Hi, this is Teena Hughes. Today I'd like to have a quick chat with you about making videos
where you are talking. I've just watched two different videos from two different people
and I'd like to talk about them with you and just to give you an idea of what happens when
someone else is watching your video. The first video was from a lady who had taken a video
of herself and was reading from a clipboard that was lower than eye level. Now it was
an 11 minute video and for those 11 minutes she looked down and read her transcript, and
tried to look up at the at her camera and couldn't do it -- and it was painful. In fact,
it was excruciating, and it was really hard for me to watch it, but I was interested in
her subject matter. There were five videos in a row that she had created, so I did go
ahead and watch three of them.
After that, I just couldn't watch any any more. It was just too hard to watch someone
who wasn't looking at the camera and who had nothing else on the screen to be of any interest
to me to look at, so that was the first type of video that someone can make - looking at
the camera. And if you're going to be looking at the camera, you need to have your eyes
at the same level as the camera, so that you're engaging with the person who's watching you.
And if you feel like you need to read from a transcript, that's not a bad thing, but
there are certainly better ways to do it. What I could suggest is read the sentence
out to yourself before you start filming and just do it one sentence at a time. Read the
sentence, turn the camera on, and then say the sentence.
You can either turn the camera off or clap your hands or do whatever you like and then
look down, read it to yourself and then look up at the camera and read it out loud. Now,
that might sound like a really complicated thing to do, but in reality it's not. All
that's going to happen is that you are going to be looking up at the camera for each sentence,
but looking down away from the camera as you read each line (to yourself) inbetween. So
the bottom line is at the end of this, you'll have a long video that just needs editing.
You're going to edit out all of those bits where you have "looked down" to read what's
coming up, and that's a very simple thing to do. I also have to say 11 minutes is a
long video when someone's just talking to camera with no images or anything else on
the screen.
So I'd think about popping in some photos at different points or having something else
going on on the screen so that your viewer doesn't get bored - because that's absolutely,
definitely what happened to me. That was the first person that I watched today. I just
watched another video of someone else in a similar field talking about a similar topic
and it was a chap and he didn't have his photo on the video at all -- and it was a great
video. He actually had photos that were - I don't know - there was some kind of a lens
put over the filtering he had over the photos -- the photos were of him, but he had for
each sentence that he said, he had just picked out one phrase and made that in big bold letters
on the screen. And that was so great to watch because I was listening.
I was hearing what he was saying, but I was focusing on the one takeaway from each sentence.
As you went onto a new sentence, he would either change the photo in the background
or leave it the same,, and then just put the new words on that with the short form of whatever
it was he was saying. This was so much easier to watch and get involved in. And I just wanted
to mention both of these types of videos to you today so that you can give it some thought.
As much as it's good for you to try and practice to talk in front of a camera, please, please,
please don't be reading straight off a script where your eyes aren't even looking up because
that is no good for the person who's viewing. Because it's not about you, it's not about
you who's making the video, it's about the person who's watching you, so it's the "what's
in it for them", and it's really, really important not to make them get bored too quickly and
to only give them as much information as you need to. That's my little short tip for today.
Have you had any experience of trying to make videos or watching videos where either of
these things have happened? I'd love to hear from you. This is Teena Hughes from TeenaHughesOnline.com.
Talk to you soon. Bye Bye.