From Stage Fright to Spotlight: Transform Your On-Camera Confidence (Episode 181)

Chris Schwager: [00:00:00] Welcome to the DIY Video for Professionals podcast where we take ordinary people out of the audience and make them look and sound like stars. Well, that's what I got to do recently. I'm

Chris, the head of DIY Video Production here at Ridge Films and your podcast host. Just recently, Ez Khan from Humescope got me to speak at his recruitment masterclass event.

Chris Schwager: I was very, very happy with it. And he asked me, what would you like? to do. And I said, you know what, man, I've been speaking, I've been presenter training for 20 years and I have never done it live. I'd love to do it live. And so we got that opportunity. I got to bring Kat my talent out of the audience, plucked her out and we, the audience got to see her from not knowing what she was doing.

Chris Schwager: To reading from a teleprompter with the confidence and with all the right tone and all the right method behind it. And it's a really great, wonderful transformation to see. So I encourage you to witness this because it's very rare that. I unpack on camera training for people in this level of detail. So it's really, really great episode.

Chris Schwager: Also stick around to the end because there's a whole bunch of really great tips that will get you thinking differently about how you use video in your business. There's a lot of ways you can differentiate through the world of video. And so you can check those out at the end and enjoy the show. Please join me in welcoming the stage,

Chris Swagger, also known as Shwag.

Chris Schwager: Well written by chat GPT humbled to be here. I'm curious to know what's stopping you from making videos. Cause I know that there's probably a lot of people in the room that are like, Oh, that's that thing I've got to do. It's on my to do list. What's stopping you?

Chris Schwager: Judgment, negative comments, shit video. Yeah, cool, cool. What else? What else? Cringe of watching yourself back. Yeah. What else? That's a couple performance, bad quality, time management. Yeah. Editing. Scripting. Yeah, not knowing who you're talking to. In the next 60 minutes, I'm going to revolutionize the way you think about one element, and that is performance.

Chris Schwager: The way that you show up is not always the way the camera sees you. Your brain is lying to you. The camera is not. That's the mantra. The brain is lying to you. Oh, I think I sound and look like this. The camera. Shows you something else and it's a shock most of the time. Oh my God. Do I really sound and look like that?

Chris Schwager: No, but it's takes an incremental amount of time just to kind of get used to it. Right? If I have you guys in a plane automatically, you're ready to jump out of the thing. You've got the chute on. And nobody's giving you any instructions. They're like, go! You're gonna go, what the hell am I doing? You're gonna need some training, some guidance.

Chris Schwager: Here's where the cord is, at least, right? This is how you land. On camera training, which I've been doing for 15 years, training people just like you to present like a pro, to read from a teleprompter and not sound like a pro. Shit. I'm here to make you not suck. Right? So, and, and the reality is the people that I see suck.

Chris Schwager: Okay. Let's, let's call it for what it is. All right. And if we acknowledge that and call it and keep it out in the open right now, then we can get on and proactively go to fix it. People talk a lot about being authentic. I've heard a little bit. By virtue of you being in front of the camera for the first time, in front of the lights, the director going nitpicking, the makeup artist doing their thing, whatever the situation is, by virtue of you being in that situation for the first time, is your authentic self.

Chris Schwager: So what are we trying to do? Make you not suck. Get you comfortable so that you can repeat this process and make it like a muscle memory, right? So it doesn't burden your day. You guys aren't video producers. You're not meant to be a video production company. So don't try and take on all of that burden.

Chris Schwager: Take incremental steps, acknowledging that there are a whole bunch of different things to consider. And this guy is probably a representative of Now, what's happening with this guy? He's sunburned. Yeah, that's the obvious one. What else? What else? Deplacement. I beg your pardon? He's lost a placement. Yeah, yeah.

Chris Schwager: We could argue that he's trying to get his message organized. Yes, he's had a pretty sunburned weekend. He doesn't know how to frame. He doesn't know how to get himself a decent [00:05:00] background. All right. He is out of his depth. All right. And so, The idea is to get some structure back into the madness of video, okay?

Chris Schwager: Because there is scripting, messaging on camera presence. Video recording, the lighting, the sound, the framing. Can I, should I go on the background, the editing, the distribution, dah, dah, dah, There's like 120 bloody things that make up this. And we just need to kind of narrow it down. And really this session is just going to focus on the on camera training, on camera presence.

