Recording a voice acting demo

What a demo reel is for

A demo reel is a casting tool, not a portfolio. A casting director listens for perhaps fifteen seconds before deciding whether to keep listening, so the reel's job is to demonstrate range and competence fast.

• Keep it to 60–90 seconds. Commercial reels sit at the shorter end, character reels can run slightly longer. Nobody complains about a short reel.
• Lead with your strongest read. The first eight seconds decide whether the rest gets heard.
• Show distinct range, not many voices. Four clearly different reads beat twelve that blur together.
• Keep spots short. Ten to fifteen seconds each is plenty to demonstrate a read.
• Separate reels by category. Commercial, narration, character and video game reels have different conventions and different listeners.

Recording takes

Record each spot as its own take. Every take here gets a player and a Discard button, so you can work through a piece repeatedly and keep only the one that landed. Download the keepers as WAV — the reel will be edited, levelled and mastered afterwards, and that all works better from uncompressed source.

1. Set your level once with the volume meter and do not change it for the session.
2. Mark your distance from the microphone and hold it — takes recorded at different distances will not match when edited together.
3. Record a take. Listen. Discard or download.
4. Move through your pieces, keeping several options for each.
5. Record thirty seconds of room tone at the end for the editor.

Character work has one extra risk

Character reads are frequently louder, more sudden and more dynamic than commercial reads — shouts, screams, sharp changes in volume. Set your gain against the loudest thing you plan to do, not your normal speaking level, because clipping cannot be repaired afterwards.

Back off the microphone for loud passages rather than turning gain down mid-take. Half a step back is worth several decibels, and it keeps your level consistent for everything else.

The room, again

Casting directors hear amateur rooms instantly. Reverb, computer fans and traffic all signal that a performer cannot deliver a broadcast-usable file, and that matters more to a client than the performance. Record in the smallest, softest space available — a wardrobe genuinely works — and treat that as a higher priority than upgrading your microphone.

• Recording voiceoverClient delivery specs.
• WAV recorderThe uncompressed recorder.
• Recording singingThe same raw settings.
• Reduce background noiseTreating a room for nothing.

More in use cases

• Recording a podcast
• Recording singing
• Recording interviews
• Recording lectures

See all use cases — the right recording setup depends on the job: what you are capturing, and where the file goes afterwards.

Questions