How to sparkle in a video presentation!

Your business advisor, the media, everyone you ask tells you the same thing. Market yourself on video!

Easy eh … Well … possibly not!

You might have tried, hated the results and given up.

But don’t be disheartened. Remember. TV presenters get a lot of help to look that good!

• A team of editors, producers, directors and writers make sure every line they deliver is brilliant.
• The camera operators and the lighting engineers are being paid big money to make sure they’re picture perfect.
• And – they’ve got professional hair and makeup! 

There’s one other thing. That wasn’t the first take. If the programme was live, they rehearsed. If it wasn’t, they probably had two or three attempts before they got it right.

So, stop doing yourself down. Even without all this help you CAN produce a decent video. It just takes time, thought and a lot of effort.

Try this:

• Work out what you’re going to say. Write a script. Then rewrite it. Treat it like an important pitch – but an informal one!
• Find a nice background. You don’t need a room out of an interiors magazine. The viewer will only see the tiny bit behind your head. A bookshelf in the corner of a messy room, or a rosebush in a scruffy garden, will do fine!
• Light yourself well: Make sure there is nice even light on your face. Just don’t have all the light behind you! 
• Film several takes. Edit the best bits together. If you can take video of what you are talking about to cover the edits, it will look slicker than lots of jump-cuts.
• If you are struggling with the words, just slow down. Great orators speak slowly, enunciating every word carefully!

The key is to keep trying and experimenting. You can’t do this in five minutes and think it will be fine. You have to keep hammering away to make it better. YouTubers and TV presenters make it look easy, like they did it all that off the cuff. But it takes a lot of work to make it look  that easy!

• Tried all this and still unhappy? Contact Rough Cut Media for a free consultation and a helping hand.

(A version of this article first appeared on Linkedin in April 2020. Updated November 2024)