Collab with Dane Reid - Making a Narration Demo

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Collab with Dane Reid – Making a Narration Demo - 9:51

Gabby: Yeah, no, I'm telling you, he’s coming. Yeah! Dane, yeah, no. He’s coming. He’ll be here. He will! He said he would.

Dane: Every once in a while, you should update your demos, and when I realized that I needed to update mine, it was already far in the process, so I decided to call up a friend, Gabrielle Nistico. Called her up, paid her for my demos, two years later, I went and recorded it. I'm Dane Reid, the voiceover guy and chronic procrastinator. Check me out.

This is the story of the making of my demo.

If you haven't seen the video of me and Gabrielle Nistico a couple of years ago where I interviewed her, go and check that out. It has a bevy of information about voiceover, getting started, little bit about her and recording, and it’s one of the best interviews that I’ve ever done. And that relationship between me and Gabby has carried on until now for years. She’s lots of fun. I know her. She’s super professional. She’s a great career coach, and so I decided to do my demo with her. But that was 2016, and I’d realized it had been some years since I had done a demo. So I called her, she said yeah. She gave me a little bit of coaching. I sent her some money, and we were on our way. She sent me a script. I reviewed the script. The script was perfect for me. And I was ready, except I wasn't ready.

Gabby: He’s not coming.

Dane: For anyone who knows me, you know two things. One, I’ve been traveling the world for the past seven years, and I absolutely love it. And the second thing is that I’m a chronic procrastinator, so much so that I wrote the book on procrastination.

Gabby: Yeah, he may have written the book on procrastination. I wrote these.

Dane: So when I finally decided to go to North Carolina to go see Gabby to do my demo finally, I know it was like kind of a surprise to Gabby because I had been saying that I was gonna come for two years.

Gabby: Day 578, third attempt. Just got the email. Dane's not coming.

Dane: And she had been like, yeah right, yeah right. And I’d email her, I’d call her. She’d be like, OK. I’ll just see you when I see you. [laughs]

Gabby: I don't understand. Is it me? Like, what am I missing? I don't get it. So if you need me, this is where I’ll be.

Dane: I’ll let Gabby tell the story because what she told me her end, I had to bust out and laugh. Check this out.

Gabby: Hey, guys. What's up? It’s Gabby. Doing my part to [laughs] address this craziness for Dane, and by now I think you’ve probably got the gist of the story. Yeah, two years this demo was in the making, and multiple cancellations and probably the funniest part of the whole thing was having not one but two conversations with my accountant as we were going into the next fiscal year where he was saying, “we need to refund this money because the job is clearly not happening.” And I would keep going, “no, no, no it is. It’s going to happen, trust me. It will. I promise.” He thought I was absolutely crazy. [laughs]

Dane: So I get these scripts, they’re awesome, I approve them, I let Gabby know. What I needed was an industrial narration demo. So I’ve talked to Gabby about my career and the direction that I wanted to go and my purpose for these demos. Not all demos are created the same. You might want a commercial demo. There are lots of kind of demos, promo demos, I even have a live announce demo. Depending on what you’re looking for, you’re going to want to talk to your demo producer about what you want the demos for, what direction you’re going in. I think it’s important to talk but also to listen. I talked to Gabby but also I wanted to hear that she understood exactly what I wanted out of a demo.

Gabby: So script selection on this demo was really interesting. When it comes to industrial corporate presentation, this kind of stuff, I'm a big believer that it can't be boring. And we have to sometimes go for the unexpected because these demos otherwise can be very, very predictable. Now I remember the first time we selected scripts, being that it was two years prior, by the time we actually got to the creation of the demo, we had to make some script changes because two years is a long time. Stuff can be outdated by then. Made some tweaks, made some adjustments to that. Resubmitted the scripts to Dane. Finally, finally got him here in studio. And truthfully then it’s all about balancing I think what all voice actors are trying to balance inside of a demo. It’s personality meets skill, and helping a client to understand exactly what it is they're purchasing and what they can expect from you as a talent and a representation of their brand.

Dane: You know, I think a lot of times people go to these amazing demo producers, and the demo and the production outshines the voice. The truth of the matter is the voice is the center of your demo, and you want to make sure that, you know, it’s not so amazing that someone wants to call up the demo producer. The other thing that you want to make sure is that you can reproduce the sound that the demo producer puts into your demo because the last thing that you want to do is have a demo that people say, “wow, you did a great job,” and then you can't do that again in auditions or in real jobs. So when the demo was finished, this is what we got.

“We launched a video app that gave fans a firsthand look at what it’s like to sign on and become Band United's next great superstar. The copyrighted anti-money laundering course that you’re about to begin is designed to fulfill your regulatory requirements, and the IFM will provide evidence of completion of this course to you and your firm. Welcome aboard American Airlines coast to coast service. Please review the safety information during the flight. Did you know that the Constitution itself doesn't list who has the right to vote? Instead it lists who cannot be denied the right to vote. It took over 130 years and the 19th amendment after the Constitution was adopted before women could no longer be denied the right to vote. In the traditional approach we began with an investigation, not an assessment. This tended to create problems. The emphasis was on capturing every deficit in the family in hopes of being thorough. This led to them resisting our service solutions and ultimately not complying, so how was solution-based case work different?”

At the end of the day I got an amazing demo. I went out to North Carolina, I recorded with Gabby, we had a good time. We went out to eat afterwards. And even our friend George Washington came out, hung out with me and Gabby, and actually win Gabby went home, me and George hung out for hours talking, just had a really good time in Charlotte. So I want to thank you, guys. Relationships in this business matter, and I’m so glad to have really great friends.

Gabby: So yeah, he finally came out here. We got the demo recorded, he’s an amazing talent, takes direction super, super well, so that always makes the process a lot easier. And you know, what can I say? I love the guy. If you ever get the opportunity, you need a big, gigantic bear hug from that guy.

Dane: I’m Dane Reid. Check out more of my videos. Definitely subscribe and also hit the bell. Because if you don't, then you won’t be notified of the next video. Also even better, subscribe to my blog on the Dane Reid Media website, and you’ll get emails about when new blogs come out. Check out the blog, check out more videos, and I’ll check you out. I'm gone.

704-674-8294 / GabrielleNistico.com / gabby@voiceovervixen.com

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