DoctorHypothesis

Hey man,

I used to be a casting director specializing in cartoon and video game casting in Vancouver.

I noticed you said you didn't have any money for coaching or a better demo. Unknown if this will help, but I can at least tell you what we looked for in quality voice demos from new actors when I was doing it:

1) Demo should be 2 to 3 mins MAX (If you don't have that many voices you can pull off, shorter like 1 minute is better - and no filler - only your BEST work should make the demo). It's got to be short enough that we won't get bored listening to it (I never had time to listen to a 5 or 10 minute demo anyway!). The other reason it's short is so it can fit into an .mp3 that you can email. That'll be about 3-4 Mb's, any more than that and you'll clog my email inbox!

2) Open the demo with simply your name and identify what type of demo it is and perhaps even the year. So, "John Smith, animation voice demo 2014", If you were doing commercials, you'd say that instead etc. And do it in your regular voice (no "put on" voices). This way if the .mp3 file gets mislabeled somewhere along the way, someone can click on it and at least know what it was.

Note: this is an animation demo, so you want to do a few different voices to show your range and versatility. The reason this is important for ALL voice actors is because its cheaper for me to hire you to play 3-4 characters in a cartoon (your "main" character plus some background guys) than it is for me to bring in 4 different actors to cover all the individual roles. So if you have range, you have versatility, so if you save me money, you're more likely to be hired! So...

3) Open with a reading in your own natural voice. The first thing I'd want to hear is what you sound like normally.

4) Next, do 2 to MAYBE 6 additional readings (remember its still only 3 mins long) in all the other voices you can do. If you have a "Jack Bauer / Army General" voice, let's hear it. If you do "mad scientist", "old man", "reptilian/animal" type voice, or any number of other "characters", let's hear them.

Remember range is key (side note: sometimes even if we had someone's demo that did NOT have the voice type I was looking for, they might still show me enough range that I think they could pull something else off, so they may get an audition anyway).

Each of these should be ~20-30 seconds, as I need enough material to hear what you can do with a character. Something only 10 seconds just isn't long enough, and longer than 30 seconds I don't need to hear and you're wasting my time.

5) Note that if you're working on voices but they're not yet good, don't bother putting them on this demo (you can always release an update later when you've perfected something). If I hear something on the demo which doesn't sound good enough, you may make me question your ability/choices overall, and that would be bad. Only put on things you know you can do well.

6) One more note about voices: if you can do a child's voice, get it on your reel! Typically adult men can't pull this off so I'll mention it just as a point of reference: Who are the main character of most children's cartoons? Children! Between the ages of 8-18 usually. If you can do a realistic young child's voice (young boys for men, both young boys and girls for women) you'll be huge in animation because of the simple fact that we don't want to hire REAL children. Think of the Simpsons, Bart Simpsons voice (voiced by a woman!) hasn't changed in in ~25 years. If we hire real children (for lead roles that is, they can still do one-off's), their voices will change as they age, which just doesn't work on a animated series which may run 4 or 5 years or longer.

7) Finally, if this is a blind submission (ie: you don't know the agent/casting director), it may be prudent to end the demo with you saying how to contact you, give email + phone number. This is again in case your demo is separated from your paperwork (or your .mp3 is passed around to other casting directors, which would be awesome!) they can still reach you.

I think that's about it. If you already knew all this, I apologize for assuming, but just thought it could help you make up your own new/fresh demo (since I believe you mentioned you have a home studio?). Good luck to you!

Edit: I want to apologize to uglydork for quasai-hijacking his AMA here. T'was not my intention! There's just been so many people commenting and asking questions, I wanted to give a few more answers in the event it can help anyone else out. Thanks to uglydork for allowing me the use of his AMA!

Edit 2 Also, I forgot one more thing I could add:

8) Editing your demo: If you know NOTHING about audio editing, that's ok. What I recommend, as a timeline of your demo, is doing your introduction in your own voice, then 2-3 seconds of dead air, then the first reading, 2-3 seconds of air, then the next etc.... don't put them back to back because I need to see a definitive beginning and end to each voice you do so I'm not confused as to why you just switched voices, and don't put more than 3 seconds of space between each or else I'll think the demo was over and close it prematurely. So 2-3 seconds in between each reading is about enough to put definitive space in between segments, but it's fast enough that my mind won't register it ended to go close the .mp3.

