How to look good on camera (checklist included)

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You’ve got to look good on camera and that’s all about presence, posture, and preparedness. What I’m going to share with you in this video I’ve used with my clients for years to help them LOOK GOOD on video and when they follow the process – it works.  I’m going to go through each of these steps quickly but if you’d like to get the whole checklist with additional notes, click on the link above and grab the PDF to download or send to your clients. 

How to Prepare for Your Video Shoot

1. Have a Shooting Plan

Confidence in your content comes across clearly on camera.

• You need to have clearly written down shooting plan to organize your shooting objectives for that session.  Oftentimes with business owners we see the “I know my content so well I don’t need to write it down” syndrome. However, when the lights go on and the camera starts recording, you’ll find that your memory works about as well as the Linkedin Mobile app. Take the time to document your shooting plan this will help you transition from video to video faster and shoot more videos in a day.

2. Diet

Coffee belly and gurble guts are embarrassing and can affect if you look good on camera.

• Limit your coffee intake and avoid sugary creamers the day of your shoot. A jittery mouth full of sugar generates a lot of gummy saliva (think about eating Skittles when you were a kid). Saliva gathers in your throat and the corners of mouth causing massive spittle and an irregular speaking rhythm. Drink tea that day.

• Have snacky carbs and fruit on hand. Shooting for a full or half day takes a lot of energy and it’s important to recharge. I like to pack granola bars, fig bars, and bananas to a video shoot.

3. What To Wear On Camera

People who look good on camera often stand out from the background. Wear clothes you feel comfortable in. This will vary depending on your business and your location but here are some things to consider…

• Office space or walls – when shooting in an office we often see browns, blahs, and blank walls. Wear brighter colors to liven up the scene and definitely NOT wear colors that match the office space walls – even if you love the outfit.  

• Outdoors – Shooting outside can cause a variety of issues for audio, lights, and distractions. I’ve actually had people walk right through my set!! If you find yourself shooting video outside you’ll want to be aware of brightness, darkness, and busy streets. Make sure to wear clothes that CONTRACT the environment. A busy shirt against a busy street with trees will just look like noise.

Stripes – Avoid stripes if you can. Stripes cause spatial aliasing an effect that causes different signals to become indistinguishable (or aliases of one another) when sampled. You might be ok if you wear a jacket or a vest over it but in general go light or nix the stripes in general.

4. Voice Warmups

Warm up your voice and lips with vowel exercises. Really use their lips, teeth, and tongue to pronounce all the vowels. This might seem silly at first but shooting videos without lip warm-ups is like tryna crane kick a Kobra Kai without stetching.

• Recite Tongue Twisters with the client to get their brain and mind working together in harmony. The more warmed up you are before beginning to shoot video means the less stumbles and slurring when we’re on video.   

Tips to Look Good on Camera

5. Over Smiling

It’s important to smile the whole time. Today’s video quality is High Def and in some cases 4K. That means that even a non-smile looks like a frown. If you watch TV commercials you’ll notice that the on-screen talent always has a pleasant look on their face. You need to look amiable to appeal to the widest base of clients.  

6. Hands

Knowing where to place your hands is so important so I prep all my clients to have a “home – base.” This is a naturally resting place for your hands. Whether you’re fine with your hands or your hands feel like rocks on camera, a home-base will solve your problem.

• A great home base is above the waistline with all fingers touching like a spider on a mirror.  It’s normal, authoritative, and easy. For some, home-base might be hands clasped behind the back or on the waist. This is fine as long as it looks normal.

• Keep your hands away from the groinular area and never rest your hands below the belt line. You want people focused on your eyes 😉
  

8. Where to Look

To look good on camera, you should always look at the camera when you’re speaking (unless you’re doing an interview0. Memorizing is tough so instead shoot video in bursts – this is The process of shooting small chunks together in small bursts, looking away to remember your lines, bursting again, and so on. You can edit it all together seamlessly afterwards. With bursting you can look at notes and then back to the camera again and your audience will never know.

The key to bursting is to be very punctuated in your movements:

7. Bloopers

When you mess up, restart from the beginning of the sentence or the thought. Do it quickly – don’t dwell on or laugh about mess ups for 1 second longer than you need to or they will steal your whole day.

Mentally, mess-ups can steal your mind too. The more you mess up at a certain word – the more YOU WILL mess up at that word. This has to do with our neural pathways and the way we remember things. Because of this, you need to push through the SCRIPT even when you emss up

Try this –

“Even when you mess up I want you to finish the whole sentence. Once you get through the sentence, you’ll restart.”

This way, you’re reinforcing the whole sentence and you’re more likely to get through it faster.

8. Video Formatting

Imagine watching a sitcom where every week the theme song changed, the actors changed, and the set was different. It probably wouldn’t last too long and the same is true of your videos.

• Consistency creates trust with your audience so make your videos similar to each other. Establish a rhythm for your show that makes shooting video systematic. Your audience will grow faster and you’ll be able to shoot videos faster..
• Think of your format like a skeleton or a checklist for writing content. Follow the same basic check list every time. You’ll notice all my videos follow a format where I ask for subscribers after the first joke. You know what?

Remember that you can get the whole checklist with great detail on my website just click on the link in the box and I’ll send it to you.

Watch the video Below 😉