Pitfall Number 1

Making a Voiceover demo to soon!!!

Breaking into voiceover and establishing a voiceover career needs a well thought through plan, some really good voice coaching, and a sensational voice demo.  Want to know why making a voiceover demo before you’re really ready is doomed to failure?

Having a demo is, as you know, crucial to getting work.  In fact, one of the most important events in the process of becoming a voiceover artist is the casting process.  And the thing is, you’re never there for it.  Only your demo is!  So your demo needs to say it all.  It needs be a high quality recording, containing your interpretation of interesting, current scripts that your voice would be cast for and it needs to give the impression that you absolutely know what you’re doing.

Now, you might be thinking, “No, I can just put a demo together in my home studio or my friends studio”, or “I can go to a studio and for a few hundred dollars they’ll put a demo together for me”.  Now, the fact is, both of these experiences can be useful, but I’d like to explain the pitfalls of going down this path and why your demo probably won’t succeed in getting you work, before I give you the directions to the path that will lead to work.

• Putting a demo together in your home studio

I really have to say, there is nothing wrong with doing this, as long as you call it practice.  In fact I encourage any voiceover artist or voiceover potential to do that.  The practice that is going to do you the most good at home, is ‘reading’ and ‘listening’ practice.  Listen to what’s out there on radio and television, develop your sight reading skills and most importantly, develop an ear for the sound of your voice and your own uniqueness.  But to make a demo at a home studio to send out to the industry before you know what you’re great at, what you’d be cast for and before you’ve had any professional coaching is a recipe for disappointment.

• Putting a demo together at a studio

I’ll also say that there’s nothing wrong with doing this either.  It’s a great way to get some studio miles and have a studio experience, but this is where you need to realistic.  It’s a known fact that making a demo before you’ve had any coaching, rarely leads to any or much work.  Why?  There are a few reasons.  Sometimes the scripts that you are asked to choose from at a studio are dated or boring, and often you choose  something you would never be cast for.  It’s also not ideal that you only have an hour or so to record a selection of 5 to 7 scripts.  This is just too much for one hour.  I would never attempt to try and do justice to that  many scripts in that small amount of time.  The likelihood is, that they’ll pretty much sound the same.  Your inexperience will show in the demo and you’ll be overlooked.  But the real reason is that without expert coaching, you won’t really know how to perform each script at a highly professional level, knowing all the tricks and techniques that will not only make sure you do a great job of a script, but that you’ll be booked over and over again.

And this is where I come in!  Believe it or not, great voiceover coaching in a professional studio situation is really the only way you can experience for yourself the ins and outs of what it takes to be a voiceover artist and find out all you’ll ever need to know about your unique style and creating a great voiceover demo.  So the best way to get your hands on that winning voice demo, is to really understand who you are and where you’d fit in.  If you believe you have the talent and ability, then you can’t afford to cut corners when it comes to making a demo and launching a career.

If you do think you can go it alone, or you really feel you are ready to make a demo, and then market yourself to the industry, download my audio programs from http://voiceovercoach.com.au called ‘How to Make the Best Ever Voice Demo’ and ‘Marketing for the Uninitiated’.

If you’re serious about being a voiceover artist, sign up for my newsletter, receive the free download that answers some of the most asked questions about breaking into voiceover, and download my audio technique programs.

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