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Voice Over Casting: How to select a voice actor through voice reels
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Be selective when shortlisting voice talents' reels. You want to narrow down the number of voice reels you listen to and pay attention to what really matters in a voice over reel: timbre, versatility and market-fit.
Shortlisting Voice Reels
Pay attention to what really matters in a voice over reel: timbre, versatility and market-fit.
3 Important Aspects
Professionally produced voice-over demo reels encompass the 3 most important creative aspects expected from a voice talent in top-performance creative media productions:
- timbres: what's the voice's core characteristics and how the voice can sound in different situations and styles;
- artistic ability: capacity of being flexible and comfortable while being required, pushed, challenged towards creativity and versatility;
- market-fit: showcasing the greatest samples of final products (commercial, character, narration...) that can be done with the talent's voice and confirming that the actors knows the high standards of real-world media business and carries elevated ideas and expectations for the new clients.
Look up for those 3 elements and shortlist the voice talents that have the desired timbre, versatility and market-fit. Your project's result depends on it. Most of the time, you won't have time to listen to the reel in full, so you should select reel that starts with the tone of voice you're looking for.
Versatility
In the last decade, I got to know many audio engineers and studios specialized in voice-over demos, and the one I've been recommending for voice artists is Voquent's Voicereels, because Voquent's team know what casting directors, agents, and producers want to hear. For the better of everybody in the media business, they are educating the voice-over industry and producing reels that sound like real-world productions.
Recently I listened to a reel they've produced for a voice actor in English and when I realized I had kept focused until the end - I was genuinely interested and hooked by the contrast between the samples. The key point is that they provide non-nonsense scripts with detailed artistic direction to help the voice actor show versatility throughout the reel.
Reels Save Time
Professional voice reels can save casting directors' time. For this, it's urgent for voice actors to start being careful and intentional with their demos and voice reels. Having a professional reel is not only a way of showing a voice actor's own artistry and versatility but an opportunity to show that he/she knows the business and respects the agent who has taken the time to listen to their voice reels.
Usually, we won't have time to listen to the reel from start to finish, so you must look up for reels that start with the same style as your project to find the best voice for your specific production.
That's not always possible, because when we find a reel, we usually have no clue about the order or the styles included there. Voquent makes finding the ideal voice easy by tagging reels with the first read's style, so we directors can know which reels might match the tone of voice we're looking for. So if you are looking for a conversational voiceover style, you look up for reels that are tagged as conversational - the first sample will be a conversational one.
And because Voicereels lists the style, vocal characteristics, vocal tones, and medium on their scripts - so voice actors can provide the best voice sample for that specific gig -, a reel from Voicereels is also optimized for Voquent as a platform.
Market-fit
When a reel is poorly crafted or is based on fakeness, we can feel it in the details as well as in the energy. There's a gap between the energy of the reel and the energy of a world-class production for a real client. Simply put: that voice has no market fit.
Let me take Voicereels for example again. They have a workflow very similar to a real project workflow, and it impacts directly on the result we hear when looking for a voice actress to fit a role. When a reel is recorded in a live direction session with remote direction, using original scripts with detailed artistic direction, with massive post-production, going through revision rounds... it's no different from real world-class projects.
The importance of variety and specificity sits in the core of demo reels but the majority of voice artist don't get it. However, our industry is as it is: competitive, exigent, innovative and fast, and there's no other way around it. I put it in bold: voice actors must have professional voice reels to get the best voice actor jobs. Agents, studios, producers and directors look for who's ready, fit and in place.
Now you have clarity of the most important traits that have been guaranteeing me exceptional castings for years.
When casting a voice actor, keep versatility, voice timbre and market-fit in mind in the first stage to optimize the voice over casting for your next project. If you need help finding the right voice, send us a message - we'll love to know more about your project and to contribute to its success.