Chris Schwager: So the world first is that I've been doing it for 15 years, but not done it in a live situation. before. And in one hour, one and a half hours, you are, you are free of the confusion of the things that are holding you back from performing. And that's what you're going to get. But you've got to stand here with me and help me guide you through it.

Chris Schwager: I want to pep you up. Okay, we want to take confusion and we want to, we turn it into simplification and to clarity. Okay. This is what our business does. We're a video production company. We've been around for 22 years. We're taking people from crappy to great in a very short period of time. Okay. Taking a lot of that back break out of, Oh, I'm going to buy some gear.

Chris Schwager: Ted's camera shop said I should get this ring light. And this DSLR camera, and we know this from real case studies of people, be coming to us going, I tried it. And it didn't work. I threw that bloody thing across the room. I have no idea what I'm doing. Help me, please. And it's changing their life. And I know that sounds like a big, grandiose kind of statement, but when you're frustrated to the point where you have no option and you're flustered and it's taking you away from your business and what you do.

Chris Schwager: Is that life changing? She's organized. She has one button switch and she goes, records her videos, goes on podcasts, guests on podcasts, records her social media videos, does her course content. Tara's got a, a kid in her Sydney office. Same thing. You know, just, just do it. You got that immediacy, that frequency, right?

Chris Schwager: Just a little bit about me and where I came from. So I've had a journey, a life of like since about five years of age. This is my first wedding that I did back in the 1980s. Speeding ahead from my teenage years, me and my business partner at the time are running like headless chooks to sales meetings going, not winning.

Chris Schwager: deals and wasting a shitload of our week. So in 2018, we called it. That's it. No more face to face meetings. We're going to go all on zoom. And back in 2018, zoom wasn't that big a deal, right? So there's a bit of process building to get people to kind of like comply with that, but we did it. And then the next question we had for ourselves is why do we look so shit on this crappy webcam?

Chris Schwager: It's not a good image for a video company showing up with like the printer and the door in the background and the lighting doing whatever it needs to do. So we started engineering a desktop video studio which enables this kind of one button push, lights, camera sound, teleprompter, all there ready to go.

Chris Schwager: Overnight, we were just more efficient. We were just doing things far quicker because we weren't traveling. And then in 2023 from a accidental drowning in my brother in law's pool that I would have been really bloody disappointed in my life if I'd left my wife and my kids and what I'd actually achieved from a personal and business perspective.

Chris Schwager: For me this and getting one of you People up for You're on camera training is all about changing shit up. We've got a bookkeeper, her name is Pat, little woman from Eastern Suburbs and we were in BNI for a long time as a networking group. And she came to me one day and she said, I go into these networking situations and I try and pitch what I do for a living as a bookkeeper.

Chris Schwager: And I spend about five minutes chitchatting, through it, and they just leave confused. I need something, I need to straighten this out, right? And so, she, she got us to do a little personal profile video, a 30 second video, said who she is, what she does, how she helps. in under 30 seconds. And she told the whole five minutes now condensed in a micro video touch point that she has on her website, on her LinkedIn, on her about page, on her social media, [00:10:00] diversified across multiple platforms, ready to go.

Chris Schwager: One 1, 500 investment, boom. Leveraged for years. And today the script that we're going to be using is Pat Murphy's personal profile video because I couldn't find a recruitment one after going to the bookkeeper. Okay, so that's what we're going to be rehearsing today. Cat! Come on down. Give her a round of applause.

Chris Schwager: This is the visual for everybody. I need a, I need a clapper operator and I need a teleprompter operator. Who wants to be my teleprompter operator? so much. And the clapper board operator. Go on then, come on up and you want to come up and sit here for us? Excellent. Thank you. So this is the camera here.

Chris Schwager: That's it. Something like that. Come, come forward. Okay. So, so I'm not going to give you too much information right now. Okay. You're going to trust me for the next. 40, 50 minutes. Yeah. Very good. So in any filming environment, you'll get a mark on the floor. And so the camera stays in the right position. I don't have to do any camera operating, the sound, the lights and everything else are all focused on her.

Chris Schwager: So they'll probably put a little mark on the floor for you. That's what the coffee cup is. Okay. Cause I don't have gaffer tape. So come forward and stand on the mark. So you're going to face that way. Okay. With that background. What a great background. That's all you guys. Can you see this? Can you see what's happening here?

