Video Transcript: Question: Just a couple of comments. Most of your framing discussion here is about a structured environment. The reality is, most of the people here when they start doing video, they won’t have a structured environment. They’ll either be doing it in an office or in their home or whatever. So when you’re thinking about framing, remember that everything in the frame either says something about you, the subject, your personality or it says something about the context of the video, the product or the service you are talking about. So if you don’t have a structured backdrop and you are going to be recording in an unstructured environment, think about what’s in the background. Maybe even put things in the background that says something about you.
David: Ed does that really well, doesn’t he? He puts things like guitars in the background, South Park cartoon characters.
Ben: So does Gabe Barnett. One of our clients does that as well. He’s got his logo and some flowers because he knows his avatar. He’s selling print jobs to mostly women who are marketing people and whatever, so he sets something up that he thinks will be pleasing to them. It looks great, it really does, it’s really nice, it’s not over the top, it’s beautifully done.
Question: Everything says something. In a video you eyes are the most important thing. If your eyes are wondering around all over the place, that’s extremely discomforting to people who are watching that video. So be confident when you’re in front of a camera, be confident to look into that camera as if you’re looking into somebody else’s eyes. Keep those eyes really solid.
David: Yes, I almost do something, when I’m doing it, I imagine that avatar. I imagine as I’m doing that presentation, I’ll float up out of my head and I’ll imagine that avatar is the camera. I talk to the camera as though it’s a person. So I’ll sit there and that comes across and you get that feeling in the videos. That’s a really good point too.
Question: On the subject of notes, if you are going to use notes in front of a camera, make sure those notes are either adjacent to, right behind or even blue tacked on to the camera itself so that your eyes don’t have far to move to see those notes. If your eyes have to move a big distance away, the viewer knows what’s happening, they know you’re reading something. That says something about you that’s often not very good.
David: A good example of that as well, we had a client who ended up getting a teleprompter in a cheap recording studio and ended up reading the teleprompter. Sometimes if you write too in depth notes, it comes across very scripted. You have to practice that script so many times that you know it inside and out. Really you probably don’t need your notes because it is coming across naturally anyway, or you just need to use bullet points and be confident and know your material inside out to go a little more off the cuff.
Question: A lot of the time the videos that you shoot with you in the frame will often be introductory elements of the video which flow onto a ScreenFlow video. So that introductory part of the video where you’re in the frame may only be one or two minutes. You should be able to get that down where you can perform those one or two minutes very seamlessly, very naturally.
I will actually do the practicing in front of a mirror. So I’m looking at myself, I’m confident. I can see how I come across so that when I actually get in front of the camera, I’m not worried about how I’m looking. I’ve already seen how I look, I’ve practiced in front of the mirror and I can go in front of the camera.
David: That’s something Ben has taught me, aside from audio recording tips. He’s really good as far as the practice. I’ll go through and do it over and over and that’s why Ben says, as many takes as it needs to be. Especially that podcast interviews video which I referenced earlier, most of the time no one’s in the room when I do it and it’s ok. It’s easy for me to just sit there and do it over and over. But when Ben is in the room, he’ll just say, breathe, relax, get your stance back. Let’s do it again, let’s do it again, after fifty takes we get a pretty good one.
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