Please don't put a video of yourself on You Tube or your website if it's not high quality. A substandard piece tells potential clients or reporters that you will not pay attention to detail when you are interviewed or hired.
Here are a few easy-to-correct mistakes I'm seeing:
1. People looking around, coughing, swallowing before talking. How to fix: The camera is rolling, so start talking immediately. Or figure out how to edit the distracting material at the beginning.
2. People sitting or standing in front of bad backgrounds, such as cheap-looking paneling, cluttered desks, and a VHS-TV combo unit. If you're telling the world that you're high-tech enough to create a podcast, a VHS machine sends the opposite message. How to fix: find a one-color (not black or white) wall or book shelves that you can stand about six feet in front of for depth.
3. People sitting or standing in front of a window. This means you're "backlit" in photography terms, and we can't see your face. How to fix: Move so that the light source shines on your face, not on your back.
4. People leaning back in a chair. Aren't you engaged and passionate about the material you have to share? How to fix: Get in job interview mode for this... sitting up straight, weight slightly forward and ready for anything!
5. People looking everywhere but into the camera. This can make you look unfocused or shifty. How to fix: look straight into the camera.
Use these tips as a checklist and make sure your video passes every point before you post it.
Becoming a Better Newsmaker with Soundbite Coach Lorri Allen
Books About the News Media I Recommend
- Be A Newsmaker by Lorri Allen and Linda Swindling
- How to Speak TV: A Self-Defense Manual When You're the News by Clarence Jones
- Speak Like a CEO by Suzanne Bates
- Telling the Story: The National Public Radio Guide to Radio Journalism
- The Crisis Counselor: A Step-by-Step Guide to Managing a Business Crisis by Jeffrey R. Caponigro
About Me
Why this method of communication?
You have to reach people where they want to be reached. And some days we're all just talked out. So we can let our fingers do the dialoguing.
The idea of this blog is to answer questions about the news media from a different perspective. Some media-savvy advice givers will tell you only how to spin, some are too cynical and others just don't have the blend of TV, Radio, Print and PR experience that I've been blessed--or cursed!--to gather.
1 comment:
Have you tried to make a video of yourself using a tiny Flip camera? I faced that challenge. I wanted it in one take so I wouldn't have to edit. It was for youtube.com/columnists - a channel I created for the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. And I was standing on top of the Star-Telegram float in the Arlington, TX Fourth of July Parade. So I didn't have a steady platform. We were moving on down the road. But it was fun. I put Elvis in the headline, got a hundred views and called it a day's work. Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irtZtpmP9gY
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