6 Tips: A Stress-Free Guide To Being On Camera
Matt Wilbore, Director of Mattix, on camera for our monthly C4DI interview.
Being on camera can be a nerve-wracking experience for many people, and we understand the long list of challenges our clients feel they tackle when a lens is pointed directly at them.
“What do I say?” “What do I wear?” “How do I sit?” “Do I sit?” “Am I talking too fast?” “Too slow?” “What do I do with my hands?”
The more confident you appear to others, the more confidence they’ll have in you. If you’re trying to promote or raise awareness for a brand, it’s vital you bring your best self.
Below we provide practical tips to help reduce your anxieties and increase your on-camera confidence.
Practice your lines.
Let yourself get comfortable.
Have the crew help meet your needs.
Don’t worry about your hands.
Do some dry runs.
Pick the right interviewers.
Practice your lines.
Not having to improvise means you have one less thing to worry about. If you’re going to be speaking on video, here are some ideas.
If you know the questions you’ll be asked beforehand, think about how you might respond and practice. This means when it’s your time to shine, you spend less time being caught off guard, and more time delivering a much clearer response.
If you don’t know the questions you’ll be hit with, think about what could be asked. Even if you can’t guess exactly what your interviewee will come out with, you might find you’ve managed to come up with responses to similar questions - with just small adjustments needed.
Always feel welcome to make notes or a script to help guide your talking points. Although you won’t be able to have this during the real shoot, you can stop, re-read your lines, and try again until you’re happy with the result.
Practising in front of a mirror, or even doing a test run before the cameras roll, are fantastic ways of preparing yourself; getting you into the flow of the interview.
2. Let yourself get comfortable.
There’s nothing worse than being both uncomfortable and being filmed at the same time.
Wear an outfit that is appropriate for the occasion, but also keeps you relaxed. If you’re nervous as is, putting on clothing you don’t feel at ease in might make you feel more tense.
Sit or stand in a position comfortable for you, facing your interviewee, and see if any other accommodations can be met. Room temperature, position and lighting are all perfectly reasonable considerations and can typically be adjusted to help you out.
Bonus tip: Wearing a jacket, cardigan or other over-clothing is usually recommended if your crew are attaching lavalier microphones (also known as lav mics, lapel mics, body mics or neck mics) to you.
3. Have the crew help meet your needs.
Maybe you struggle to remember large parts of your answers at once, struggle with a speech impediment like a stutter, or aren’t comfortable with the environment you’re in.
Whatever it is, you must communicate this as best you can to the team you’re working with, as they can help you by trying different techniques or methods of structuring the interview.
For example - you might prefer to do a sentence at a time. Assuming a multi-camera (two or more camera) setup is used, sentences can be edited together to sound like one long answer.
Alternatively, your crew may have a teleprompter - a device that sits just above the camera, or wherever you need to look, and has your answers written for you to read. It will scroll down at a comfortable level that matches your reading and speaking speed.
Will Dunn, founder of AG Drive for our C4DI newsletter video.
4. Don’t worry about your hands.
The most common question we get asked when filming clients is: “What do I do with my hands?”
And the answer might be frustratingly simple - it’s whatever you feel comfortable with.
A lot of the time, you’ll probably be filmed chest upwards, so your hands won’t even be visible unless you want them to be.
Talking with your hands is also usually beneficial more than anything, as it conveys a sense of confidence and emotion in the subject you’re focusing on.
Try and think back to what your hands normally do when sat down or stood up. You might not even know seeing as you do it so passively. Try replicate that feeling of blissful ignorance and do your best not to overthink it.
5. Do some dry runs.
Before the cameras roll, act out your scene or run through your interview in a dry run.
This means pretending the cameras are recording, whilst knowing that they aren’t.
Dry-running is an effective strategy used all the time for reducing on-camera anxieties. This is because it allows you to tackle your actions first e.g., your answers, delivery, acting, movement etc., and then you can work on your presence on a recording camera.
It breaks the pressure down into manageable sizes and helps you build up a few skills at once.
If you’re on a time limit, decide the most important parts of the shoot and run through those.
6. Pick the right interviewers.
When you’re readying yourself to be on video, the team behind the camera needs to be just as prepared as the subject on camera - whether that’s you or others.
A friendly, welcoming team of people who are willing to work with you to make the experience as relaxing and pleasant as it can be - and that’s what we offer.
Here at Influence Media, we’re experts at giving you the camera confidence you’ve been looking for.
We’ve worked with hundreds of clients; some with their first time on camera, and some with their tenth, and we’d love to get you started too!
To reach out, get in touch here!
The Influence Team, Tim Goodfellow and Mattix.
