Career Advice

If you are of a certain age, the voice of Speedy Alka-Seltzer is fixed forever in your mind. That little guy was all over our television sets in those days. Dick Beals is the name of the voice actor who provided the voice of Speedy. You’ll find a nifty interview with Dick, here, and discover as you read that Dick really understands the voiceover business. (If Dick’s interview has been moved to the archive section of the site by the time you read this, you’ll find it here. And please let me a comment so I can update this post with the correct link to the interview.)

My thanks to my buddy Charlie Glaize for pointing me toward this interview.

Mike Shepherd, a talented voiceover guy with years of experience, sent me a very kind note yesterday. Since he had some questions about updating his demo that I thought might be useful to you, I asked his permission to quote him here and he has kindly granted it. These were the thoughts and questions…

I have procrastinated on a new demo for far too long…. call it complacency or just sheer laziness, but the time is far overdue for updating and I’m just wondering if you any recommendation on a good candidate to consider as a Director to help me do some serious re-construction/rebuild of my existing demos. I tend to be partial to someone who is a working performer who’s accustomed to advising experienced/established talents such as myself (vs., say, the studios on the Coasts that tend to cater to the newbie VOs). If you have any people who’ve served you well in the role of demo producer…I’d welcome your thoughts.

One of my biggest hangups in approaching this, is that I have archived virtually everything I’ve produced out of my own studio and when I look at the prospect of demo updates, a “daunting feeling” overtakes me! There’s a part of me that wants to consider “actual production” that I’ve done — as potential demo material… in addition to any new material I might cut specifically for a New Demo….

The amount of stuff I have is huge…and unfortunately I was never as disciplined as others insofar as trying to keep a sort of ‘catalog’ of particular work that may at the time have struck me as especially good and worthy of future demo consideration.

I learned long ago that I’m far too close to my own stuff to be objective about picking and choosing the “right” cuts for my own demos… That said, I really value being able to work with someone who has the the directing ability to truly bring out the very best in a talent…and a track record of building proven successful demos that reflect it.

Mike’s situation is similar to lots of folks currently working in the voiceover world. It’s very easy to let a couple, even several, years go by without re-working our demos. And like a lot of us, he’s archived a bunch of work without setting aside material that might work well for future demo updates. (I’ve actually only started doing some flagging and collecting of potential demo update material in the last year.)

So, here were my suggestions for Mike. Hopefully they’ll be of some value for you as well.

Regardless of how poorly organized your archives are, spend some time listening back to several spots and pieces of narrations every day for the next few weeks. As you do set aside or copy all of the tasty pieces you find (not the edited bits, the whole piece) as you find them. At the end of a month you’ll have a big pile of good to great material in probably several categories. Commercials. Promos. Narrations. And at least a few others, depending on how specific you want to get.

More than likely you’ll have enough real material that you won’t have to make up anything, or if you do, it will be minimal. To cover that option, as you get toward the end of that month, start looking for copy you can use to cover those holes in your material. Magazines. Current TV or Radio ads. You’ll know what you need so you’ll recognize it when you see or hear it. The point here isn’t to try to listen to everything, just some of what you have. And you won’t start until and unless you do.

Then, talk with one or both of these two friends of mine, both working professionals and both of whom have been working with demos for a while: Ben Wilson and Dan Nachtrab. I’ve listened to the demo work both of them have done and I think it’s really good stuff.

The reason I’m recommending that you use only or almost only real stuff that you’ve done is because I think it makes a difference that’s subtle, but genuine. As you no doubt remember, years ago a demo was essentially an audio resume. Using real stuff is going to raise your credibility for those who can tell. And it won’t matter for those who can’t. Either way, assuming that you’ve done good work over the years, you’ll have a ton of usable material.

Thanks for reading. If you find any of these thoughts or ideas useful, leave a comment. I’d love to read your thoughts on the subject.

With thanks to Connie Terwilliger for pointing me to it, check out this wonderful article by Joe Bevilacqua in the archives of Animation World Magazine. It’s well worth a few minutes of your time.

What follows are comments I posted on the Voiceover Bulletin Board earlier today. I think they’re well worth repeating here. These comments were written in response to a question from Joe Rodriguez about the value I had realized from attending the Audiobook Master Class with Pat Fraley, Hillary Huber and Kimberly Breault in July 2006.

In my experience, studying with Pat Fraley is money in the bank.

I’ve been to 3 seminars with him now. After the first, my understanding of copy and characters improved a great deal. After the second, I was cast for two national projects, no doubt in large part because of the improvements in my ability to break down copy and figure out quickly how to approach an audition that I gained at that seminar.

And the third was the Audiobook Master Class, after which it took less than 2 months to book an audiobook project, a massive non-fiction project I’m still working on and will be for a few more months. Two months after that I made the connection with this SciFi audiobook publisher.

Like I said, money in the bank.

If you’d like to read the entire thread, you’ll find it here.

As I’ve mentioned a number of times, the voiceover business is a business. In fact, the vast majority of your time working as a voiceover talent is going to be spent finding work, not actually reading and recording.

With that said, my friend Drew tells me he has recently received an interesting offer, but ultimately decided against taking it.

The gist of the story is that while it looked good initially, the terms were such that he realized the situation wasn’t as appealing as he thought. In other words, it’s always a good idea to keep your eyes open before you jump through an open door.