Vocal Varieties: Using Your Voice for Maximum Value - Reeling in Your Demo CD
Have friends and relatives always told you what funny voices you do? Have the recent astronomical salary hikes of the cast of "The Simpsons" sent dollar signs spinning in your head? Is the voice-over field one you've always wanted to try? Performing with only your voice can be lucrative and challenging, but it is a competitive field. For our annual Spotlight on Speech, Diction, and Voice-Overs, we spoke with casting directors and actors on putting your mouth where the money is. They all agreed the first thing you need is a demo reel.
The term "demo reel" is something of a misnomer these days. According to Steve Harris, a veteran voice-over actor and instructor whose credits include Pepsi, AAMCO Transmissions, and Toys "R" Us, "These days everyone has a CD rather than an actual reel or a cassette or a tape. CDs are great because you can have your commercial reels on track one. Track two can have three or four different voices, if the performer has those skills. That really works well." Harris cites the ease with which CDs allow casting directors and agents to access various tracks. You just push a button on your CD player and it takes you to the track you want. Tapes and reels meant searching for the right segment by fast-forwarding or reversing.
In preparing your demo CD, Harris cautions against trying to be too versatile. "Basically, you do what you can do best. New performers shouldn't try to be the voice-over for everything. They're wearing hats that don't fit. My suggestion is to do the type you're best suited for, whether it's commercials or characters. Some people can do both, but each genre of voice-over has a completely different direction. Narration requires a different technique than announcing, for example. It's best for performers to really understand what they can do best and not try to stretch their abilities into a shape that doesn't fit."
Actor John Michael Higgins, a Drama Desk nominee for best actor in a play for "Big Bill" who also has voice-over credits like the Cartoon Network's "Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law" and Fox's "Game Over," concurs. "You want to be careful not to be too rangy. Honestly, don't try to do a macho Ford Bronco kind of voice if that's not you. It's such a tight fit with voices and there are hundreds of guys who do the Ford Bronco. I don't try. You have to know your sound quality. And be very honest. If you're doing an imitation of someone, it's going to come across as a parlor trick. If you don't inhabit the tones and timbre of the voice, you won't book it. That's for commercials. In cartoons, you can do an 'aped-up' voice. The characters are broader than usual. So you can do funny voices on the character section of your reel."
So what makes a good reel? And do you need more than one for different types of jobs? First, let's break down the area of voice-over work.
The Big Four
1.) Straight commercial/voice-over announcer/spokesman or woman. These are the voices you hear in radio and TV commercials extolling the qualities of the product for sale. What makes for an employable voice-over announcer? "Very unique, sometimes compelling, sometimes memorable voices," says Harris. "You're hearing unique voices, sometimes with the ability to convey wryness or irreverence. Denis Leary does that very well; so do Dennis Miller and David Spade. Then there are more conventional spokesperson types who are warm, assuring, smooth, and confident."
Casting director Charles Rosen, whose recent credits include the MTV animated series "Spider-Man" and spots for Ford Focus, the History Channel, and Minute Maid Orange Juice, advises, "The first cut should be the best part of the person's voice. You should do something that is fun for a second cut, or warm and friendly, so that you've covered all your major areas. The demo needs to entertain, so the copy should be interesting and fresh."
According to Harris, a demo reel for voice-over announcers should contain four pieces that are no longer than 20 seconds each of different voice attitudes and textures. "No two should sound the same. One would be straight, conservative; another can have more attitude and irreverence; another could be off-the-cuff, casual; and then one that is more warm and assuring. For copy, you can use actual scripts of past commercials. People can tape off the TV or radio or they can read magazine ads. You need short scripts, about 20 seconds. All four pieces should total no more than one minute and 20 seconds tops."
"I think you want to show your range," says David Cady of Donna DeSeta Casting, "and give a good indication of what you can do in terms of range and pitch. One of the common mistakes with demo reels is too many sound effects, or too much background music. It gets in the way. The CD shouldn't be overproduced. Good production values are important, but they should not overpower the voice."
2.) Character voices for commercials or animation. These are the weird, quirky voices that you hear in animated cartoons for film and television and sometimes commercials. Quite often, an actor will play several characters in a single episode of a cartoon series. For instance, on Fox's "Futurama" series, Billy West did the extremely different vocals for the young hero Fry, the ancient scientist Prof. Hubert Farnsworth, and the crablike extraterrestrial physician Dr. Zoidberg. Most members of the cast of "The Simpsons" play several inhabitants of Springfield.
For your character reel, Harris recommends "a short montage of various impersonations and accents, one right after the other, no more than one minute and 20 seconds total - a tight montage with examples of your best voices. Original voices should come up first, followed by accents, dialect examples, then famous voices of well-known characters or impressions - like famous cartoon voices such as Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck." Again, Harris stresses doing outlandish voices only if you have a knack for it - don't push your voice where it doesn't what to go.
Collette Sunderland, a casting director for the Cartoon Network who has worked on such popular shows as "Dexter's Laboratory" and "The Powerpuff Girls," agrees about keeping your demo short. "Keep it under three minutes," she says. "Don't wait till the last minute to show me your best stuff. Do your best right off the top. I might not have the time to listen to the whole thing, so give me your best in the first minute. Don't wait for the end. It's great to have established characters. We always need to have sound-alikes for the characters we've already cast, just in case the original actor is not available.
"I would also say the CD should keep my interest. I try to listen to as many as I possibly can. Sometimes I even play them in my car while driving home. Perhaps you can write a storyline with each one of the characters telling a different part. This will tie all your voices together so it kind of flows."
