I’ve never had a demo reel.
Okay – well – I made one in 2012 or 2013, but it was bad. I never really used it to apply for jobs.
Now, those of you who are sharp may say
“But Adam, you’re a technical sound person/implementer. You don’t need a reel!”
to which I would 100% agree.
But then that begs the question…
If you’re doing more technical work – programming or “technical sound design” – how do you showcase your work?
My Story
Back in 2016 I’d finally landed a full-time position in games. Prior to that I’d done plenty of contracts and worked around the periphery of the industry for years, but had never been on a development team.
It was at this point that I realized how few audio roles exist within the AAA portion of the games industry – audio director, sound designer, composer, programmer, and various shades in-between. Certainly there’s outsourced voice over and other tasks to be done – but for AAA those things are often highly specialized and done by only a few teams in only a few cities in the world.
That left me in an odd predicament.
I’m not – and have never been – a phenomenal sound designer. I’m capable and can certainly get the job done, but many of you would beat me out for pure sound design roles.
I don’t have a degree in computer science either – I’m a “self-taught” programmer and certainly have fewer credentials than those graduating with degrees.
But, I was more interested in technical audio (programming, Wwise, implementation, making tools, etc.) than being a full time sound designer. I also didn’t want to quit the industry just when I got in.
So – think for a minute – what would you have told me to do in that situation?
You have no idea, right?
Well… I started writing. In fact, almost exactly 2 years ago I started writing on my website.
I also started a (now defunct) Slack channel dedicated to audio programming. Because most of the folks I knew were in games, it was more game audio-centric than otherwise.
Keep in mind – I wasn’t an audio programmer at all. I had no idea what I was doing.
Somehow, that group ended up attracting a few “major” names of programming in game audio. Those folks gave me plenty of resources to dive into that were vastly over my head (and many still are).
Additionally, I dove into learning to write useful scripts for Reaper. I also wrote a bunch about the Wwise Authoring API as it was being announced, because I could see the potential in it.
My work in Reaper ended up attracting the attention of legitimate sound designers (people from Oculus, Activision, PopCap, Raven Software, etc.), so much so that my customers demanded I take payment for my work.
Audiokinetic also gave me access to the beta program for Wwise 2017.1 so that I could play with, and write more about, the Wwise Authoring API.
Within a few short months, I could put on my resume that I had a paid software product on my website and that I was an expert in this little-understood part of Wwise that everyone (still) knows has the potential to drastically change workflows.
This work (and a long, long history of audio work across various industries) got me involved with the AAA teams I’ve since been involved with, and it’s been a pleasure and honor to work with them.
Extrapolating to You
So how do you take my story, and apply it to what you do?
How do you get noticed if you’re doing technical work and not just sound design?
Here are 3 principles you can apply from my story, to exactly what you are doing, right now.
Make Cool S***
My foray into Reaper scripting wasn’t intended to make me any money. It was a very easy way for me to wade into something that I deemed to be “audio programming”.
(I was programming, and doing audio things – so… that counted)
The problem for me was that I didn’t want to just make dumb things like “mute a bunch of tracks with a hot key” – but I had no other good ideas.
So I spoke to various sound designers about what I could do to help them. Pretty much none of them knew or understood what I was asking of them. 2 years ago, everyone knew you could customize Reaper, but not exactly to what extent you could do it. The game audio folks had very little idea that the people who make their various favorite Reaper scripts could be contacted, were real humans, and would be happy to make them custom tools.
It was a mildly uphill battle just to get people’s brains wrapped around what I was trying to do.
So when I chatted with my dear friend Matt and he understood, it was wonderful. The only problem was that Matt doesn’t use Reaper.
(He still doesn’t)
But it provided me the perfect opportunity to ask him if there was anything I could make that would make him more willing to jump DAWs.
He came out with
“If you could put Audiosuite in Reaper, I might use it”
and I was off to the races.
Think about how audacious of an idea that is – to take a feature from one DAW and replicate it (or improve it) in a completely different one. That’s a big deal and something I wouldn’t mind sharing with people at all. It was also something that I knew other designers would use.
It was also a task that left me going “oh crap… where do I even start?!” – which was perfect.
When you’re making something to show – be it a demo reel, a piece of demo software, whatever – it must be unique and interesting. Enough so that you know it will catch the eyes of a few people.
From that point, your only enemies are yourself and the scope of your project. You then need to clearly define what you’re doing, and get it done.
Document Your Work
Somehow, someway, you must share the things that you’re working on and what you’re interested in.
When I made the first (horrible) version of my Reaper scripts, I mentioned it publicly on the game audio Slack channel. The audio director of Raven Software ended up contacting me, eager to take it on a test drive.
That turned out to be the most wonderful and horrific time in my programming journey. I simultaneously learned how bad I sucked, and got the chance to drastically improve very rapidly.
Suffice it to say – he got to see the absolute worst version of that software. He also very willingly continued to test it for me as I improved it, and I was super gracious for that – and still am to this day (thank you, Mark!).
At the same time, others were paying attention – including one of the team members at 343i (which, while helpful – wasn’t what got me the job).
You literally never know who is paying attention.
Simply because I write weekly, I’ve been put in touch with more random amazing humans than I ever thought I had the hope of connecting with before. When I document my work, show people what I’m up to, and charge for it – it becomes a big deal.
Taking that action of writing weekly is what put me directly in touch with the team at Audiokinetic – where I became close enough with a few of the team members that they reached out to give me a shot at using WAAPI before it was ever public. Now I’ve got a book on it that you can get as part of my C# Implementation with Wwise and Unity course.
Before I was writing and making things purely because I was interested in it, I could never have planned on being in touch with any of these people or teams – much less getting the fortunate opportunities to learn and build relationships that I did!
Charge For Your Work
One of the most understated parts of my story is this – legitimate industry professionals paid for my Reaper product.
It wasn’t just a demo reel. I figured out how to sell a real software product for real money to real professionals.
I never had to go into an interview and say “oh yeah, I know Lua – I made some pretty neat things in Reaper with it once. It had these features…”
Instead, people have turned to me in interviews and said
“I see that you’ve… sold audio software? In Lua? That’s impressive! Would you tell me a little about that?”
to which I reply with something like “Oh, yeah – you know audiosuite in Pro Tools? I replicated that in Reaper, and improved on it a little bit”.
I’m not trying to sound like a haughty know-it-all there – it’s just factual that I made that and sold it. It also comes off really really well if you’re not a legitimate low-level programmer. Even if you’re a legitimate low-level programmer, it’s still impressive that I sold a real product to real pros.
Now – do you have to do exactly what I did?
No, not at all.
But there’s no reason you can’t take your interesting ideas and extrapolate them for use by working professionals. Even if you’re a sound designer!
As I’ve told some of my mentees – yes, “sound effect packs” get a bad rap. But if you’re capable of putting together a good small-sized pack of sound effects that’s useful to people and sell a few copies – that’s resume worthy!
When people see that you’re doing work and getting people to pay you for it – even outside of a normal “industry job” – it’s usually an interesting story and people will sit up and take notice.
What We’ve Learned
As an implementation specialist or “technical game audio professional” – you may or may not need a real fantastic demo reel. You certainly must have work and a reputation that proceeds you if you don’t have a reel (even if you do have a reel, too).
At minimum – follow these three principles:
- Make Cool S***
- Document Your Work
- Charge For Your Work
After that, the lessons of persistence and patience still apply – just like they do for any other audio job.
Good luck!
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