J. Michael Collins

Why “Best Demo” Awards Are Good for the Voiceover Industry

Recently there’s been a lot of discussion about the value of awards like Voice Arts Awards and One Voice Best Demo Awards in various categories. Skeptics have pointed out that being nominated for or winning an award for your demo reel is not in and of itself a sign of success. Ultimately, they say, only your booked work matters.

This perspective often comes from wanting to help talent focus on the meaningful things that will increase their bottom line, and I’m sure it is, at its core, well-intentioned. There’s a valid argument that a voice actor’s daily efforts should be expended primarily on tasks that generate work directly, such as auditioning and marketing. However, dismissing the value of awards for demo reels misses two critical points, one of which is directly salient to the bottom line of voice actors competing for these awards.

Best Demo Awards Provide Opportunities

First and foremost, one must consider the opportunity provided to a voiceover artist simply by submitting for a Voice Arts Award or One Voice Award. These competitions are judged by dozens of the industry’s most prominent talent agents, managers, and casting directors. Agents from the biggest LA and NYC agencies have participated, as have casting directors from all of the significant casting companies and even Disney, as well as representatives from the most sought-after and selective management companies.

When a voice actor submits their demo to one of these award programs, they have the opportunity to be heard by the key players capable of helping them access the highest-level work. And, while there is certainly no guarantee or promise that this will lead to direct opportunities, having the chance to have their reel listened to, often in its entirety in this setting, gives voice actors a chance to make a front-and-center impression that simply submitting for representation through the usual channels might not. It’s a rare opportunity to have the most impactful people in casting as a captive audience.

There is another benefit to these awards as well, though more indirect.

Improving the Demo Production Game

Since the Voice Arts Awards launched almost a decade ago, the industry’s best demo producers have been forced to up their game. The chance for an award should not be the primary decision point one relies on in selecting a demo producer. Still, it can play a factor in some voiceover talents’ deciding whom to work with. This has led to friendly competition among top producers and required us to pay more attention to the finest details of scripting, direction, and production.

Undoubtedly, the quality of demos produced by the top ten demo producers is considerably higher today than it was ten years ago. This is essentially a result of industry awards creating a more competitive landscape. This means that more talent is getting top-level competitive demos, and these superior-quality reels ultimately lead to more and better work.

Certainly, talent should be focused on immediate revenue generation. No one can argue that. But awards for demos or anything else in VO aren’t just a dog and pony show. They are a way of gaining the attention of the most connected people in the industry, and those impressions can help create channels of access that may not have existed for a voice actor before. The value is clear.

3 Things About the Voiceover Industry

by J. Michael Collins Leave a Comment

This week marks the return of my “3-Things” segments, where I drop a few shorter thoughts about the voiceover industry than my usual stemwinders. Here we go!

#1 About Voiceover At-Bats

It’s all about at-bats. When you strip all the noise away, the only thing that matters in this business is at-bats. Talent and technical ability are prerequisites. If you don’t have those, you won’t even get to first base. But assuming you do, it’s all about the number of people who hear you each day.

Even the best voice actors have batting averages that are rarely better than .100, or one in ten. You’ll never get the hits you need to build a sustainable career if you don’t get enough at-bats. What’s the magic number? For some, it’s ten a day. For others, 20. For more than you might think, 30 or 40.

At bats are auditions or active marketing touches. This means people are either hearing your audition or your demo. If this happens less than 10-20 times a day, regardless of where you source your work, you likely will not get a lot of traction in voiceover, no matter how good you are.

#2 Playing by the Rules

Occasionally, we all have to swallow our pride to move our careers forward. If you get your back up every time someone patronizes you or makes you feel small but is still offering a seat at the table, you’ll lose out on chances to leapfrog the very person who may not be treating you all that fairly. Don’t accept insults or abuse, but understand that if you want to be alpha dog someday, you have to accept that sometimes just getting into the castle is worth the trouble of playing by someone else’s rules for a bit.

#3 About Voiceover Audio

Have a pro check your damn audio. And I don’t mean me. I mean George Whittam, Dan Lenard, Uncle Roy, Tim Tippets, Frank Verderosa, and various others…..(yes, all guys….drop some killer female engineers in the comments, please!) I’ve been casting a fair bit recently, and some of you who are pretty hot stuff as talent don’t realize that you are sending in B-minus audio or stuff that’s been edited to the point that I’m hearing pops between lines. It’s often a deal-breaker and almost always a tiebreaker.

