Mount Olive Man Grows in the Voice Over Field

Mount Olive High School and Rowan University graduate, Michael McEntee, has been acting for well over a decade, was heavily involved in the drama club program in high school, and received a Bachelors of music in vocal performance with a theater minor in college. “Basically, I was trained as an opera singer for four years,” he says. “I chose not to go that route, and decided to mainly perform on stage in musicals and plays, and I've been doing that in New Jersey for the better part of 10 years.”

However, in 2015, he decided to combine all of his above-mentioned talent and venture briefly into the voice over world. After falling away from it for a few years, McEntee strolled back into the realm due to the pandemic. “I was lucky enough that I was able to keep my job during the pandemic, which combined with the sudden influx of not having to pay for gas to commute to Red Bank every day, I had some extra funds,” McEntee explains. “While I was sitting at home, contemplating the world event that we were living through, I was watching YouTube documentaries about voice actors and also streaming programs on Twitch with voice actors playing, ironically, Dungeons and Dragons. As I was watching these people do their craft and exploring it in a new way, I thought to myself, ‘You know what? I can do this. I can definitely do this.’ And I kind of leapt over the mental roadblock that's always been in my way.”

McEntee, who is 31 and was born in Morristown and lives in Mount Olive, took over a closet in his parents house. After turning it into a sound booth by filling it with audio foam, he then moved his desk and computer in, invested in equipment and microphones and a membership on a pay-to-play site (voices.com) where auditions are listed, while he also sourced auditions through Twitter. “I started taking classes, and the other ironic plus that has come out of this whole event for the past two years is that a lot of VO classes have gone remote, so I can take a class with some of the best voice actors in Los Angeles here in New Jersey via online. I've been getting tons of great training on that, and I'm starting to see some positive effects from that as well.”

McEntee is enjoying fruits of his early labors. “I've booked a couple of jobs, mainly for corporate gigs like explainer videos and videos for conferences,” he says. “I also got a commercial booking, and I've been working heavily on a commercial as well - and that's a little bit different, it's a whole different technique - and I also booked my very first contracted animated series role.” And his study to make himself better at the craft continues. “And I've also been taking video game classes and doing that whole technique as well. Because that's the thing about voice acting that a lot of people don't realize from the get go. A lot of people just say, ‘I have a couple of funny voices. All I need is a microphone and it'll be fine.’ There's a very specific technique for the very specific different genres of the industry, and it takes a lot of contemplating and a lot of examining scripts and seeing what the client wants that differentiates what can get you booked or not.”

The excitement he is currently living is definitely based on his love of performing as a whole. “Tracing all the way back to even high school, I always loved entertaining people, and I always loved using my voice to entertain people,” McEntee says. “In VO, I'm feeling something in this right now, so I'm going to try to truly make my way through here. Theater acting will always be there, so I can always come back to it. But I decided to take a break from that and just focus on this, because I was starting to feel the most joy actually working with professionals who want to see me succeed and who care about my progress.”

For more information about McEntee and his voice over work, follow him on Instagram and Twitter at @mcenteetalksvo. McEntee can also be contacted via email at [email protected].