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How to present in front of a camera: do's and don'ts

  • Act naturally. Use smaller gestures. Assume you'll be in close-up the whole time, because you usually will. Speak in your natural pace, so students can pause, go faster, or replay when the pace is too quick/slow for them.
  • Project energy but don’t get too carried away - big hand gestures, lots of movement, and fidgeting look unprofessional on camera. Enthusiasm catches on. Show your passion with the subject.
  • Pause for a couple seconds after a particularly important point. When you do so, you give your audience an opportunity to pay more attention to this particular part. This is especially important when you ask your audience a question.
  • Make sure your sentences end on a downward inflection versus an upward inflection. How can you tell? If your statement sounds more like a question, you’re doing it wrong.
  • Maintain eye contact in order to come across as a credible source. Looking down, away from the camera, or closing your eyes will make you look shifty and unprofessional.
  • Make chapters in the body of your script. It gives you the opportunity for clean cuts in the middle of the video, so you won't have to do your whole video in one take.
  • Keep continuity in mind. Don’t change your appearance when recording a video. However, you might want to change up your clothing when recording multiple videos for a bigger project with several modules.

Practice makes perfect! Before you push the record button, make sure you practise your text in front of the mirror and in front of a friend or colleague. If you are filming your video in a studio, make sure you practise with an autocue tool like Cue Prompter.

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