Step-by-step Professional Video Preparation Series: How to Speak on Camera

Talking in front of the camera can be intimidating, especially if you’re doing it for the first time. Many people worry that they are going to mess up… and then they actually do! The truth is that rehearsing how to speak improvisationally will help you a lot, but also knowing who your audience is, who you are talking to, and what is your platform, will help you understand the tone and preparation needed. This time, we’d like to keep our tips and explanations on the short side so you can recall them at a moment’s notice. The most important thing is that messing up is normal, film can be cut, and if you’re having fun, so will we!

1. Know your main points – Avoid being scripted

When being filmed on camera, it’s important to have your audience feel like you’re coming across as being genuine. Scripting out what you want in some cases can make your camera performance feel a bit…well…’scripted’. Of course if you have a really good on screen presence, or you’re a professional at being on camera, reading something scripted (from a teleprompter let’s say) can be a piece of cake and the results will be good. Otherwise, for those who aren’t professionals on camera, I find what yields better results is familiarizing yourself with your material, writing down the bullet points you’d like to make, then speaking naturally as if you’re having a conversation with an old friend. 

2. Be Animated.

This one is short and sweet.  When speaking or performing on camera, you’ll get a better final result if you’re animated and full of life. You will be more convincing in your performance, come across as genuine, and be enthusiastic and passionate as your subject matter permits. We like to imagine talking as if people are hearing your information for the very first time. 

3. Remember to smile!

This one is pretty straightforward. It’s been proven many times that smiling opens more doors and helps create positive attitudes in human communication. Of course we must take into consideration the mood that we’re shooting for. In most cases, by default, it’ll be helpful to learn to smile more.

4. Posture is power.

Making sure to maintain good posture is an essential point to embed into your camera performance. It will help greatly with your on-camera presence as a whole. Maintaining a positive body language such as keeping your shoulders relaxed and your back straight, will help you appear more authoritative giving more perceived value to what you are speaking about.

5. Don’t let the fear of making a mistake take away from your performance.

When recording on camera don’t be afraid to make mistakes. The great advantage of recording on camera (when it’s not a live application) is that we can cut out all the mistakes, and just take the best pieces to deliver the most powerful performance. When the time comes and you do make a mistake, or want to rephrase or retake something you’ve said, all you’ll simply need to do is pause… center yourself… backup a bit… and restart from the top of the sentence you were speaking. 

6. Talk SLOWLY and concisely.

Similar to public speaking, there is a natural tendency to speed up and speak too fast while delivering your performance. This can come off as nervous or apologetic for what you are saying. Just remember to slow down. Which helps with our next point as well.

7. Breathe!

This may be the most important point of all. Incorporating conscious breathing into your speaking helps give a natural tempo of delivery, helps define the context of what you are saying, is a marker of time, and helps the listener understand the content better by giving a slight pause to breath. Remembering to breathe while you speak can bring out your humanity, which listeners and viewers will empathize with. Besides helping your message, small breath pauses will help when it comes time to edit the video, creating points to cut in and out of within someone’s speech patterns. These “edit points” help to stitch together the video as a whole. How can we integrate this into our performance? By practicing leaving small pauses in between each one of our sentences and paragraphs. You don’t need a ton of air, just take time to take the air you need to speak. It makes a huge difference!

8. Pretend you’re addressing someone.

It may help when speaking in an interview context or addressing the camera to just pretend like you’re speaking with someone you know, address the camera as if it were a person, emote as if it were a person, like you’re trying to connect with that person through the words you’re speaking.

9. Record yourself on camera to see what needs improvement.

One of the best things you can do is record yourself on camera, then playback the footage so you can see how you look on camera. This allows you to focus on any areas that need improvement as you become acquainted with how you look on camera. More importantly it helps in practicing the content to be said on camera. Almost everyone has a camera right on their phone that they can use to practice their on-screen presence. Use this to your advantage! The more well-practiced you are before your shoot date, the smoother the shoot will go and the better end result you’ll have.

10. Keep hydrated!

Keeping hydrated is one of the best secrets to recording vocals, whether it be singing, or conducting an interview. This will actually allow you to pronounce your words better, and will allow you to speak for longer.