Scott Brick Joins the JMC Demos Team as Director of New Audiobooks Division

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With great pleasure, I can announce the expansion of the JMC Demos brand into Audiobooks, led by our new Audiobooks Division Director Scott Brick.

As a demo producer, I’m a firm believer in the adage that to create a quality reel, the producer needs to play in the genre being produced, whether as a VO, behind the glass, or both. JMC Demos has long counted on the expertise of A.J. McKay to lead the Radio Imaging demo process. For years, JMC Demos did not produce Animation demos, Video Game demos, or Audiobook demos because these are three areas in which I don’t regularly work, nor do I seek to.

A few years ago, because of frequent requests to produce character reels, I brought on the fantastic tag team of Matt Curtis and Chris Sharpes to head the JMC Demos Character Division. We began producing Animation and Video Game demos. Their hard work culminated in a 2021 Voice Arts Award win for Daniel Ross’s Animation demo and has helped numerous other Vo’s book work in these challenging genres.

Scott Brick and Audiobook Demo Requests

Before the pandemic, we also expanded into Spanish-language demos under the leadership of Juan Carlos Hernandez-Babic. Recently, we’ve been fielding tons of requests to produce Audiobook demos from our existing JMC Demos clients and others. Ultimately, I decided it was time to take another look at a genre that is so popular among voice actors and consumers alike.

This led me to Scott.

Scott Brick is not only a good friend, but as most of you are aware, he is arguably the most accomplished audiobook narrator in the genre’s history. Scott has narrated almost 900 audiobooks, including titles such as Jurassic Park, the Jack Reacher series, Alexander Hamilton, the Hunt For Red October, The Passage trilogy, In Cold Blood, the Bourne trilogy, Atlas Shrugged, Helter Skelter, Fahrenheit 451, and the Dune series.

Having just celebrated his 20th Audioversary, Brick’s venture into audiobooks is now considered legendary. To date, he’s won over 60 Earphones Awards for his narrating skills, five Audie Awards, five SOVAS Awards for voiceover, and a Grammy nomination for the multi-cast recording of The Mark of Zorro (2011). After recording 250 titles in his first five years, AUDIOFILE MAGAZINE named Brick “one of the fastest-rising stars in the audiobook galaxy” and proclaimed him a Golden Voice. Still, the WALL STREET JOURNAL sealed the moniker with a front-page article in November 2004. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY then honored Brick as Narrator of the Year in both 2007 and 2011. That honor was followed up with another feature in the WSJ in 2019 and a recent appearance on the CBS Sunday Morning news show. And the ultimate distinction – being inducted into the Audible Narrator’s Hall of Fame in 2018.

Taking the Lead

As the new Director of the JMC Demos Audiobook Division, Scott will take the lead in scripting and directing the Audiobook reels of our demo clients and coaching perspective demo clients when appropriate. Scott will also collaborate with the JMC Demos engineering team to ensure that production meets industry standards for this particular genre, ensuring that the final product isn’t just a showpiece but a tool to book work and advance the voice actor’s career.

On behalf of the JMC Demos team, I am thrilled to welcome Scott as part of the family, and can’t wait to see the results of this collaboration!

Why We Bought VO Atlanta, and What Comes Next

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As many of you read about last week, Anna and I are thrilled to have gained the rights to keep VO Atlanta going through a sale agreement with the previous owner and conference founder Gerald Griffith. Most of you have read the articles that were published by various media sources about the acquisition, but I wanted to use this space to give you a more personal look at the reasons for the acquisition, and what comes next for the conference.

I’ve been speaking at VO Atlanta almost since the beginning, and Anna has joined me there for the last several live conferences. In some ways, it’s become a bit of a VO home for us, where we get to see our friends and colleagues, meet new ones, and it is also where we’ve watched the JMC Demos team form and come together into a cohesive unit. It’s where we met A.J. McKay, Jenn Henry, and numerous other people that our various businesses would not be as strong without…..in addition to becoming some of our dearest friends.

We’ve also watched VO Atlanta serve as a launchpad for more careers than we can count. People who are fresh off the bus one year, and expert speakers with thriving careers three or four years later. That kind of magic is something we couldn’t let disappear, so when Gerald made it clear he was stepping aside, we knew we had to find a way to step in.

