“If my rabbi were to find out I was involved in such a project, he’d probably give me the boot — and he has quite a large boot.”

Yaakov Berger is the voice actor and narrator behind many of today’s frum commercials, movies, clips, and promos. He is based in Lakewood, New Jersey.

1. Where have I heard you?

A lot of people recognized my voice on the Rav Chaim video and the Ten Yad videos. I’ve done all sorts of work for media groups, mosdos, and businesses, both local places and worldwide organizations like the OU, ArtScroll, Shuvu, Oorah. Most jobs follow a typical style — “This yeshivah has been around for so many years, we turn to you now for help,” or “For general information, please press three.” But I also do out of the box, like acting with Joey Newcomb in a commercial for a shul gabbai program, or announcing the names of players in the RCCS hockey tournament.

2. How did you get into this?

I used to do kiruv work for Project Gesher of Lakewood Links. One day, the Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation called and asked if there’s anyone who could do intros for their hotline — d’hainu, “The following segment is presented by so-and-so,” and “The previous segment discussed this-and-this topic.” People always ask if I acted or did voices as a kid. Believe it or not, I did not — it was this job that propelled me. When I saw I had a knack for it, I went for lessons at Marla Kirban Voice Over school in the city, and then I had a demo made. I sent out ten CDs, one videographer picked it up, and that was the beginning of my professional voice-over journey.

3. Why do videos need professionals and not just a narrator with a deep, clear voice?

Not every read warrants a deep voice. It can be good if you’re doing something like, “The BMW 5 series, the ultimate driving machine.” But sometimes you need softer, happier, sadder, more exciting, more somber, jumpier — you shouldn’t have the same voice for a car commercial as you do for selling teddy bears or bagels or flowers or sponsoring mishnayos l’zecher nishmas a loved one. We learn things like compartmentalizing. If you’re doing a read that has switches or turns, you go from really excited — “I can’t believe he’s coming!” — to disappointed — “Oh, no, he’s not coming” — and you’re doing these voices yourself, so you have to be able to switch on the dime. Also, there’s the 3-6-4, changing the cadence of your voice when saying, ““It’s exciting, it’s amazing, it’s adventurous.” So for the first, “It’s exciting,” you want a moderate cadence, a 3, then for “it’s amazing,” you go higher, to a 6, and then for “it’s adventurous” you go down a couple notches, but not as low as the first time, to a 4.