Video Presentation Tips: Add Inflection on Words (Episode 108)

Welcome to the Video Made Simple podcast where we help take the mystery out of video and break through the monotony of day to day communication. I'm your host, Chris Schwager. And if you find people drifting off when you present your script that maybe that's because you're unsure how to read and present your script with some love, baby. So here's a video presentation tip that will get people listening, keep you interesting with a rockstar performance guaranteed to work and it's all about inflection.

0:33
Inflection, what's that? Inflection is the modulation of intonation, or pitch in the voice, and more so on specific words. So, for example, I would pitch up, that would be modulation, it's where you're, if you're familiar with a keyboard or piano keyboard on the little dial on the electric keyboard on the left hand side there, if you bend that more on does that to the sound of the of the keys (pitching sound), that is modulation, we do it unconsciously in our day to day lives.

1:07
And the trick when you're reading a teleprompter or reading a script for the first time is to give it some love, from time to time, because that's the way our ha ha we like it. We as humans, as viewers, recipients of what you're saying we are pretty smart at receiving the information. And so it's your agenda while orchestrating your script to make sure that you hit all those inflection points accurately. Not too many times. But just in specific areas that can really assist in people being able to understand what you're saying.

1:45
Inflection allows you to emphasize key words and phrases along with emotions, and helps convey your exact meaning to the audience. So here's an example with no inflection for instance.

1:58
Welcome to the Video Made Simple podcast where we help take the mystery out of video and break through the monotony of day to day communication versus something with inflection on I'm going to use a couple of the pauses, you'll hear me through the pauses, and the full stop where I'm bending words up. And I'm going to bend that down right at the end. Let's have a listen.

2:17
Welcome to the Video Made Simple podcast where we help take the mystery out of video and break through the monotony of day to day communication. So you can hear quite clearly I would bend up in part of the middle of the script there and in downward inflection at the end. And that indicates to people that that's the end of that sentence.

2:36
Inflection has a big role in subliminally if you like telling people what's coming up what's happening, where the content is going. So it provides structure, and everybody needs that structure. What a lot of people don't realize is just them blurting out in their script on camera is going to be like Bible to the recipient. Well, it's not, you know, you've got to take for granted that they don't care as much as you do about what's written in the script, they don't care about as much as you do, about the way that's presented, or the content, right? So just assume that they really don't care. And if you go with that theory, you know, you can have the best chance at really trying to push this as hard as you can, because it's so important that you get people to listen to you.

3:21
Nowadays, in this current client, use visual cues that can be placed in the script to help the audience understand the intent of what you're saying. So commas and full stops are classic, highlight things in red if you need to capitalize your words, so that you know to push those a little bit harder than the others.

3:38
Now you can't just go and jam this into a paragraph and just expect that it's going to sound right, you've just got to use it sparingly, right. So a sentence would have one comma and one full stop. For instance, sometimes we'd have more, but just use it sparingly. Don't try and emphasize every single word. Otherwise, it's going to sound clunky and really weird. So comments, full stops, capitalization, changing the color of words. These all these tips will help guide you to emphasize those areas and help clarify the message for your audience.

4:05
Pauses can also help with inflection adding dramatic effect and avoiding the uhms and errs and all those filler words. Sometimes they creep into my vocabulary from time to time. We're all guilty of it. And obviously removing those in your delivery is also really, really important.

4:21
People will hang on to your every word and understand your presentation better when you start to orchestrate the inflection properly. It's not what you say or how you say it. It's how people hear it that is ultimately the most important thing.

4:37
If you want more personalized coaching around this then be sure to like, share, and leave a comment and don't forget to subscribe to this channel where we will give you regular Video Made Simple ideas every single week to present your videos like a pro. That's all for this episode. Thanks so much for listening and have a great week.