To find out if you can do character voices, Sunderland recommends "taking a class first to see if it's something you want to do. See what you can do. A good teacher will push you a little harder to find out what you can do."
John Michael Higgins inadvertently came up with a fun and lucrative voice. "I do an imitation of Ed Wynn, the old-time comedian, and I was just trying it out at an audition. It was for a candy-bar commercial to be shown on Saturday mornings when they run cartoons, so it's okay if the voice is a silly one. Well, they loved it and I booked seven or 10 commercials with that Ed Wynn voice. That was a way of stumbling across something new."
3.) Narration for industrial or corporate tapes or videos. Large corporations produce an amazing amount of video and audio material to disseminate information to their employees, stockholders, and clients. Often these take the form of mini-documentaries requiring performers with authoritative, steady voices.
For a narration reel, Harris states, "I believe that brevity is key. No one has the time to listen to long demo reels. In the first 29 seconds, they'll know if that's a talent they can use. You can pick four pieces of copy that are totally different in content. First a medical piece, then a corporate segment, followed by an educational narrative, and a final suggestion would be a wonderful documentary narration.
"You can read from different magazines or trade publications such as National Geographic or BusinessWeek. There are hundreds of publications on computers and software. The articles in these magazines can be converted into little script segments. It's just a question of making each piece diversified. You don't need two nature narrations. Keep them different. The possibilities are really so wide."
4.) Audio Books. Tapes of performers reading entire books have become increasingly popular. The author sometimes provides the voice-over narration, but more frequently actors do the job, since they can more easily differentiate between the numerous characters. Harris suggests for an audio-book reel a track of one minute and 20-30 seconds of reading from your favorite book.
"Some actors will do two pieces, maybe one drama or mystery and then maybe something lighter. If you do two, they should be about 45 seconds each." If you can do multiple voices, he also recommends finding a passage that will show that quality off. (For more on audio books, see the separate article by Simi Horwitz on page TO COME).
Now that we've broken down the various types of demo reels and what should be on them, the question arises whether you should have more than one, or if all your material should be on one CD. Harris feels you can put your commercial voices and character voices on one CD, but make sure to clearly label the tracks on the outside package.
Casting director Charles Rosen prefers separate demos. "Show me one reel that's commercial and another that's charactery," he explains. He went on to say that packaging and presentation of the CD is also an important element. "The most important thing is having your name and contact telephone number on the spine and on the front. The picture on the front is important, too. It can be all cartoons if you're auditioning for animation, or a scene with some color, or your headshot picture. It's vital to stand out so that if I'm looking for somebody's demo, I'll say, 'Oh yeah, that was the red one.' List all of the spots you're doing on the back with their track numbers and their running time."
How does one get a demo reel or reels made? There are several instructors who offer classes in voice-over with a package that includes a finished demo reel. These programs can be expensive, so it's a good idea to ask around and get recommendations from friends in the business.
Okay, you've got your CD ready with just the right packaging. What now? Just like your pictures and resumes, you can send them off to casting directors and agents. (For a list of casting directors and agents, see page TO COME). Most of the casting directors interviewed for this article find available talent through agents, but most said they do accept unsolicited CDs and try their best to listen to them.
"If I hear a 'cut-through' voice and it snaps me to attention, then I'll remember that person regardless of where the demo reel came from," says Rosen. "If you're just starting out, there is plenty of nonunion work that's less competitive. At a higher level with the union, national commercials, it's very competitive, because recording time is very expensive and they need performers who know what they're doing. They only have one hour to tape a spot. Voice-overs require an exacting kind of timing. If it's a TV voice, you have to come at a certain point at an exact second that goes with the action. They expect you to know how to nail it. There's not as much pressure with local commercials."
John Michael Higgins agrees: "There are people who can shave off a second here or two seconds there and, on the national level, the producers of the spots expect you to know how to do that."
Harris recommends several venues for fledgling voice actors: "There are small ad agencies that do nonunion work. There are also production companies and some recording studios that have voice libraries and are in a position to book directly. Also, local cable TV will often produce their own commercials and commercials for their advertisers, so you can send a demo to the local TV affiliates."
There are some creative and inventive ways to attract attention to your voice talents. John Michael Higgins relates one: "A good friend of mine used to do really funny character voices. She and I did a Mike Nichols and Elaine May-type comedy show. We wrote some sketches that showed off her voices. I had an agent at the time. She didn't. An agent was invited, who invited a friend, and the next day she had a voice-over agent. If you think you got something, do something to show it off and have fun with it. If you specifically invite agents and say, 'I just want you to listen to my voice,' that might get a response."
Let's say you get a call from a casting director, either through your agent (if you have one) or a direct submission. What's the most important thing to do in a voice-over audition? "Listen," says casting director Donald Case, who has cast for such shows as the Cartoon Network's "Courage the Cowardly Dog." "In an audition, there is no big trick. Just listen to what the person is saying in the waiting room and, once you get in to see the casting director, listen to the direction. People don't listen. Also, it's important to bring something to the party. Don't come in with a totally blank mind. Have some ideas and try to use them in your reading based on the direction." If you book the job, the same advice applies to the session itself.
All of the casting directors we spoke with agree that the voice-over field is as competitive as any other area of show business. A few years ago, there was a stigma attached to doing commercials, but not now. With well-known performers like Stockard Channing, Donald Sutherland, and Gene Hackman all doing national voice commercials, the space for new actors is getting more limited. But with the expansion of cable television, video games, computer software, audio books, and corporate video, new markets are opening up every day. "There's still room for talent," offered David Cady.