You want to work as voice over talent and you know the first tool that you will need is a marketable voice over demo. Your demo will present your voice to clients. They can listen to it and evaluate your services first-hand. And you wonder: How do I make my first voice over demos?
Related Article: How to Become a Voiceover Talent. 10 Tips.
Good news, in a recent post, we talked about how to become a voice over talent. In this one we give you some tips on recording your first voiceover demo.
Be yourself. People are hiring you because it’s you. Use your natural voice, skip the accents and the characters, at least in the beginning. You can always develop those as you go.
Imagine you’re speaking to one person when you’re recording, talk to them. Also, in being yourself, record in your space.
If you go to a professional studio and spend thousands of dollars to record a demo, and then turn around and do your work in your closet, there’s going to be a discrepancy there. You’re not going to be able to match the quality of your demo. And if you can’t record the parts and sound natural, like you did on your demo, people are not going to work with you. So, be yourself.
On your demo, put your best foot forward. In other words, put your best clip right in the beginning. Skip the music: people want to hear your voice, and music and major production work is distracting at times. They can add all of that later one once you get the job.
Remember: the number one purpose of your demo is to get to the next step. In some cases that may be to get an audition. With other projects, you may actually land the job with your demo.
The other thing you may want to consider is a specific demo for specific areas of the voiceover business. For example, if you want to get into e-learning programs and corporate training, have an e-learning demo, specifically for that. Whatever area of the voiceover business you choose to focus your attention, be yourself and put your best foot forward.
Bonus Track: distribution on the Internet, it is best to keep your voice over demo to 1 MB in size – approximately 1 minute in duration.
