GTT Spotlight: Voiceover Audio Engineer and Demo Producer Henry Willard

George talks with UK-based voiceover engineer and demo producer Henry Willard about the rise of virtual engineering and why more actors are bringing their own engineers into remote directed sessions. Henry explains how having someone handle recording, playback, timing, and client requests can free the actor to stay where they belong: in the performance.

They also explore Henry’s approach to creating authentic commercial demos, why overproducing auditions can backfire, the never-ending battle with mouth noise, common home-studio mistakes, and the realities of producing audiobooks by hand in an increasingly automated world. And because two audio engineers can only behave themselves for so long, there’s plenty of talk about Pro Tools, headphones, plugins, noise reduction, Macs vs. PCs, and keeping your processing chain simple.

Timeline

00:00 Sponsor and Sound Check 01:00 Meet Henry Willard 03:00 Running an Audio Business with Two Young Kids 05:00 The Reality of Working from a Home Studio 07:00 Why Voice Actors Are Hiring Their Own Engineers 10:00 What a Virtual Engineer Actually Does 11:00 Henry’s Start in Remote Recording 14:00 How COVID Changed the Voiceover Workflow 16:00 Building a Freelance Voiceover Engineering Business 19:00 Getting Into Voiceover Demo Production 20:00 Making a Demo Sound Authentic—not Overproduced 22:00 Music Choices That Can Ruin a Demo 24:00 Henry’s “Palette Call” for Building Personalized Demos 27:00 Why Demo Spots Need a Beginning, Middle, and End 28:00 Mouth Noise, Perfectionism, and Over-Editing 29:00 Mac vs. Windows for Voiceover Recording 34:00 How Much Mouth Noise Should You Actually Remove? 35:00 RX Mouth De-click and the Problem with Overprocessing 37:00 Alternatives to RX and When Your Headphones Are Too Good 39:00 Fix the Room and Mic Technique Before Adding Plugins 40:00 The Wrong Mic, the Wrong Input—and Other Common Mistakes 43:00 Henry’s Approach to Audiobook Production 46:00 Punch and Roll vs. Continuous Recording 49:00 AI Proofing vs. Actually Listening to the Audiobook 51:00 Why Henry Takes a Premium Approach to Audiobook Editing 53:00 Henry’s Favorite Tools: Pro Tools, Editus Keys, and Headphones 58:00 Keeping Plugins Simple 59:00 Waves NS1 and Noise Reduction 1:00:00 Apollo C-Vox and Real-Time Noise Reduction 1:02:00 More Audio Geekery—and an Invitation to Pro Audio Suite