VO: Tales and Techniques of a Voice-Over Actor by Hogan Harlan

Author:Hogan, Harlan [Hogan, Harlan]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Allworth Press
Published: 2014-08-04T16:00:00+00:00

From the 1989 Harlan Hogan voice demo—Kurt Mitchell, Illustrator

Techniques of a Voice-Over: Making the First or

Fiftieth Voice Demo—A Never-Ending Project

“When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story. When you

rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the

story.”—John Gould, editor, Lisbon Weekly Enterprise

To paraphrase the quote above, when you make a voice demo, tell the story of what you can actually do well, then edit out all the things that get in the way of that story.

For years, the “perfect” or “killer” voice demo was touted as the Holy Grail of voice-over actors. “You’ve got to have a ‘killer’ demo or you’re dust”—a quest helped along in no small measure by some voice demo producers anxious to charge thousands of dollars for that killer demo.

Most talent, with the help of a good engineer, can produce a terrific voice demo without spending thousands of dollars. If you’ve got the bucks to farm out your demo to someone you believe has the magic formula, that’s fine, and more power to you. Personally, I’d rather take that same money and invest it in promotion.

Compilation (sometimes called sampler) voice demos all have the same basic structure, no matter who creates them. They are simple stories with an “arc”—a beginning, middle, and end. You will no doubt also produce more specific demos as well aimed at different genres such as narration, audio books, e-learning, political, animation, character, etcetera. Regardless, they all begin—always—with the “money voice.”

If it isn’t obvious, your money voice is the sound you are hired for (or hope to be hired for) 99 percent of the time. Many people call this your “signature voice.” Call it anything you like, but your basic, most employable sound and interpretative style for that particular type of work always starts your demo—to lead off with anything else might be creative, but not smart. Next are the other voices and approaches you are known, or not known, for—the “variety” elements. And we end up with the money voice. We want to leave ‘em with another version of your most popular—and profitable—signature sound.

Honestly, I was never quite sure what people meant when they talked about killer voice demos. If killer meant you got booked as a result of its production values, fine—but often they were a triumph of production over substance, a demonstration more of the art of audio engineering than of the art of voice-over, and pretty useless as serious casting tools due to the incessant sound effects, music, and quick-cut snippets of voice-over all jammed in to a one minute package.

It’s no wonder that producers soon realized they couldn’t just cast from our voice demos anymore—they were too easily manufactured to sound great even if the performer wasn’t! Producers began insisting on auditioning almost every job to be sure of their casting decisions and the ease of sending auditions via the web made it easy. However, good compilation and genre-specific demos may help you get chosen to be on those auditions, so there is still value in well-produced demos that reflect the real YOU.

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