Voice Over Producer, Editor, and Technical Coach – Michael Smith…

When it comes to coaching voice over and training new talent how to handle the complex demands of the craft, I like to take a realistic approach, teaching in a fashion and at a pace people can understand. After all – I’m working in voice overs and have been for years.

As well as being an experienced narrator, I cast talent, produce and direct voice over sessions on a daily basis. I make no bones about sharing my experiences and mistakes with people so they in turn don’t make them.

In my day to day life, I work along side several very talented voices, creative directors and other producers, in the field of Health Science Marketing and Education and Biomedical Visualization.

When it comes to life in the studio – recording, editing, and performing, I go through the same struggles that other voice talent are always facing, as well as witness them as a director, producer and studio owner. I share those stories, along with my own personal journey, with the people I work with. Real voice over guidance, from a real voice over coach. Someone who has not just been there – but is there. When it comes to coaching, these are the things I try my hardest to bring to the table.

These days, my personal business life is centered around voice over casting, production, project management and editing for motion picture (animation) – primarily in the medical, technical and health science marketplace. My primary focus when working with voice talent and coaching is more heavily skewed toward the technical side of things.

I no longer offer strictly “performance” coaching. Rather, I coach and consult on the technical requirements related to audio production, editing and studio proficiency. Years in the producer’s chair has taught me that there is a strong need for more guidance in this area, as well as a constant demand for more qualified talent. I’m not afraid to admit that there are better, more “in the loop” performance coaches out there. For a top notch performance coach, certainly in the Medical and Health Science category – you should give Debbie Irwin a call.

Mostly due to time constraints, and the reality that my head is in buried in the production, casting and directors game, and my studio is tooled and geared for production, my coaching and instruction have become more granular. My coaching sessions and evaluations are focused exclusively on providing individual instruction on microphone technique, remote connection technologies, voice over studio design, audio editing, sound reinforcement, isolation, acoustics and production.

Yes, there is some performance training and guidance involved in the process, but it is no longer the primary focus of my work. My “performance” related coaching and feedback comes from the perspective of someone who sits in a directors chair each day, rather than one who stands in front of a microphone. Though I have done both for a very long time, the views are different from opposite sides of the glass.

One thing is certain; I provide direct, meaningful, personalized insight and instruction to those who are trying to work in voice over, rather than fill them with hopes and dreams about some mystical potential.

Reason being, potential doesn’t pay bills. Yes the potential to make a lot of money is there, but it isn’t easy, and it takes a great deal of time, investment, tenured guidance, practice and education.

Below is a very short, somewhat abbreviated bio, at least where voice over is concerned.

I started my voice over training in late 1992, working one on one with a voice coach for several hours a week. I continued that training for close to two years. It was a rather conservative coaching style. It wasn’t until later in my career that I began to realize there were a lot of things my two-year voice over coach had never shown me or told me about.

Some of that may be due to the fact that he couldn’t because he didn’t know. Some of it can also be attributed to the fact that the business changed once everyone had computers and digital editors in their home. But I trusted him then and it wasn’t until later that I began to question why he hadn’t shown me many of the things I would have to learn the hard way later on.

Though I used to be a bit bitter about this, I have grown to realize there are many good foundations he actually taught me, even if he might have been more than a little guilty of leading me on to keep me paying and coming back, which I think upsets me the most. It just goes to show, that even with two years of coaching there was still a whole lot to learn about how things were done.

I started getting professional voice over work in 1994 with my first set of commercials for a doctor named Whitten who performed a then relatively unknown procedure known as Lasik. The doctor went on to bigger and better things, like performing his surgery on Tiger Woods, after which his career exploded, as did mine and Tiger’s. I would like to accept responsibility for their success, but oddly enough, neither has called to thank me.

When I was done with the training and D.C. as a whole, I moved to New York with demo tape in hand to find out about the next level. I knew there had to be another level to this stuff, but my coach just looked at me cross-eyed when I asked him if he could take me there. During a brief relationship with William Morris, I learned more about the acting and the character work involved and required when it came to pursuing voice over in the big leagues.

I went into industrial narration, political and commercial work in both the New York and Washington Baltimore markets. For a while I lived in Manhattan 4-days a week and Virginia for the other 3, driving back and forth to work and sleep.

While living in New York I attended Broadcast School where I learned a lot more about the internal operations of the radio and television business, which led me to a radio job back in the Washington DC market working for Metro Shadow Westwood One.

I loved the people I worked with, but that was about it. Full time split-shifts as a traffic reporter were definitely for someone other than me, and the whole adventure, broadcasting school, on-air shifts and all, did absolutely nothing for me as far as voice overs are concerned. I’m not sure being on the air even ever bought me a beer.

I left commercial radio and never pursued it again, and now work full time in the studio. While I was working at the radio station I began building my first recording studio. Several years later, I finished my second recording studio, where I now teach new voice talent how to break into the market and properly say the word W.

After more than two decades working with studios, voice talent, producers, agents, audio engineers and radio people, I have been fortunate enough to gain quite a bit of experience. I have taken that experience along with my voice over talent, and used it to my advantage.

Overall the experience has led to making me a better talent in the studio as well as an all around production guy. That experience coupled with as many years of coaching other people on how to do it – as well as how not to do it – has led to me becoming a pretty good voice over coach, or at least that’s what they’re saying…

I thirst for this stuff. You have to love it or there is no sense in doing it. VO is a lifestyle, as well as a craft.

Have any questions? Don’t hesitate to ask.
Have any doubts? Ask around. I’ll give it to you straight. And most anyone who knows me or who has worked with me will tell you exactly that.
I don’t play games, and have no time or patience for messing around.