0584 – How To Be An Auto-Cutie 3

2022.08.07– 0584 – How To Be An Auto-Cutie 3

Look at the lens

·        Keep looking the camera lens ‘in the eye’ in the same way as you’d look at someone if they were in the room with you. That doesn’t mean a stare or a glare, but with a natural ease (one of interested, informed involvement) alongside occasional glances at your paper-notes or maybe a colleague or monitor. Not only will this make you look conversational, because you will be emulating the style of face-to-face interaction, it will also help you sound conversational too.

Relax

·        Keep your head, neck, and shoulders relaxed. Let your head move naturally, with small movements up and down left and right so you don’t appear to be staring. Some people look down at a desk script occasionally to keep up the ‘pretence’ of having committed the story to memory. As well as helping you look and feel more natural, it’ll help reduce stress around your neck and shoulders.

·        Smile and gesticulate (within reason!). Obviously, this depends on the context and content of what you’re saying, but don’t be a statue.

·        Consider (with permissions) putting in ‘natural’ pauses or hesitations to make the presentation sound more authentic.

The prompter may be just that, a prompt

·        If you just ‘read the words’ you may come across as inauthentic and disengaged from the actual content. Try and avoid the ‘glazed-over glare’ look.

·        The key is to use the prompter to sound conversational. Again, where allowed by a director, use natural habits we do as we talk to each other face-to-face: look up or down to ‘gather your thoughts’, use those natural instinctive gestures.

·        Don’t necessarily feel as though you have to read every single word. To be clear, on a TV news bulletin you will have to because of timings, fluency and accuracy, but if you have a prompter for a livestream show then you can afford to adlib around the bullet points that are on screen.

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