Chris Schwager: It's a little teleprompter app for the iPhone. Super, super easy. It means that she can just read her lines, not have to think about anything. Pretty straightforward. Yeah. Cool. Cool. Ready to go? I'm a bit nervous, but yeah. Bit nervous. That's right where I want you to be. Great. Very good. Okay. So here we go.

Chris Schwager: Rolling. One take one.

Chris Schwager: And action. Hi, I'm Pat from Behind the Scenes Accounts. I'm a virtual bookkeeper who works with you using MyObs0. With behind the scenes accounts, you get a qualified professional who speaks the language of an accountant to translate important information between you, your account, and the tax office. If you're looking for more than just a bookkeeper, then give me a call.

Chris Schwager: Cut.

Chris Schwager: Bloody good. Now, let's give you an example here of a good and bad experience and we'll kind of figure out why. If I'm a doorman at a hotel. You're ready for a horny weekend away with your partner, you take this great trip away, you rock up, you've been, you've got the porters taking your bags, you come out of the car and the guy at the door's had a shit day versus this, hello Tara, welcome to the hotel, you're here with your husband I see, come on through, what's the, what's the distinct difference in that scenario?

Chris Schwager: The Okay, what's the, let's talk about the non, the non verbal. Yeah, yeah. What a, what a joyous thing, right? So simple, costs nothing. Smile, lights up the room. The first thing that people are denied or denying themselves of when they're focused on reading from a teleprompter for the first time is the smile, right?

Chris Schwager: Because the director just said, Hey, read that. And the lights for the first time, they're not. They're not fully sure of what, what they're doing there. So it's very serious. Just try not to mess up the lines. That's kind of the idea, right? I'm just getting you to connect and create the micro touch points of communication that your audience is desiring from you.

Chris Schwager: Not your boring website anymore, by the way, right? The human face, the visual elements that show the nuances of the eyes and the mouth from you communicating to the persona. Was it Clive, right? You're not getting that very well through text, okay? Through your spammy LinkedIn emails, through your emails.

Chris Schwager: It's not, it's not getting through. You're playing the big numbers game. How many people, how many of you have received a personalized video brochure in the post and you open it up and, hello Tara? Alright, just for you. How many have received that? Zero. Why not? When I send those video brochures, people talk about it.

Chris Schwager: Now mate, I don't know. Earlier, Johnny just going, I took videos of that thing and everybody saw it and it was like everywhere. You got to start thinking about how you innovate with video, right? So it's like, yes, you got to at least just get to first base and then how do you get creative with it? Comms over creativity, right?

Chris Schwager: Communication beats creativity. Get your communication right. Understand what you're trying to say in [00:15:00] your message and how you can refine five minutes or whatever it might be into 30 seconds because that's all you really need to do because it's just that bit of introductory video that you need people to hear.

Chris Schwager: Just give them a little snip. Don't give them five minutes. They haven't got five minutes. Attention is scarce. Attention is so scarce. Even now we're building TikTok behavior. We're not even talking about seconds. We're talking about milliseconds. See what I'm saying? The flick, stopping that thumb from doing that.

Chris Schwager: That's your goal, right? Okay. Now there's different scales of what we're talking about here. We're talking about a very attention deficit or audience. You know, you really got to get in there tight, but if you're sending a personalized video to someone who you may have already warmed up in a sales process, Hey, slow it down, baby, slow it down.

Chris Schwager: It's okay. Put, put, Do a minute. Hey, Johnny, I know we had a sales meeting. The proposal was sent. You didn't go for it, but that's cool. Love to re engage you because it's been several months since we've had a chat. Why don't you just go ahead and scan the QR code I've got inside the video and we can, we can hook up a meeting either way.

Chris Schwager: Thanks so much, Johnny. Imagine getting that super exciting. It's personalized and it's getting an emotional reaction from you guys. It's getting emotional reaction. It's not just this big spammy thing that went to everybody. Hey, this is our company profile. You know, it's getting very, very personalized, very specific.

Chris Schwager: So back to our on camera training, Kat, come on up. What did you feel? I felt nervous. I felt underprepared and I felt like I couldn't read fast enough. Turn around and tell the audience. Yeah. I felt underprepared. I was nervous and I felt like I couldn't read fast enough. You couldn't read fast enough. Yeah.

