Narration Demo 2020 by Peter K. O’Connell
The hard reality for voice talents is that almost no one is as excited about the production and release of a new voiceover demo as the voice talent themselves. To us, it’s like a shiny new car.
Well maybe the demo producer – who earns his or her living off of producing voiceover demos – cares a lot…but the rest of the world doesn’t care quite as much as those two care.
Editor’s note: my new Narration demo is totally awesome (he said humbly) and you will totally love it (he noted demurely) and you’ll want to hire me on the spot (he said respectfully). I’m perfectly OK with that.
LISTEN TO PETER K. O’CONNELL’S NARRATION 2020 VOICEOVER DEMO:
It’s fun to listen to new voiceover demos when we come across them…hearing the read, gauging the performance, the script interpretation, the audio production and individually deciding if it all comes together in a finished voiceover sample that makes the voice talent shine.
From the talent and production side of the coin, it’s hard to reconcile the fact that the “shine” I mentioned is purely based on…the subjective opinion of the listener. That’s right, there is generally no right or wrong demo production answer, no perfect voiceover demo formula.
And that’s why even though I produced my last Narration demo about 6 months ago, I have now produced a new Narration demo. The last demo was great and I received work and compliments on it. But I decided to make what I feel was an important change.
On my past Narration demos, I included not only Corporate Narration clips but also E-learning voiceover samples and Explainer video voiceover samples. Maybe it was my stubbornness or my laziness (or something in between) but I believed at the time that one Narration demo with all three (3) genres included would serve the needs of producers.
For no particularly revolutionary reason and without a shocking epiphany, I decided that I might be wrong about that old reasoning.
It seemed to me that I wasn’t actually serving the producers of E-learning and Explainer videos very well with my “one-size-fits-all” Narration demo. So a new focused Narration demo has been produced as has a stand-alone E-learning voiceover demo and Explainer video demo. Each contains more specific examples of the categories, produced with element more appropriate to the production genre. Explainer video narrations sound different than E-learning narrations sound and Corporate Video narrations sound even more different than either of the other two.
Each demo now resides on its own web page as well, one for Narration, one for E-learning and one for Explainer videos.
I invite you to click on any of the links to hear any and all of them.
E-learning narration refers to the voiceover recording genre, often involving video and/or the internet that that helps students and professionals learn outside the standard classroom. E-learning has been long popular for training employees and teaching students at all levels of education but it’s popularity really spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic as part of distance learning process.
Explainer voiceovers are the narrations that tell the story of Explainer Videos. Most often used for businesses, Explainer Videos communicate in a simple ang engaging way how a product or service works and why a user would benefit from that use. Although they can be produced in a variety of graphic styles, Explainer Videos are most often animated – which helps producers convey complex ideas into a more simple form with eye -catching visuals and, of course, ear-catching narration! That’s where I come in.
