D-Mac-Double's audio Reviews on Newgrounds

[Commercial Demo 2011 (Seymour)]

Stong potential, glaring weaknesses.

I think you have a nice voice for soft toned reads, but deliveries like "reconize", "that matter the mos", "american airline dah com" (should also be "airlines", with an "s"), "b'as it might someday become", "on the moun-EN", "architec", show me that you really need to work on tightening up your enunciation, along with better training your ears so you're aware of such occurrences the moment they happen. It's so frequent that I'm beginning to wonder if you just naturally have a non-American dialect.

Interestingly, the Budweiser and Halloween spots where you're *putting on* accents are actually your strongest easily, barring a slight "hesitation" I could hear from you on "stock up now". These kinda lean more towards character voices, though, so I do like how you placed Halloween at the very end.

The Lego spot requires you to pull back and sell some emotional attachment, as a father talking about his son. The writing even allows for some light-hearted comedy to be worked in. You instead sold this as more of a stiff announcer, which resulted in your weakest read from an acting standpoint, despite having some of your better enunciation.

If you're as serious about your work as you seem to be, I think you'd greatly benefit from investing in studying diction. You also should not be touting yourself as a professional if you're having to list game mods, webcomic fandubs, and Pokemon audio parodies as resume credits. If you were not paid, these are not "employment". I congratulate you on having an agent, but this alone does not make you a professional.

PM-Seymour responds:

Hey D,
I want to thank you for taking the time to listen and write out a proper review, it's nice to see someone analyzing a demo down perfectly but keeping it simple. As for the diction and resume, I'm going to fix those up as soon as I can. Once again, thank you very much.
-Seymour

[Rough Draft Demo Reel]

Most of the groundwork is there...

This is definitely very rough, as you've specified, but with the right polish, I think you can get a really solid demo out of this.

I wanna start out by saying that your enuncition has improved TENFOLD since I last heard your work. I only found one very noticable case of slurring, on "maph problems". Kudos on genuinely putting forth the effort to better this aspect of your delivery. It's really showing.

Acting wise, there's some deliveries I liked, some I didn't, so I've go over some of 'em.

0:00 - 0:07: I found this kinda flat and not convincing. If your aim is to portray a more "commanding" sort, it will often help to actually carry a really tense and serious facial expression as you speak the line. You can also play with the levels of your tone more to really engage the listener. Imagine you're raising your voice to cut someone off with that "There's no time for introductions!" then shifting over to a sterner, slower tone, as you get down to business on the rest of the line.

0:18 - 0:28: I really liked the tone here. It's a great contrast to the voice that came right before it. This is where you started spending too much time on one voice, however. Cut it after "my time here is short".

0:28 - 0:33: You essentially did this same voice before at the 0:13 mark. Cut one of them.

0:33 - 1:10: Not a bad voice at all. There's only a handful of female AVAs who can pull out a decent elderly range, let alone try. But wooow, look at the time. You did a full out monologue in the middle of a demo reel. Just keep the first 5 to 7 seconds and cut the rest. Spending longer than that on just -one- voice, is a mistake.

1:10 - 1:42: Another monologue-length reading, which is another no no. However, it did showcase one of your better voices, just oozing with devious personality. My favourite part was: "All you have to do is side with me. Together... we can win this war." - Methinks you should just keep that part, and cut the rest. Shifting you tone for that really soft "together." kinda gave me the chills, in a good way. I really liked that acting choice.

1:42 - 1:47: Very similar voice and dialogue to what you do at 1:54 - 2:02. One of them should be cut.

2:03 - 2:24: Too much time on one voice again. Some good words to end with, however. I also liked how you paced most of this reading, though emotion was a liiittle flat at times. Think the best way to read it would be with more of a "smile".

All in all, I think you should be able to shave at least a full minute off this rough version. Between 1 minute, and 1 minute 30sec tends to be an ideal length for a proper demo. Since you'll likely have some time to fill, I also advise experimenting with different accents and dialects a bit.

Along with the above notes, add in some background noise removal, fitting music and sound effects, and this should all turn out rather nicely. I really enjoy seeing people put legit effort into their work and striving to improve, so I hope you keep it up. If asked, I'd be more than willing to review any of your work again.

Nakoruru responds:

Thanks for the detailed feedback, no one else really bothered to lay it out for me. When get around to making a final cut I'll keep these words in mind.