As you’ve heard, I’m actually taking a secondary role in all of this. My job will be coordinating the presenter lineup, X-sessions, and making sure that the content is of the quality you have come to expect from this signature industry event, and then some. Anna, however, will be quarterbacking the event experience in her role as CEO. Indeed, her new LLC, Anna Collins Events, of which she is also CEO, is now the entity that owns VO Atlanta. I’m proud to see the strong woman that I’ve known and loved for so many years take the lead in this venture.

For those of you who have come to our EURO VO Retreats, or attended the One Voice Conference USA in Dallas in 2021, you have seen firsthand the attention to detail and quality that an Anna Collins-managed event offers. Going forward, we expect to bring the same level of personal touch and care to VO Atlanta. While we probably can’t have lobster night and serve Dom Perignon like at the retreats, we CAN make sure that the attendee experience is foremost in everything we do. That means things like free coffee and water stations, without long lines. And it means finding ways to make the experience more affordable without compromising on quality…..indeed while always looking to raise the bar.

Anna has already been engaging with hotel leadership to make clear that we’ll be expecting service improvements for future conferences. More staff, a return of room service, more frequent housekeeping, and faster service at restaurants. We expect our guests to be looked after. And this is just the start.

I do want to address the question of our relationships with other industry events because I think this is really important. Just like in the voiceover business, and the demo production business, we approach the conference business from a perspective of abundance. It is our sincere belief that there are plenty of ticket sales to go around, and that voice actors should attend a variety of events throughout the year, not just those we are involved in. VO Atlanta is our new baby, but we are excited to continue to partner with our colleagues in England to co-produce the One Voice Conference USA in Dallas. We’re also big supporters and sponsors of the other top events in our industry like That’s Voiceover and the Voice Arts Awards, VOcation, MAVO, Voxy Summit, VO North, WoVO’s mini cons, and more. Find the ones that are right for you in terms of proximity and content, and do as many as you can. They will all enrich your career in one way or another.

The voiceover industry is a community. It’s a wellspring of kindness and quality humans doing amazing things. With the continuation of VO Atlanta, our goal is to provide one of many wonderful homes for the people who make this industry such a special place. With your help, we’ll achieve that goal and more!

Improv Your Way to Better Voiceover Results

by J. Michael Collins Leave a Comment

If you ask most people to play word-association with the term “acting,” they’ll usually respond pretty quickly with the word “scripts.” Indeed, for the layman the two seem to go hand in hand. Obviously, most acted content, whether on-camera, theater, or voiceover is in fact scripted. After all, we’d be fairly lost without a story, right? However, what is often unnoticed by the average viewer, theatergoer, or listener, is just how many elements of a performance are driven by good improvisation skills.

The improv techniques actors bring to bear in their performances are often lost on the public because they seem so natural. A pause, as though in thought. A sigh, a chuckle, a conversational “well” or “but” added before a scripted line. Even a stammer or a stutter can be an extemporaneous improvisation that transforms an otherwise mechanical performance into something authentic and relatable. When done with skill and cleverness, improv is invisible.

Broadway producer and actor Rob Schiffmann has said that in improv, “The key is to use something that is a mystery to you, and then follow it. And let it reveal itself without too much concern for solving that mystery.” Robin Williams, perhaps the most skilled improv actor showbiz has seen, said, “You’re only given one little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.”

The question, of course, is where does one refine that little spark of madness?

Improv skills come naturally to many, but very few actors can improvise on an elite level without exercising their abilities in an environment designed to train and grow them. To many, the first name that comes to mind when we think of improv is The Groundlings.

The Groundlings are an LA-based improv and sketch comedy organization, and have been home to many legendary performers including Will Ferrell, Kathy Griffin, Phil Hartman, Lisa Kudrow, Phil LaMarr, Conan O’Brian, and Tyra Banks, among countless others.

With more than 2,000 students per year passing through their competitive, audition-based program, having The Groundlings on your resume as an actor is instant credibility in the eyes of many casting directors both for on-camera talent and voice actors.

Yet, other options exist as well. Well-known commercial actor, voice actor, and sought-after improv coach Scott Parkin has this to say about improv in general. “Improvisation is one of the most important tools in ANY actor’s toolbox because it supports, shapes, and can define an honest performance. As a voice actor defining and maintaining your character from start to finish is an important way to compete and stand out, and improvisation is the key to character definition and development.”

