All the credit for these STO spots goes to a very good friend of mine and Mentor, Ty Towriss. His company, NLX Broadcast Design, is the genius workforce behind all the filming, 2D animation, 3D animation, compositing, special effects, sound design, editing, and finishing of stellar commercials like this one. I feel incredibly privileged to be the narrator of these really cool spots — all thanks to Ty’s belief in my voice.

When we first began talking about these commercials, we tried three different vocal styles to see which one “felt” the best. In the first read, I went for a kind of “hard sell”…a somewhat “announcery” sound that is sometimes associated with sports. In the second read, I went in the opposite direction — sounding like an “ordinary guy” — which is another very popular style these days. And in the third read, just for fun, I wore an evil grin and spoke with a little bit of arrogance…trying to put the “Don” sound on it.

For a while, it looked like the first version was going to win since it had just a touch of that ‘over the top’ sound. But then Ty, along with the guys up north at the network, decided that the third version was the one.

If you’re at all interested in hearing how the other vocal styles sounded, I threw together some lines from those original three versions. And to make it easier to hear the subtle differences between these reads, you’ll hear the exact same phrases from each take, back to back, without any music or sound effects.

Thanks for listening! Be sure to check out the other three STO spots in this series (1978, 1986, and 1994) on my GIGS page! Enjoy!

Talk to you soon,

-Tom

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