The buds are bursting forth and the flowers are poking through so now’s the perfect time to do a little Demo Spring Cleaning. “But I HATE reworking my own demos!”, you scream. O.k., take a couple deep breaths and focus. That’s better. Here are three ways to quickly dust up those musty old demos.
Out With the Old and In with the New
You’ve heard the old saying, “out with the old and in with the new”. Well, it’s time to put it into practice. It should go without saying that if you have a commercial demo that’s filled with products from the 90’s – “Get the new ’94 Kia Sorento at a dealer near you…” or If it mentions a Shopping Mall ?! (remember those?) then It’s probably time to archive it. Put that new 2020 Toyota Tacoma spot you did in there instead. As long as it’s good work and represents ‘your sound’, then it belongs in the demo.
The key to demo spring cleaning is making it sound like you’ve been hired recently. Clients want to hire fresh voices that sound current. However, if you were the voice of Morris the Cat or another iconic product that is your signature sound, then leave it in, but maybe save it for the end. That leads me to the next easy fix:
Shuffle The Order
An easy way to freshen up any demo is to shuffle the order. Don’t be afraid to chop it up and move the pieces around. The good news here is you don’t have to be a master editor to do this well. Just split the track and put a quick fade on each one so it sounds clean. Most demo players in those P2P’s and on our web pages require separate chunks anyway, so i bet you already have them chopped up.
If an audio pro made your demo for you, ask them for the individual ‘chunks’ so you can do this more cleanly. I bet your editing skills are better than you think. Heck, over the last year we’ve all had to get good at many aspects of the job.
Expert Opinion
Once you’re done swapping out the old for the new and shuffling the order, it’s time to get an expert opinion. If you have an agent, send it to them and ask what they think. Unlike your mother, your agent will be honest with you. If you don’t have an agent, I bet you have friends in the business who are experts. We all know at least one other voice actor, or engineer, or casting person. Reach out and ask for their honest opinion. Now grab those files and do some demo spring cleaning. And when you’re done, It’s a great excuse to email your clients who haven’t hired you in a while.