Chris Schwager: All right. So it's getting familiar. Okay, so there's this feeling attached to this. Everybody close your eyes for a second. You're in your kitchen. You go to the fridge. You see a lemon. You take the lemon out. You close the fridge door. You grab yourself a knife. You cut that lemon into half. You cut that lemon into quarters.

Chris Schwager: You now have four wedges. You put one of those wedges in your mouth. Open your eyes.

Chris Schwager: What did you feel? Who smelt? You smelt it? And tasted it? Anyone's saliva glands start working? Right. So your imagination, the unconscious mind and the conscious mind playing tricks and if there's a nervousness in the belly and a shuddering, shuddering hands and boggled mind, that is 100 percent what we need cat to be right now.

Chris Schwager: If she's comfortable and confident, I've got my shit together, it's okay, then she's not a great candidate for on camera training, but she's out of a comfort zone. That's exactly how she's going to improve with guidance. Of course, it's exactly how she's going to improve. So Kat, it's a couple of things before we get, and you're pretty good on this, but I need you to be better.

Chris Schwager: Here it is, right? So every sentence has a comma and a full stop agreed. It looks like this. Maybe there's more than one a comma and it's a full stop. On the comma, we're upward inflecting and on the full stop, we're going down to a full stop. Why? It gives you time to breathe and then it stops and stops.

Chris Schwager: Very good. I wish you sounded like Nicki Minaj. Yeah, very good. Yeah, very good. Who's most important person? Not Kat. I love you, Kat. Even though we've known each other. It's the audience. And that human brain of that audience member needs to be spoken to in a way that is clear. Otherwise it's confused. And what happens with confusion?

Chris Schwager: They're out of there. Their brain is shutting down to conserve calories. that animal instinct. I'm out because it hasn't, cat hasn't delivered that script in a way that their brain is accustomed to their brain is used to. So it's a compelling reason to not read a video script in the first place. But if she doesn't, she's going to go on for five minutes.

Chris Schwager: So now we've got a conundrum, right? We've got to get 30 seconds of video from from Kat, not Pat, and not suck and sound real so that the human brain interprets it. And that's great. Smooth sailing. They're in, they're out. She's done a video. The person's consumed the video, moving on. [00:20:00] And that's the trick.

Chris Schwager: And if she gets this, she can repeat this process for every video that she does for the future. She can load up her script, load up a teleprompter, put a piece of paper next to the lens, whatever she needs to do, she can read it and know how she should upward inflect and downward inflect. Upward inflect.

Chris Schwager: Downward inflect. Right. And so where did Kat, Oh, this is a hard one because Kat, who's, who's a muso in the, in the audience? Understand high notes and low notes. Yeah. This is a keyboard of a piano. High notes on the right, low notes on the bottom. Yeah. Yeah. Where's Kat? And it's a hard one, but yeah, generally that's why I had it preloaded, but she came in strong.

Chris Schwager: She came in real strong, right? She's hi, I'm Pat. Like she was, she was coming in hot. Most people are like, hi, I'm Pat Murphy from behind the scenes accounts and I can, right? So we're in the middle of the keyboard. We want to be playing with entire keyboard, right? Low notes, low notes, low notes, and high notes!

Chris Schwager: Ah, high! Right? Do you start low in your introductions? Hi, I'm Kat. Does that sound interesting? Okay. So it's hi, I'm Kat. What a difference, right? Here's our script. We've identified the punctuation now. So Kat, you can actually go through this now. So down to accounts, up to myob, up to zero, up down to desktop.

Chris Schwager: Yeah, you got it. Have a crack. Hi, I'm Pat from behind the scenes accounts. I'm a virtual bookkeeper who keeps working with you using myob. See you around. Zazu, or your desktop. I'll prepare and launch your best Chase status, pay staff, and manage your accounts. With behind the scenes accounts, you get a qualified professional who speaks the language of an accountant.

Chris Schwager: To translate important information between you, your accountant, and the tax office. If you're looking for more than just a bookkeeper, then give me a call. Yay! Who agrees that was better? It was slow, she took her time, but it was better, wasn't it? What a difference that made! You can do that too. Please do.