And for those of you who PM'd me asking how you could edit your demo, there is a cool FREE audio recording and editing program I've always liked called Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/). It's open source so it's not illegal to download or anything. It's basic by any standards, but still has more features than something like Windows Sound Recorder. It allows you to edit a bunch of your clips into one main clip, and export it out to .mp3. It probably has a help section that discusses basic editing, I'm not sure I haven't touched it in a few years myself...

Finally, I know I sound like Billy Mays saying "Oh it's so easy to cut a demo right in your own home, just do this..." etc etc. I don't mean to make it sound EASY. This is your first demo, IF you manage to get an agent with it, they'll likely arrange for you to go into a REAL recording booth and do another, higher quality version that they can use to impress casting directors like me haha! No matter how good of equipment you've got at home, it will still likely sound like you recorded it at home... My advice for recording at home is mostly just for starting out. You can't get an agent without a demo, but you (likely) can't afford to pay for a professionally recorded demo until you've got the agent etc... chicken and egg thing... So I'm just trying to give you the beginning of the egg I suppose... It will take a lot of hard work and practice to perfect any characters you try to create, and even though it's cartoons, we want them to sound realistic, in the sense that it's believable enough that a viewer is not taken out of the immersion of the program. It is a very difficult skill to master, so please don't take my above notes as suggesting it's easy to become a famous voice actor. With that said, if you can afford the time and you enjoy it, I say go for it! Because somewhere out there, there's some little kid who needs to experience the imaginative worlds that cartoons provide them. That's a pretty important task in my opinion haha!

Edit 3: Just to be clear, the above notes are for animation demo only. A demo you make for cartoons/video games is VERY different than something you'd do for commercials, or narration (like Morgan Freeman documentary is what I mean by that), audio books etc. All those have different types of demos. My experience was all animation & cartoon based, but user ajracho commented below with some further tips for commercial demos. Very informative! Check him out.

Edit 4: Two different people gave me reddit gold. I thank you, but I don't even really know what it does haha! I'm just glad that so many people found this info useful. I hope it's not too out of date and can at least get you started on that path if you choose to do so. Thanks everyone!

No problem! I knew plenty of voice actors who didn't know how to break into the business, but the simple answer really is "have a great demo" because that's how you'll get noticed. And the best thing about being a voice actor is its fairly easy to get a good voice demo. A screen actor needs to be cast in films (student or otherwise), or even own or have access to camera gear to film a scene. doable but not easy to produce something of quality, and it can take a long time to amass enough work to cut a decent reel of variable material. BUT, as a voice actor, If you have even just a computer and a mic, you could cut yourself a generic demo in your own home in a single afternoon! Practice! Practice! Practice! Of course, and do multiple takes if you need, but yeah, literally one day in your own home.

So having a great demo is the "start" of it. You must submit to casting directors and/or agents (I knew all the V.O. agents in Vancouver at the time, and they were always sending over new stuff for me to listen to - of course they want their guys to get work so they promote them whenever the chance was given haha!) and say you're a new actor (in your case may not be applicable since you've got a body of work -regardless of how limited - under your belt already) looking for representation, here is my demo etc. (and since its only 2 mins long, they're more likely to listen to it!)

I will also comment that I was a casting director for just a few years before I moved on to other projects, and that's just how my company handled it, so i have not seen "everything" by far (and I also exclusively worked in Vancouver). There could be other ways to structure a demo that may be better depending on who the casting director or studio is, this is just what we looked for.

I'm glad that helped! Good luck again!

horror stories haha! Yeah there are some of those, and some people are just generically rude, but I always liked to be happy at work. I mean come on, we were making cartoons! How can you not have a good time with it??? :)

It is tough to break into the industry, that's not in question. But the thing I've always also thought was if you're good enough and work hard enough (which are two different things! If you're talented but don't practice I'll be able to tell, if you're bad but practice all day, I'll be able to tell, and neither are good situations to be in haha!) then it's not so bad. If you're that good, people will want you for their productions. The catch is getting heard for the first time... I'm no expert on that, and I'll be honest there were plenty of times I'd get blind submissions and they'd go in my "I'll listen to it when I have free time" pile (you can guess how much free time I had ha!), but if you make a good first impression (with a good demo reel) your chances of getting accepted are much higher! It will take a lot of work AND a bit of luck, but there are some things you don't control. The mood I'll be in when I hear your demo for the first time, the amount of free time I have at all, etc.... but what you CAN control is the quality of the demo you release.

