Demo Production - Toronto
Your Demo Reel is Your Calling Card
Your voice-over demo is a collection of voice samples that showcase your sound, range and style, allowing casting, studios and agents or prospective representation to hear what you can do before bringing you in to audition or booking you for a job.
On The Mic offers demo reel production to students whose voice-over skills are market-ready. A common mistake is creating a demo without first investing in sufficient training. With only one chance to make a first impression, it’s important that your demo showcases a skill level that is competitive in the market, and is professionally produced.
For adults, a specialized demo for different areas is the best approach, so it’s best to prepare for the animation, commercial, video game, and narration demos separately.
Kids’ and Teens’ animation and commercial demos are more focused on highlighting the quality of the individual’s voice than a lot of character work.
What’s included in the production of your demo?
When you make your demo with us, we start with an online demo prep session, scheduled a week prior to your demo record. We select scripts that best showcase your sound and style. Then we move in-studio for the final record. Included in the production is the cost of the studio, engineer, director, as well as the mixing and editing fees.
Please fill out the form on this page when you’re ready to request your demo reel production.
Animation Demo Reel Production
PACKAGE A: 5 – 6 characters
$900 + HST
PACKAGE B: “Bells & Whistles” Mix
Looking for some extra sparkle? Bring on the supporting cast and add sound effects and music to your demo. Final demo will be available two weeks after your final record.
$1450 + HST
Commercial Demo Reel Production
PACKAGE A: 3 Spots
$900 + HST
PACKAGE B: 5 Spots
$1200 + HST
Audiobook Demo Reel Production
3 Genres
$700 + HST
Video Game Demo Reel Production
$900 + HST
Kids & Teens Demo Reel Production
(2 spot)
$450 + HST
(3 characters)
$500 + HST
Request Demo Production in Toronto
Demo Production F.A.Q
Our demo production rates are between $700 + HST and $1450 + HST for our Adult demos. You can read more about the different packages and options above. Kids and Teen Demo are $450 + HST for commercial demos and $500 + HST for animation demos.
The demo production service includes an online demo prep session, scripts then selected specifically for you, a 1-hour record in studio with a professional studio engineer and director, the mastering and editing of the demo by an engineer, and (if applicable) all music and sound effect sourcing for the demo.
1 hour for Adult demos, 30 Minutes for Kids and Teen Demos.
Yes, you can. You may make your own arrangements with a local studio to record in, and we can direct you remotely. Once the record is finished, arrangements can be made to have the Pro Tools sessions sent to one of our mastering engineers.
One of our many voice directors will direct your commercial, audiobook, animation and video game demos. But if you really jive with a specific director then we can discuss having them direct your demo.
If your reads are professionally competitive and you have a wide range to showcase in a specific area of voice-over, then you are likely ready to begin preparing for the demo. We have sample scripts for you to record and send in so that we get a feel for your range. Our instructors will let you know if we do not think you are ready to record a demo yet.
Much of the prep work for demos takes place in your one-on-one session with the director. For animation demos, we will send you a package to guide you in creating your characters.
60 – 75 seconds is the optimal time for commercial or animation demos in our experience.
For our animation demos, we custom write the scripts for your demo uniquely for you. We never use the same script twice!
For our commercial and video game demos, we select industry quality scripts that are best suited to your sound and style.
5 – 6 well written characters that each show a portion of your range and the types of genres and archetypes you fit into.
We typically aim to showcase 3 or 5 styles of commercial voice-over in the demo. If this is your first demo, 3 spots is great to start out with. If you are an experienced actor wishing to highlight your range and versatility, then the 5 spot demo would be a good choice for you. It is important that each spot on your demo sounds distinctly different than the next. It is not beneficial to have a longer demo if all the spots sound the same!
Think of audiobook narration as a marathon performance. A good demo should be between 2.5 – 5 minutes long and showcase your your ability as a narrator to sustain consistency and connection to the material. Now, think demos vs demo. Since there are several different genres of books (fiction, non-fiction, 1st person, 3rd person, comedy, sci-fi …etc), performers should aim to have demos that demonstrate their narrative tone in different genres. From our experience, 3 different audiobook demos is a solid place to start from.