How to Create a Voice Acting Demo Reel
An exceptional demo reel is the key to securing voice acting roles. Showing off your ability with a collection of demo samples across various mediums, genres, and vocal tones will help prove what you can do to clients and casting directors.
However, creating a voice acting demo reel is no easy task. Haphazardly putting together a bunch of audio clips won’t impress industry professionals. Your voice reel is essential to your success as a voice actor, so it must be curated with care.
How do you produce a demo reel? What planning is involved in the production? Who can help you create a voice acting demo reel? Let’s look at the important factors to consider, the answers to these questions, and more!
Planning a Voice Reel
The planning process of your voice reel should not be overlooked. Discovering what you want from your reel is necessary to create the product you want to represent yourself with. More importantly, creating the voice reel that casting directors want from you will drastically increase your chances of landing work. So, what should you want from your voice reel?
What is Your Niche?
With experience comes expertise. Most newer voice actors are unlikely to have discovered their niche in the industry. You may find that your voice is particularly suited for specific types of projects, such as audiobooks, animation, eLearning, or one of many other mediums. However, this results in many voice actors creating a generic voice reel featuring a taste of each.
General voice reels can be helpful if a client is looking for one voice for multiple projects. However, a casting director will usually have a specific role or project in mind when listening to voice reels. Focusing on an area in which you want to be involved, such as character voice-over, narration, or business and commercial, will cater your voice reel to match the industry you submit it to. This means that more of the demos your voice reel contains will be relevant to the listener.
Deciding on what kind of reel you need depends on what kind of roles you want and which niches your voice excels in. The balance of finding a niche while providing variety can be difficult, but this should be your goal.
Have You Included Enough Variety?
Variety is more than just demos that sound different. Showing off your vocal range and the multitude of emotions your voice can portray is essential to casting. If your reel includes the full range required in the role, then casting directors know you’re capable of the part.
This variety should include completely different voices in animation or character reels. You may be cast as a softspoken princess or a burly ogre, and your reel should demonstrate that you can do both. However, the variety in commercial and business reels should be seen in the vocal tones and characteristics used. It would be best to show that you can sound authoritative, scared, professional, funny, and more.
While offering variety in your reads will help, this is most effective when the scripts you read from have been written with specific tones and characteristics in mind. This is why we include the suggested tones and characteristics in all of our scripts. You can ensure variety before you’ve even begun recording, and you can search for scripts with a specific style.
Producing Your Voice Reel
There are a few routes you can take when creating your voice reel. Many voice-over veterans will have the knowledge and expertise to self-produce, while many newer voice actors will need more guidance and technical help with editing and recording.
Creating a Voice Reel Yourself
Self-producing a reel is undoubtedly an impressive feat, which may save you money if you can tackle each aspect yourself. Unless you have many years of experience in audio engineering, you will probably want someone some help with the editing to create a professional-sounding reel with high-quality audio and seamless transitions. After all, great recordings with bad editing will ruin your reel and your casting chances. Look for a professional with industry experience who knows the format and purpose of a voice reel for the best results.
You will also need a space to record in. This could be achieved by setting up a home studio if you plan to invest in your voice-over career or book time in a local studio. It is essential first to investigate the correct recording procedures, such as audio treatment and microphone placement. A cheap USB microphone in your kitchen simply won’t do.
Now you need something to say. Sourcing scripts online can be more complex than expected, with many sites offering a small selection of free scripts with no other information, such as mediums and how the scripts should be read. Of course, you can commission scriptwriters to create unique content for you or have a go at writing scripts yourself.
Ultimately, you will still want to work with specialists such as audio engineers and scriptwriters for a high-quality reel. This can be difficult to manage when sourced from different locations and will still require some budget.
Creating a Voice Reel with us
We offer all the services and guidance you require in the production of your voice reel, with plenty of industry knowledge and practical experience. We will always start with a consultation to establish what you want from your reel and your requirements, so we can help you create exactly what you’re looking for.
Our script library is the easiest way to build a reel, selecting scripts that offer variety in any combination of mediums and tones. There is no need to scour the internet looking for royalty-free scripts or adapting work to fit the time restraints of your reel. We can even offer unique scriptwriting services to stand out from the crowd.
We remotely help you with the recording process if you have a home studio or find space for you to record in. We’ll also verify any studio we might send you to, so there is no need to worry if it will handle the specific requirements of your recording process or whether the audio quality is up to standard. In the session, we’ll guide you with the knowledge we have gained from both reel production and voice-over casting.
From individual reads to an entire voice reel, we’ll mix and master the audio. This includes editing, transitions, music, and delivering separate demo samples and the reel itself. Your reel is an excellent investment, but your individual samples will also be available for you to use on casting platforms.
While the production of your reel will involve costs, it is a tool used to make you money. Any time or funds spent making a reel that is not of a professional standard will fail to get you cast and, in turn, will have been wasted. Creating an outstanding voice reel is an investment in your career, and a professional reel should bring in enough work to pay for itself.
Distributing Your Demo Reels
Now that you have your high-quality voice reel to market your voice-over services, you might wonder how to distribute your reel. Where do you put it? Who do you want to listen to it?
While sending voice reels to casting directors is still a viable way of landing roles, this method is far from the only way you could be cast. Many casting agents now use casting platforms to search for talent within a more extensive database. This distribution model removes the element of actually sending your reel out manually. Signing up to platforms such as Voquent is a great way to get noticed, and this is another reason we provide you with individual samples as well as the reel itself.
Crafting the perfect voice reel isn’t easy, and you will likely want to update your reel many times over your voice acting career. As you develop, your reel should too.
Contact us today for professional voice reel production services. Whether you are looking to find your first voice-over role or you have plenty of experience under your belt, we will help create a voice reel that is right for you and your specific requirements.
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