the way, I highly recommend them. Sony MDR-V6 Monitor Series Headphones You can actually find them cheaper than amazon. Just do some searching. After the new recording and editing, my current Commercial Demo Reel is here.

Jay Preston Commercial VO Demo Reel

So there you have it. I definitely welcome your feedback and suggestions. I am content with this reel for now, however there still are some tweeks I'd like to make. I am working on my legal and trying to write a good spot that involves two people for dialogue purposes. 

Animation Class

I also have begun an Animation Class at Voicecaster with Marsha Goodman. A sort-of legend in the casting directors for Voice Over in my opinion. The first person she ever directed was Mel Blanc, and has been the casting director for shows such as Captain Planet, Inspector Gadget, Ghostbusters, and Sonic the Hedgehog to name ONLY a few. I have one week left, and have gotten many a "high-five" from Marsha. Our last class consists of a feature length animated film where I will be portraying 7 different roles. I can't wait to be doing this sort of thing and getting paid! 

Until next time, May the Voice be with you, and as always,

Be Wonderful