Hello, everyone. Welcome to this video tutorial. Matthew Mann here, video producer
for University Communications, with just a few tips on how to record yourself on
video so that you look and sound your best, whether you're recording on a
mobile device, laptop or desktop computer, or any type of camera. So the first thing
that you want to consider is the space that you're recording in. Make sure that
you choose a space that's quiet, that's free from distraction, and look at the
background to make sure that there's nothing cluttered or busy happening
directly behind you that might distract your audience from the message that
you're trying to deliver. The next thing that you want to consider is the
lighting in the space. So the space I'm recording in right now, there's a nice
wall of windows. It's giving me a nice, even natural light and it's going to give a
good look without a lot of setup involved. You may not have a space like
this where you're recording. You may not have a lot of windows, but even one good
sized window or a couple windows on either side of you is just going to give you
that nice, even lighting. Another thing to mention about the use of natural light
is you want to make sure that you are facing the windows and not with the
windows behind you, because then you are going to be very underexposed and backlit,
and it's not going to look very good. If you don't have natural light, you can
certainly use artificial lighting. Try to use sources that are at about eye level.
So a desk lamp is fine, a table lamp. Try to avoid using overhead lighting like
the recessed lighting that we often have in offices or in homes. As you can see,
it's not a very flattering type of lighting. It creates a lot of heavy
shadows, especially around the eyes, so it's best to look for an alternative. You
want to try to choose a space that probably is a little on the smaller side
and the reason why I say that is because for the acoustics, if you use a larger
room, you're going to have a lot more sound bouncing around at a further distance
and then coming back, creating reverb and echo. When you think about when you walk
into a large hall or a church, it's very echoey. It's because of that sound
bouncing around in that large space so try to choose a smaller room. This room
actually is a little larger than I might recommend, but the thing that's working
in here for me for audio quality is there are a lot of soft surfaces. So the
upholstered furniture, the carpeting on the floor, draperies or fabric blinds
can help absorb some of that sound, give you nice clean audio and that's going
to allow your audience to focus on your message. And that brings me to my final
tip, which has to do with camera placement. So you want to sit about two
to three feet from your device and just a good rule of thumb is if you can reach
out and just about touch your device, that's about the right distance and
that's going to give you a good audio quality because you're sitting closer to
the built-in microphone on your device, in this case a mobile phone, and it's
also going to give you about the right framing. So in terms of framing, you don't
want to have too much headroom above your head. So you notice the way I have
the shot set up. And the other really important thing is making sure to set up
your device at eye level. So often we'll set up a laptop on a desk or on a table,
it's shooting up at us from a low angle. It's not going to be a very flattering
angle and you're just going to end up with a lot of ceiling behind you as opposed
to a nice-looking backdrop. So in this case, all I've done is I've is just set up a
stack of books and I've propped up my phone, and you can do the same thing with
a laptop or any mobile device. And that's going to give a nice flattering angle and
it's going to be more comfortable for you to shoot and look directly into
the camera. And that's another really important point is making sure that
you're looking into the camera throughout your recording. It's often
tempting to look off camera at our screen and you can see when I do that it
appears that I'm looking off camera to the audience that's watching. So the
camera in this case is right on the left side of the screen because I have my
phone set on its side. In the case of a tablet, it's going to be very similar. In the
case of a desktop or laptop computer it's usually in the center of the screen
above the screen. The last thing that I'll mention is you'll notice that I'm
recording this video in the horizontal format and I know that many of us are
used to holding our phone in a vertical orientation and it's often fine to
record a video that way if you're uploading it to certain social platforms
or mobile platforms, but it's not going to work for everything and you can always
crop a horizontal video to vertical if you absolutely need to later. But I would
suggest to record your videos in a horizontal format and that way you can
make that decision after the fact. The most important thing is to just be
comfortable with your message, to do your best to connect
with your audience, and hopefully these tips have been helpful in doing that.