Scott continues, “On stage improv is a different animal but offers the easiest access to improv training. In voice over, generally speaking, the window to improvise on your audition is much narrower than on stage, but the skill sets are grounded in the same techniques. I would say find a fun local group in your own town …you don’t need The Groundlings or UCB to learn the basics.”

For actors of all stripes, it’s clear that being able to understand the principles of improv can be key to getting traction in the industry. Even if their skills are so strong that the audience never notices that they are improvising at all.

An Interview with Paul Stefano & Sean Daeley of The VO Meter Podcast

by J. Michael Collins Leave a Comment

This week I had the chance to chat with Paul Stefano and Sean Daeley, two excellent voice actors who host one of the industry’s hottest podcasts, The VO Meter. As a podcaster myself and a big fan of The VO Meter, it was great to get a behind-the-scenes look at what makes The VO Meter so successful.

Here’s what Paul had to say about the podcast.

What sets the VO Meter apart from other podcasts in the voiceover space?

We try to be as upfront and honest about all the wrong things you can do on your way to a successful voice over career. Most people only tell you the good things that happen to them. We share EVERYTHING.

What was the genesis of the podcast? Why did you decide to do it?

It started out as a way to help people who were just getting started, like us at the time. There were a lot of podcasts for seasoned pros. We thought it would be fun to hear from somebody “just like you” so to speak who was going through the same trials and tribulations. That has changed a bit now that we are both seasoned pros, but we still keep that focus, of helping the “newbie” as much as possible.

What do you look for in a podcast guest?

We like to have people on who are like us. Tell it like it is, while also offering insight. Also, it’s important that they can laugh. Both at us, obviously, but also themselves.

Tell us about some of the most interesting guests you’ve had on.

Well, our first-ever guests were Michael Schwalbe, Moe Rock, Matthew Curtis, and Heather Costa. Prior to that we only did a back and forth conversation with ourselves. I’ll always remember that episode because frankly I was shocked anybody else wanted to talk to us! I’m also eternally grateful that we’ve been able to have most of my early mentors on as guests. People like Bob Bergen, Doug Turkel, Melissa Exelberth, Peter Bishop, Trish Basanyi, Terry Daniel, George Whittam, Dan Lenard and YOU JMC. Finally, we are very proud of the episodes we did on racial, ethnic, and sexual orientation diversity.

If there was a wish list of three guests you could get for the podcast, who would they be?

I can honestly say there isn’t anybody we haven’t had on that we’d consider a “dream guest.” Part of that is because the VO community is so giving. We’ve had so many legends on already that it’s an embarrassment of riches. Joe Cipriano, Kay Bess, Scott Brick, Mara Junot, Johnny Heller, Daniel Ross, Melissa Disney, we already mentioned Bob Bergen, the list goes on. Simon Vance reached out to US asking to be on, which blew our minds at the time. I guess I would say I hope we just continue to be blessed with people who are so giving of their time.

For those considering starting their own podcast, what are some of the benefits and drawbacks?

Don’t. Sorry, we’re full. Seriously, though, really understand what you are getting into. It takes more work than people realize. While we were new (ish) to VO when we started, I had a BS degree in broadcasting. I knew how to produce a radio show, which is essentially what a podcast is. It’s a full production. I spend hours on each episode and I think it shows in the quality.

Talk tech with us. What gear do you use to record, and what software are you using?

Well, as you may know, we have a segment called Questionable Gear Purchase, which talks about whatever gear we bought or sold since our last show. We are unabashed tech GEEKS. I almost never have the same mic from one year to the next, sometimes month. In fact, as I write this I’m waiting for FedEx to deliver a new Antelope audio mic to my house! Having said that we do love Sennheiser/Neumann products, as well as Studiobricks! Not, only because they are sponsors, LOL. I’m not only a client, I’m a member! It may be interesting to note that we record the show with Twisted Wave, over Source Connect and I still mix with Audacity.

If people want to listen to the VO Meter, where can they find it?

www.vometer.com, and follow us on Twitter @thevometer, or like our Facebook page.

Hire Paul Stefano for your next VO project at paulstefano.com

Hire Sean Daeley for your next VO project at dailyvo.com

J. Michael Collins

Best Demo Awards Provide Opportunities

Improving the Demo Production Game

#1 About Voiceover At-Bats

#2 Playing by the Rules

#3 About Voiceover Audio

Scott Brick and Audiobook Demo Requests

Taking the Lead

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