I have to say, it was a rush and, honestly, came out of nowhere. I’m not even sure it’s really sunk in, yet. All I can say is, booking a National voice over commercial was a pretty amazing experience…especially since it was my first one.

I have to start out by saying that I’m fairly new to the voice over world. To be honest, I’m a two and a half year old toddler in this industry, and what got me into voice overs to begin with had nothing to do with me wanting to do it. I don’t think it had ever crossed my mind. However, for years, I had friends who were producers and directors that would contact me and ask me to voice projects they were doing. Wasn’t until later that I thought, “Hmmm…maybe I should look into doing this.” Needless to say, I’m happy that I did.

The Audition

Ok, fast-forward. So, around the December 2015 timeframe, an audition popped up for a Sam Adams pre-roll. Pre-rolls are the ads you see before the YouTube video you’re watching. I figured, “Hey, nice client for the resume,” so I did a quick audition. Four days later, I got an email saying that I had been shortlisted and they wanted to know my availability. After picking a day, I was contacted again, asking my rates to do three spots instead of one. Within a few hours, I was given a thumbs up.

Session with a follow-up…

The session was about 10 minutes total and the first spot showed up on their YouTube channel a few weeks later. The day after, I got this call. “Hi Bryan. The client actually wants to air one of the spots nationally, this Sunday.” I nearly dropped the phone. I was out of my mind excited, but tried my best not to act like it. My mind was even present enough to ask one extremely important question. “Is this for the Super Bowl?” Not quite, but as it turns out, I was close. It was for the, just as important, Puppy Bowl on Animal Planet. Well, I gave my price and then waited the longest 24 hours in the history of mankind. The following day, I got the good news. About hit my head on the ceiling and tried to come up with reasons not to take the day off.

Puppy Bowl Sunday

That Puppy Bowl Sunday, I went over to my parents’ house and just spent the day with them. The Bowl was on in the background. And then, a weird feeling that’s still hard for me to wrap my head around…I heard myself talking on TV. Hard to put into words how that felt, but ‘excited’ and ‘emotional’ would be two key words.

Ok, so what did I learn through the process? Well, I almost didn’t audition for the job, so I got the lesson of a lifetime right there. So if I had the right to give advice to any voice over artist…don’t miss an opportunity! If you had told me two and a half years ago that my first national booking would be a voice over for Sam Adams, I would’ve thought you were crazy. So would the one and only producer  who told me that I “don’t have a national voice”. Please, don’t miss your next opportunity!

And just to prove how important is to take every shot you can, here you go…Sam Adams Nitro Now.

For more voice over samples, visit the Voice Over page!