Mastering the Human Side Of Looking and Sounding Your Best on Video

Most courses on video production start off with by this camera have the lighting like this.

And as I mentioned to you there are tons of other great courses on udemy on all the technical aspects.

This is of course on video production but my focus is to help you with the human side of the video production because on the one side you got a camera lights microphone on the other side you have an actual human being.

And in my experience that’s the weakness in this whole puzzle.

That’s the weakness when it comes to knowledge and resources and investment.

Now I’ve got entire courses on you to teaching people how to look comfortable on camera.

This is gonna be a brief overview and that’s what I actually spent all day long doing in my in-person media training workshops and public speaking workshops.

But I want to give you a brief overview on how to look your best on camera.

Then I am going to ask you to do an assignment be up to you whether you want to do it.

Here’s the big problem for most people when they speak on camera for the first time they act natural.

You could say Oh what’s wrong with that.

Aren’t you supposed to be natural.

Here’s the thing.

If you’re nervous and everyone’s nervous if they haven’t spoken on camera a lot.

They do this.

What happens is their body freezes their face freezes their hands stop moving their voice starts speaking at a consistent tone and consistent volume and they look scared and nervous and uncomfortable and oh my God do we have to listen to this guy any longer.

That’s the big problem.

So here’s what you have to do in order to become comfortable looking confident looking for starters you have to move your head.

Look at how my head is moving.

You can even hit the mute button on your computer your cell phone and rewind this and you’ll see my head is moving a great deal.

All great communicators when they speak their head move their face moves the eyebrows move.

So you want to make sure you have constant movement.

The next thing you want to do in order to seem lifelike to seem natural relaxed is yet to move your body.

I’m not just standing straight up like this.

My body is actually moving the whole time and then the final thing you want to do is yeah.

These things are moving now.

You don’t necessarily see them all the time because of how this is framed for the video that you’re going to watch on your cell phone iPad.

But my hands are moving the whole time.

You may have heard Oh don’t move your hands that’s unprofessional.

Wrong.

The second you freeze your hands you typically freeze your arms shoulders the muscles get it into your neck.

Next thing you know you have that kind of blah blah blah blah.

Charlie Brown’s teacher voice it’s tensing up your vocal cords so when you move your hands Your body moves more your vocal cords move more.

The thing you want to do in order to come across as natural and believable on camera is you need variety.

You need variety and movement in your face your body and your hands.

And most important you need variety in your voice.

I mean sometimes you speak a little softer sometimes a little louder sometimes faster sometimes slower and occasionally you need to pause.

By the way all of those things never happen.

If you’re trying to read a script you have a script in front of you or a teleprompter and all of a sudden everything is leveled out and flattened out and you become robot awful.

That’s why I don’t recommend you try to read a script.

I don’t recommend you use a teleprompter.

Think of it this way if you’re sending a video proposal to a client or answering a frequently asked question you don’t need a teleprompter to do that in real life.

If you were talking to the client prospect sitting in front of you so why should you need it.

If you’re talking to a camera just treat it like it’s a human being.

And the beauty of video other than when it’s live.

If you don’t like it you hit delete and you just do it again.

Now a lot of people will look at a video and they’re hyper critical.

I understand that we’re all human beings.

Oh I don’t want to see my face I don’t want to.

Well clients have to see you in real life.

Customers have to see you in real life.

You can’t walk around the office or go into meetings with a bag over your head.

At least I hope not.

I assume not.

So you kind of get over it.

It’s not about being gorgeous and perfect.

I can look at a video of this one and I feel confident I look my best and sound my best.

This is exactly how I want to come across.

But sure I could point to the video and say Oh my God my hair’s falling out.

I’m getting bags under my eyes I’m getting wrinkles I’m getting jowls I could pick apart all sorts of things and I’m not any smarter than you.

But one thing I am pretty smart about is this.

I know it doesn’t really matter to you what I look like you didn’t come to this Udemy course to find some perfect specimen of beauty here not here to find a date or a spouse you’re here to get information for you to help you in your business and your organization in your career.

And as long as I can deliver that at some level you don’t really care what I look like.

You’ve got to come to that same realization.

It’s one thing if you’re a supermodel I’m assuming right now you’re not.

You are a business person and you’re trying to communicate and the focus has got to be on how can you simply come across comfortable confident relaxed and talk about the things you do to help other people and organizations.

If you do that no one’s going to care what you look like.

Now of course there are some things that could distract.

So if you have a really loud colorful clothing and you’re in a conservative industry that can be distracting you may notice I have a simple dark shirt on.

It’s not pure black.

It has a lot of white in it so there’s a little more contrast and I don’t have anything else that’s going to jump around no stripes no Paisley nothing that’s going to jump around.

Other than that I’m trying to keep it simple so that you can focus on the message for you not what I’m wearing or what’s behind me.

So here’s the homework assignment and I’m not going to ask you to do a lot in this course.

This is really the biggest determinant whether you’re going to get a lot out of it though because if you don’t get comfortable with how you come across on video you’ll never make inexpensive talking head videos for all the other things to talk about in this course.

So here’s the homework assignment I need you to pull out your cell phone or an iPad or a webcam and record yourself talking just for one minute about your business and look at it.

Figure out what you like what you don’t like.

You say anything you don’t like.

Keep redoing it until you like what you see now again.

Don’t wait for perfection.

Don’t say oh gosh my hair doesn’t look as good as it did 30 years ago.

Well mine doesn’t either.

And you know what people pay me a lot more money than they did 30 years ago and I had more hair because I give them valuable information and insights to help their business.

So don’t try to make it perfect.

Just try to keep doing it until you’re comfortable.

You’re coming across your very best.

Now here’s what I’ll recommend.

It’s up to you.

Most people aren’t willing to do this but if you’re serious about this I think you should post the video on YouTube.

You can make it a private link or an unlisted link and then put that link in the discussion section right here.

I will watch your video.

I will give you personalized feedback.

Now I do this in a lot of my other courses on udemy.

Very few people do it.

Oh well T.J.

What if somebody makes fun of me.

What if somebody sees it.

Well somebody could make fun of the text on your Web site too.

You could be in a meeting and someone could make fun of you if you never show up.

Yeah maybe no one will make fun of you but then you remain anonymous.

And that’s the bigger problem for most people in most industries is simply not getting your message across.

So I would urge you to get over it.

Everybody’s worried about their own video.

No one really has the time to come to you to me fish around and all the discussion groups find your video and then cut and paste it to make it turn into some joke on YouTube.

So that’s what I’d ask you to do.

Post a video of yourself speaking.

Get to the point where you’re comfortable with how you come across.

Because once you get there then we can do all the other things we’re going to talk about in this course.

t a video of yourself speaking.

Get to the point where you’re comfortable with how you come across.

Because once you get there then we can do all the other things we’re going to talk about in this course.