I remember there was this woman (no names) who was a new actor. She was trying to get into animation but hadn't booked anything yet. She was sent to us as a demo from her agent (so she was already a step ahead by having an agent...) saying "hey, check her out. Let us know if you could use her in anything" etc... So we listened, she had a strong reel that showed she had potential, even if she hadn't booked anything yet. So a couple months pass and we have some auditions for some roles and we're going through our database and we think "you know what? Let's give this girl a try, she might work." Now this was a lead on a series, and with little experience behind her she wasn't LIKELY to book it, but we thought her voice fit enough that it was worth the shot.

She came in and did her audition. She was great!... but she wasn't even shortlisted for the roll. We brought her in a few more times after that, and she was always smiles and super friendly and pleasant to be around (and when you're on hour 9 of auditions and you're tired, having pleasant actors around always helps ha!), but she kept getting passed up for roles for any number of reasons (why does ANY actor not get a role? haha). But we LIKED her as an actor and a person, there just hadn't been a hit yet.

Finally, one day we have a minor character come up where we think, you know what, let's just give her a shot and direct cast her (it was such a small role that it would have been a waste of our time to hold auditions, this happens often in animation). We brought it to the producer and director and said "here's her demo, here's some of the auditions she's done for us recently (because we file all that stuff!), what do you think?" And the producer and director agreed to give her a shot. She came in, recorded her lines in probably less than an hour (as I said, small role) and that was it. BUT, she had her first role! It might have been 6-9 months between us hearing her for the first time and her actually booking a job, but having a good demo got her an audition, and the first good audition (regardless of not booking it) got her another audition, and another, etc... until the right role came along for her. This was nearing the end of my time with that company, but as I recall she booked a few more things after that, including a major guest role on one of the animated series we were doing at the time.

I used to hear actors complain about getting auditions but never booking anything. I would say to them hey at least you're memorable enough to be getting auditions. It means SOMEONE out there thinks you might have what it takes to land a role, or else they wouldn't waste an audition time slot on you! So even if you're not booking, getting lots of auditions is HUGE news!

Anyway, don't want to type all night here, but the point is that while some horror stories may be true, that doesn't HAVE to be the norm. And it's cliche, but having a good attitude to go along with good work keeps you in the door. You just have keep your foot in there long enough for something to hit, and then BAM! you've booked your first role. In the end we WANT you to be successful (because it makes us look good when we suggested you for a role in the first place hahaha! - but seriously, that's kinda true lol), so I guess that's why I'm here tonight writing all this. Even if I'm not in animation casting anymore, it's still something I really loved (because hey, CARTOONS!) so I'm happy you and a few others have found my list useful.

Oh yeah, I'd say it happens rather often. When that happens (or when an actor becomes unavailable) you have to do what's called a "voice match" and try to cast someone new who sounds close enough to the original actor that you can get away with the continuity change.

Often the fans of a show will complain because you recast a lead role like that, but it usually was not our fault and was only done due to circumstances we couldn't control haha! But yeah, that kind of thing happened rather often I found. Most of the time, unless it's a lead role, the viewer wouldn't even notice, which means we did a good job lol...

Hi Ajracho,

Thanks for your addition. I agree with pretty much everything you've said here! You made a lot of extra notes on commercials, to which I have NO experience with (I was strictly cartoons and video games) so that helps a lot for the people here thinking of doing commercials or anything more "realistic".

Back in my day (2008-2011, so long ago now haha), we liked the 2-3 minute demo because it gave us enough material to pick pieces out. 1 Minute demos are great too, and if you don't have that many voices to do, then yeah, don't force a bunch in just because you're trying to stretch it to 2 mins. If you had a 3 minute demo, we wouldn't necessarily listen to the whole thing, but if there were some good voices included in it, we may skip to hear something we like. The difference between what I remember and your current notes is likely, as you said, just a sign of the times changing even in the last 3-4 years.

I also only worked in Canada, so the scene is probably much different even in just the U.S., but yeah everything you said sounded good to me, especially the part about making sure you have income and your family is taken care of. It's all well and good to "go for the dream", but if you have responsibilities at home, I also fully advocate you taking care of your home before taking care of your dream. If you're lucky enough to do both, then that's amazing, but please do not sacrifice one for the other. It will end poorly for you.