Awakening The Storyteller in You...
If you find yourself struggling with how to make your eyes do the work for you, try reading your lines like you would to a 5-year-old child. Simple, yet very effective.

Summer 2002

Being the production coordinator at Six Degrees I encounter a lot of new voice talent and I have some suggestions that I think would be useful.

First off, for demo material the more accessible and easy format it is, the better; CD's are great, but if it is possible to have them emailed to me in an MP3 format, even better. Secondly, Once you have dropped off your demo keep in touch with me. Call once a month, that way we can maintain a relationship, and it lets me know you are around and interested, even when the work gets slow. Lastly, availability. Very often we are trying to turn around an audition, casting, and recording session within two to three days, so availability (ie call returning) is crucial to getting work.

The voice industry is difficult to break into, and at times radio production comes in waves, so if you don't hear from us immediately do not get discouraged. Be persistent, keep in touch with me once a month; We are ALWAYS!!!! looking for new talent.

Summer 2002

The art of the demo
Okay, so you’ve recorded a voice demo and sent it out all over the city, the province, the country, the world. Now all you have to do is sit back and wait for the calls to come in begging for your unique voice for their radio, TV, multimedia or corporate video project. A talent like yours can’t be denied… right?.
So why hasn’t anyone called?
Before you throw that demo in the garbage and fill out that Starbuck’s job application, there are a few things you should know about getting into the voice over game. There are many factors involved in a certain voice being chosen for a certain project. The demo is just one. Now don’t get me wrong, a good demo is very important, but there are a lot of people out there who realize that making a couple of hundred or more dollars for an hour’s “work” is pretty sweet, just for reading something out loud into a microphone. Of course it’s not as easy as that. But to those with real talent, it comes easy, and it’s a great way to make a living. My point is: there are a lot of people trying to get voice work. A lot of demos at a lot of studios. How do you and your demo get noticed?
First, let’s talk about the demo. So your mom, girlfriend or boyfriend or local phone solicitor has told you you have a great voice. Let’s not discount them right away, sometimes they are actually telling you the truth. But find someone honest outside that group who you can trust to tell you the real truth. Do you suck or don’t you? Be honest with yourself too. You don’t have to be James Earl Jones to get into the business, but you need to have a sound, preferably a unique sound to get noticed. But a great sounding voice isn’t enough. It’s the read that counts the most. Bringing the script to life by way of inflection ,energy, and… interpretation. Throughout my years in radio and post production I’ve come across some really talented people, and some not so talented. To have “the pipes” and not be able to use them effectively due to poor reading skills, a tin ear or just not practicing enough is frustrating. Some people have no idea how great they could be if they just worked at it a little more…. But I digress.
Back to the demo. First of all, decide how serious you are about this endeavor. If you are going to do a demo, do it right, or not at all. Recording a demo with an old portable cassette recorder doesn’t cut it. . On the other hand you don’t need to have a fancy CD jewel case with your resume , high school grades and pictures of you and your dog on it either. Be professional. Have all the pertinent info included with your demo, and this is important, put a date on it. Here’s why. At a lot of studios, demos can accumulate, usually in some sort of cardboard box. Your demo might be listened to and returned to the box for some future use. Months and months go by and it’s forgotten. By the time someone finds it again. It could be years later. No one knows when the demo was submitted, whether you moved away or died or whatever. If you are working in the business you should update your demo once every 2 years. Skills improve, voices even change with age and your demo should reflect this.
There’s two ways to do a voice demo. 1 . You can edit together snippits of past voice projects. 2. You can go to a studio and have a sound engineer coach you through some scripts that you have chosen, and then produce a professional demo from that session. Both are good methods, although for the new voice talent, going to the studio and recording your demo is best, because there isn’t a vast supply of past work to choose from.
A demo shouldn’t be longer than two minutes. One minute is best. Believe me, whoever’s listening to your demo usually knows within the first twenty seconds whether or not you are good enough for the said project. I know what you’re thinking. “ I can’t get a decent sample of all my talent into one minute!!” Maybe not, but if you’ve got lots of reads and voices, make lots of demos. Make your main or “general demo”, and then do a “narration demo” and a “character” demo as secondary cuts on your CD, and make them a minute long too. This way all your bases are covered and it shows your range without losing your unique sound.
What to put on the demo? In the words of Tina Turner “Simply the best”. If there is one teeny tiny flaw in the way you emphasized one word, DO NOT USE IT! Only your best material will do. You have to grab that listener right away, cuz if you don’t the finger goes to the eject button and the next CD is put in. The first ten to 15 seconds are vital. Make them count.
Good writing is so important. If it’s theatre of the mind stuff that you can bring to life, use it. If it’s a funny piece that needs comic timing, and you can do it, use it. Don’t use boring material, like price and item hard sell car ads for example. Any radio announcer can do those (and they do them for free). Try not to use supplied scripts from the studio. Most of those have appeared on a pile of other demos, and all that does for you is make it easier to compare you with someone else. Another tip - don’t edit five words from one script with one sentence from another. You may seem to showcase more in sixty seconds, but you don’t show that you can read more than one sentence at a time. Five to ten seconds per selection is fine. The engineer who is cutting your demo will know best. Listen to his or her advice. If you are using actual spots that have aired on TV or radio., A national Ford spot will impress more than Bob’s stereo store down the street.
Way back in my ramble I stated that the demo is only one part of getting the gig. There’s two more important parts to this equation. The first is meeting the sound engineers and studio owners. When you drop off your CD, make sure you introduce yourself. Let us put a face with the name and voice. Don’t over do it, you don’t need to suck up, or call and email us again and again. Just be pleasant and make that contact. The second point, is not really about getting the gig….it’s about getting the next gig, and that’s the important one. I could go on and on about how to conduct yourself at a voice session, but right now just focus on being polite, easy to work with ,and this is important- punctual. If you do these things, (the client already likes your voice, that’s why you were chosen) you will get called back for their next project. People (and by this I mean agencies , clients and studio people) tend to go with the people they know they can work with. Once you’ve proven that, there’s no stopping you.
Work on your reading. Read out loud. Practise all the time.
Take acting and voicing classes. These can do nothing but help you.
And Listen. Listen to the radio, the TV Listen to how that announcer on your favorite commercial didn’t sound like an “announcer” at all. Soak it all in, and then make it your own. Good Luck!

Summer 2002