Do you feel anxious when standing or talking in front of a camera?
Your heart beats fast. Your palms get sweaty. Your voice starts to tremble. Suddenly, you can’t remember what to say in front of the camera.
Stage fright is something that everyone experiences and it’s nothing to be ashamed of — I’ve been there! Talking in front of a camera can be intimidating at first. But with constant practice, you’ll surely start creating videos that show your personality.
In the video below, Gideon Shalwick shares camera ninja tricks to help you conquer stage fright.
Here’s another way to look more engaging in front of the camera:
Just remember, your first video may not be great, but the more you practice, the better they’ll become. So get started today!
[VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION]
A Ninja Camera Presence Trick
The first thing is when you’re talking to the camera even into your phone, imagine you’re talking to a friend of yours. That’s a really good tip. If you want to take it to the next notch up to make it even more engaging, imagine you’re talking to someone that you’re in love with. And what that does is it softens your features, it changes your body language, and it makes you naturally more engaging on camera.
Beautiful little tip. It took me years to figure this out. So just imagine someone, a friend of yours you’re chatting to or even better, someone that you’re in love with. And it might feel a bit awkward at the beginning, but trust me it’s going to make a difference.
For the other person watching on the other side, they’re not going to know that you’re in love with them, but you’re going to be much more open. That’s going to change how you look and present yourself on there.
Stop Looking Like a Deer in the Headlights
Now this one is total ninja. I only realized that I was doing this subconsciously and I only analyzed it like about a year ago and realized that’s what I was doing. And this is basically where you shift your awareness into the lens when you’re speaking.
So, have you ever had a conversation with someone and you’re looking them in the eye and they are even looking you in the eye and you realized they’re not quite there? You’re telling them something about your day and you realized there’s something else going on in their head. They are looking at you but something else going on, you can just tell right? You’ve experienced this, right?
So, we do this when we create videos as well. We look into the lens but there’s something else going on in our heads. We’re talking and talking and it’s called the deer in headlights effect. And sometimes you watch videos and the person is looking into the lens, yes but it’s like, “Today, we’re going to talk about this other strategy.” And you can just tell there’s no connection.
So what happens there is that person when they are speaking, their awareness is inside their head about what they want to talk about. That’s where their awareness is. You can try this yourself. Like I can shift my awareness if I close my eyes, I can imagine, I can put my awareness on my hand. I can shift my awareness to my hand. I can imagine my awareness now on my hand. Now I can shift my awareness onto my computer over here and I can shift my awareness on to the audience.
Now in the same way when you’re creating a video, you can shift your awareness away from your head into the lens. Makes a huge difference. And this works with public speaking as well by the way. My awareness I can shift it to this person here right now do you feel different now that I’m talking to you? It’s a little bit different because I’m actually looking at you right into your eyes. And my awareness is not anywhere else it’s right into your eyes right now, does it feel different compared to otherwise? So it makes a difference, where you shift your awareness and it works the same on camera.
