Aaron Marcus advises voiceover artists to skip full commercials on demo reels. Instead, use 10-15 second clips to show range, and keep your whole reel to 1-2 minutes.
Hi, my name is Aaron Marcus, America's premier acting and commercial modeling career coach, the founder of HowToModel.com, the author of How to Become a Successful Commercial Model, now in its 5th edition, and I've been making my living as an actor and a commercial model for over 26 years. One of the questions that pops up is, when you are recording your first demo, should you take the entire length of the radio spot or whatever piece that you are recording and place that on your demo reel. Here's some really helpful information to you. Absolutely not. You never want to take an entire piece because people won't sit through a 30-second or perhaps even like a 60-second radio spot. What you want to do is this. Take 10 seconds, maybe 15 seconds tops of all the different pieces that you want to use. Just take little snippets and pick different parts of the spot that show different things that you can do. And that way people can get a really good sample of all the different types of things that you're able to accomplish with your voice and with your acting skills. And I wouldn't make the demo reel any longer than a minute, like 2 minutes tops, but typically it's going to be somewhere around a minute, maybe a minute and a half. I think that would be the best amount of time. This is just one of the many topics you're going to be learning when you register for the Voiceover Jobs Online Workshop. You'll even learn how to put together a great demo reel, how to get work even if you're living in a small market. You're going to learn how to find the right agent to submit you for voiceover work. I'm also going to be interviewing Ty Ford, who's an incredibly successful voiceover artist. So simply click Click on the link below for additional information and to register, and I look forward to seeing you there.