Chris Schwager: You will be pleasing. Rottie, don't sit down. Told you you have to work for those movie tickets. All right. Okay, so we're running a bit slow. Now, why is speed important? How long did that go for, roughly? Let's call it 40 seconds, right? Why am I getting you to speed up? So that I don't lose people's attention and interest.

Chris Schwager: Yeah, good, good. And let's go back to the old, who's the most important person? The viewer, right? If they're hearing, hi, I'm Pat from behind the scenes accounts and blah, blah, blah, right? Get the fuck on with it, right? Get on with it, get on with it, get on with it, right? The thing is, the thing that you've got to remember when you pour your heart and soul and energy into these scripts is they still don't give a shit as much as you do.

Chris Schwager: Alrighty? That's the thing you've got to remember. That they won't hear every word like you've written every word. Oh, I think I'll take that out and put that in. That's not quite, they're not going to, they're not going to hear it like you're reading it. They're just going to hear the vibration of it.

Chris Schwager: They're going to hear the intent behind it. Yeah, so give it to them quick because their time is precious, right? Let's give it another crack. Ramp it up, baby. Hi, I'm Pat from Behind the Scenes Accounts. I'm a virtual bookkeeper who works with you using MyOpps, ZRL, Zazu, or your desktop. I prepare and launch your baths, chase debtors, pay staff, and manage your accounts.

Chris Schwager: With behind the scenes accounts, you get a qualified professional who speaks the language of an accountant to translate important information between you, your accountant, and the tax office. If you're looking for more than just a bookkeeper, then give me a call. Yeah, pretty good, right? Amazing. Amazing.

Chris Schwager: The thing you've got to understand is the commas and full stops need to be used sparingly. But they are your guide. They are your guide. You haven't got any commas in your sentence? Put some in before you deliver it. Cause that'll get you triggered so that you can upward inflect and really start using the whole dynamic range of that keyboard in the way that the human ear is interpreting it.

Chris Schwager: Now, what we do to add another layer of realism. Okay. This whole exercise is about getting Kat to read effortlessly, no matter what script we put in front of Kat and for her to do it as a repeatable [00:25:00] process, no matter what. What, what time of day it is. Had someone the other day say to me, Oh, it just, you know, I had a crappy morning and I got on there and I didn't, you know, and all the excuses, right?

Chris Schwager: And it's like, well, this process is all about getting you into a frame of. Mind that enables you to repeat the process morning noon or night no matter what happens And I always use this analogy of coming out here on stage and performing with people It's very similar to similar things Kat's got a an agenda to please her audience at the start and the finish of this video.

Chris Schwager: She's smiling

Chris Schwager: Okay, door, door person, positive first impression. And it's my belief that the emotional connection that the audience is making with Cat is based on the start and the finish of that video. That's where the emotional decision. Okay, so Cat's respectfully saying thank you for clicking play. In a non verbal way, going through the script, and at the end, Thank you for spending 30 seconds with me.

Chris Schwager: The non verbal, the 90 percent of the way that you're communicating to your market is non verbal. So I say, we talk so much, I talk a lot. I know that I'm talking way more, I'd love to include you in, but I can't stop myself! I love it so much, right? And yet I know that, As part of my communication, my hands, the way that I'm engaging and looking at all of you guys, hopefully trying to get to every single person, it's part of the process of making sure that you stay with me throughout this.

Chris Schwager: So as a second layer, so the first layer is commas and full stops and smiling, all that speed and all that sort of wonderful stuff. That's the first layer of someone going, I can't pick it. Is she reading or not? Can't pick it. So the second layer, just to smooth all this off, is we're going to emphasize more than the rest.

Chris Schwager: The three highlighted yellow words. They don't exist next to a comma or full stop because we already have emphasis on those words, don't we? I'm a bookkeeper, right? Virtual, you're going to push outward, project outward now. I'm a virtual. I'm a virtual, probably because virtual, back eight years ago when this was recorded, by the way, it's an old script.

Chris Schwager: It's so old. Virtual is going to push out. And keep it away from the commas and full stops, which you've done. So just let's run that. Just I'm a, where you go? I'm a virtual, I'm a virtual bookkeeper, I'm a virtual bookkeeper. Yeah, good. That'll do. And moving down to translate, to translate important information.

