Welcome to the Age of Emotion by Michael Langdon

Author:Michael Langdon [Langdon, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: -
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2018-07-10T16:00:00+00:00

ACTION!

Now that you are familiar with the technical aspects of shooting, let’s get onto what you’re shooting.

Should I use actors?

In pre-production you should have figured out whether your talent is going to be made up of actors or regular people being in front of the camera. Whatever you decide on, it’s important to know the pros and the cons.

Using actors

The benefits of using actors are obvious. Actors will come across great on camera (good ones anyway!). They will also save you time. To give you an example, at Appliances Online we used to use an actual product expert on video who was a trainer on white-goods. He used to get through about eight products in one day of filming, as he had quite a few takes and was generally starting and stopping whenever something didn’t go to plan. A good actor can go through a long script all in one take, and if something doesn’t quite go to plan they can ad lib and look comfortable and professional when doing so. When we replaced our product expert at Appliances Online with professional presenters, we went from filming eight products in one day to fifteen. We thought this would impact our engagement levels as there was reason to believe our viewers would connect more with a real employee as opposed to a paid presenter, but stats proved that not to be the case. It’s possible viewers didn’t even realise the person was an actor.

Using regular people or doing it yourself

If hiring actors is outside your budget and you choose to front the video yourself then there’s a few considerations to take into account. The first one is to practise a few times beforehand so that you look more natural when the actual filming day comes around. Practise in front of other people. When the time comes to film, you are likely to do it in front of a small crew so make sure you’re prepared.

Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. This is easier said than done, but the reality is that professionals themselves sometimes take up to 20 takes to get one sentence right. If this is happening to professionals then it should be happening to you to (although it does happen to the professionals a lot less often)! Don’t get stressed when you stumble on that same sentence for the seventh time. It’s not you being rubbish at presenting, it’s just you being the same as any other human being on the planet. When I’m behind the camera I don’t like saying to my subject, ‘Take a deep breath and relax’, because I feel it only draws attention to the fact that they are a bit nervous. It’s okay (actually it’s expected of you) to be nervous. Just channel those nerves into focusing on delivering the best possible piece to camera you possibly can.

If nerves do get the better of you, I find that some self-deprecating humour usually helps. It may sound a bit counterintuitive, but if you jokingly say that you’re a bit rubbish at presenting it kind of points to the elephant in the room.

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