Now that I've learned how to embed audio links in this page, I'm going to share a few goodies, starting with the repost of something I put up here a long time ago, before most of you began visiting this blog. This is the demo tape of the late, great voiceover god, Paul Frees.
All voiceover actors have at least one demo and some have several — one for animation, one for narration, one for trailers, etc. Mr. Frees had a "one size fits all" demo. Actually, he had a couple different ones but they all had a wide variety of what he did, and of the three or four I have, this one's the best.
It's five minutes. Note to anyone who's considering a career in voiceover work: You would be a fool to make your demo five minutes. No one who can ever possibly give you work is going to listen to it and many of them will think less of you because you don't know that. You are not Paul Frees.
Actually, given his rep, his demo probably wasn't used primarily to get him work. It was probably more like a catalogue so that people who were already thinking of hiring him could get a fix on which Paul Frees voice they wanted. Even then, if Mr. Frees were around now and looking for work, this demo would be two minutes. The business has changed since his day and now agents and casting directors figure that if they don't hear something wonderful in about the first minute, there's no point in listening any longer. That's probably valid.
I once asked a top voice agent, "If this demo came to you from an unknown, how far into it would you get before you decided you wanted to take this person on as a client?" He said, "Halfway through the first voice on it." That's even discounting the most impressive thing about it, which is that about 80% of these are from real jobs Frees had, some of which were quite successful and loved. So was he, and I think you can hear why…