Chris Schwager: Bigger, unimportant. To translate important information. Getting there, right? Can you hear it? Okay. Moving on. If you're looking for. If you're looking for more than just a bookkeeper. Hear it? Good, right? How cool is this? My agenda is to get Kat to a really kick ass take within a very short period of time and then show you guys the before and afters because Kat might not believe what's happening to her.

Chris Schwager: Yeah. I can't hear the. Yeah, right. And it is like spinning plates for Kat, right? It's a lot loaded into that brain. Okay. Bye. But it's methodical. Remember I said right at the start, it's a process, it's a process, it's a process. All of this is just getting things lined up one at a time and executing it.

Chris Schwager: This is one element of lots of different things going on with video production. Just one element. She's not even writing the script. She's just performing. One tiny little element. Look at all the detail we've had to put in to make Kat look and sound like a star. And you're going to do the real one this time.

Chris Schwager: Ah, no problem. And action. Hi, I'm Pat from Behind the Scenes Accounts. I'm a virtual bookkeeper who works with you using MyOpps, Xero, Zazu, or your desktop. I prepare and launch your best chase status, pay staff, and manage your accounts. With Behind the Scenes Accounts, you get a qualified professional who speaks the language of an accountant to translate important information between you, your accountant, and the tax office.

Chris Schwager: If you're looking for more than just a bookkeeper, then give me a call. Yes! Okay, very fast. And What did you think of the last take? Better. Better? Very fast. Yeah, well you try to race against the teleprompter, okay? So usually in the studio, if you come and film with me, I just control the teleprompter's speed for you.

Chris Schwager: So you have autonomy over your performance. The teleprompter will go at the speed that you're reading, because I'm controlling it. So she won't have to worry about it. Videographers, like if you go to a little videographer's shoot, they'll put an iPad in the teleprompter and they'll get automatic play and they'll kind of walk away.

Chris Schwager: And then you're up, it's up to you to do it like three times. And try and calibrate it so that the speed's right. Not into it. Help the talent. I always love to help you guys just [00:30:00] focus on your performance. You should have the instinct to be able to know what's fast and slow. And as you progress as a presenter into something a little bit more advanced, you know how to dial, when to dial up fast and when to use slow.

Chris Schwager: Just so you know, a little tip. Fast on fact, slow on value. You know, I'm

Chris from Rituals. How you going? Done. Push it aside. It's not, it's not that interesting for you, right? It's a nicety. Before you go, in the next 60 minutes, I'm going to give you massive amounts of value, right? It's completely different.

Chris Schwager: You got it? That's how you differentiate fact and value, fast and slow. Here's Pat. Who wants to Pat? Finally, after all this chat about the little bookkeeper. This is eight years old, this video. So it's probably on the cusp, but let's have a listen to Pat. Hi, I'm Pat from Behind the Scenes Accounts, and I'm a virtual bookkeeper who works with you and MYOB, Xero, Sasu, or your desktop.

Chris Schwager: I'll prepare and lodge your best, chase your debtors, pay your staff, and manage your accounts. With behind the scenes accounts you get a qualified professional who speaks the language of an accountant to translate important information between you, your accountant, and the tax office. So if you're looking for more than just a bookkeeper, then give me a call.

Chris Schwager: And there's Pat. And what Pat's doing is perception. It's serving some sort of greater perception. I'm just trying to guide her to something that doesn't suck as much. We're missing information and whatnot. We're fidgeting and doing all sorts of stuff. In the first take, in the second take, she's got that message out far quicker.

Chris Schwager: A little bit handy. A little bit too much on the Talladega Knights, Will Ferrell. What do I do with my hands? But, but, you know, that's, that's a progression and we'd work on that, right? I had a financial planner. In the studio, we did the script, we did the on camera training, came back, we did the filming, we did several takes, got to the end and I was like, man, I'm ready to sign off.

Chris Schwager: Check this out, have a look again. It's 90 percent of the way there. It was like, I've been doing this for a long time. What am I missing? And then I realized he was, he was rigid and it sounded great. It looked great. He was rigid. He didn't move. Ah, hello. I'm so and so from financial services. Didn't move.

Chris Schwager: And all I got him to do. to win him over, we said on your yellow words that we've put into the teleprompter, I'm going to get you to do this.

Chris Schwager: Do this. And we did the take, played it back, guess that's the one, mate. Isn't that funny, right? But what's the, what's that little nuance of body language doing? What's it doing? Yeah. Okay. Yes. There's a, there's a long derivative of what that action is actually saying. It's communicating to the audience.

Chris Schwager: It's a one tiny little gesture, but for the audience, the perception, the perception is he's confident. He knows what he's talking about. He's a professional. He's done it a million times before. Cause he's relaxed. He looks loose. Yeah. So that, you see how important body language is now? We're talking about these minor adjustments.

Chris Schwager: People think, Oh, well the frame stops here. It's only like here, here. Why would I even bother need to use my hands? They're not, camera's not even seeing it. Well, yeah, I beat you. You're shaking aren't you? You can see your shoulders moving and your heads moving. And the real transformation in most people is rigid very like numb in the face in their first performance.

Chris Schwager: And on the final take they're moving, their eyebrows are up, they're lifting, their heads shifting and their shoulders are moving. But by virtue of her spinning those plates and doing all that and focusing on speed, her body is increasing in its energy and it's reflexing. It's like a baby when you touch its hands.

Chris Schwager: Same, same type of thing in cat. Probably not aware of that, but you're very handy at the end. But that's what's happening, right? If your brain is wired to Speed, duh, duh, duh, duh. But then the body is reflecting at the end to provide the body language. That's why I only work on smiles. Just smile. That's all I wanna work with you on.

Chris Schwager: I wanna do the rest as auditory because we want the audience that goes, click play, scurries off, grabs a cup of tea, comes back, and has consumed the video. Okay? If she mutes and she puts an animated explainer or something and no, like music, music and visuals, music and titles, it's very hard for that person to go away and come back and understand what the video is all about.

Chris Schwager: Have you guys agreed this has been a massive amount of value? Yes or no? Okay. Good, good, good. Give you this very quickly. Out of context. Oh, hi. Thanks for your email. I'm not in the office at the moment, but don't worry. I've made sure there's someone ready to assist you. Hi, I'm Greg. I'm Greg. Forge your email through to me and I'll be more than happy to help.

Chris Schwager: Otherwise I'll get onto it [00:35:00] as soon as I get back. You just witnessed the first out of office video. Cool right? Think about the ways you can use video. Video brochures, up top, boom. People are getting these from us pre Pre cold, cold, okay? I don't know you, you don't know me, but my assistant called your office and you're the guy, so this is the thing, and I'm gonna follow up, I'm gonna make sure he got it, and I'm gonna see if there's an opportunity there.

Chris Schwager: That's cold, but what we're using it for now is they didn't buy, the proposal went out, they were unresponsive, boom, off they go, personalized video brochure for me, okay? On the right, we've got a usage for video, Charlotte, who's in Melbourne, reached out to me, And I gave her a little voice message and she replied as a video message in LinkedIn, okay, in mail.

Chris Schwager: Copy and paste that, put it in an SMS. Same thing. Beautiful. Again, diversified, right? Do the energy, do the action and you'll get results. On the left hand side, that's the hardware I'm talking about. Getting your, Camera, sound, lights, teleprompter, all organized at a single switch of a button. Go to the site and go check that out cause that will change your life because you'll never have to set up or pack down another piece of equipment again and it's all at your desk, no floor space.

Chris Schwager: Couple of applications for you to just scan those. Riverside for recording virtual HD quality videos for testimonials and things like that. Vidyard for sales, emails, putting videos straight into sales emails, quite good. An Opus Clip if you want to do AI generated editing, so you can kind of feed it, feed the thing, get it to spit out a whole bunch of variations of edits, pick a couple, go upload them, it's all done for you, okay?

Chris Schwager: These are the things that I want you to learn from today. Smile. Use a simple language that people understand, read it quickly, use your inflection and tone on those commas and full stops, and show some bloody excitement! I do have two tickets and I think it's got to go to Kat, because she was just such a There you go, so much.

Chris Schwager: That's it for this episode of DIY Video for Professionals, one of my favorite episodes. I gotta say, I just had so much fun putting that together for you guys. And if you got as much out of it as I did, Please go ahead and share, like, subscribe to this channel. Do you know of someone that sucks on camera?

Chris Schwager: Maybe it's you, maybe it's you I pull out of the audience next time. Either way, thank you so much. And I'll see you on the next episode.