an exercise to get comfortable on camera

(and find a format that’s right for you)

(a mostly unrelated photo of me in a hotel room in Athens, Georgia)

I often get emails from my viewers, telling me they like my videos and want to know what advice I can give them for making outlines and scripts for recording.

Then I have to break the bad news to them: I don’t use outlines or scripts.

I have tried over the years, and it’s just not for me. I get too focused on saying the words exactly right versus focusing on conveying my points effectively. Filming takes at least an hour longer than normal and the final product is stilted in my opinion.

But maybe you aren’t someone who can just talk and talk and talk with only some articles pulled up on your computer or facts written down for reference. Maybe an outline or a solid script is what you need to shine and be confident in what you are speaking about.

Here is an easy exercise you can do to not only find what format is best for you, but also become just a bit more comfortable talking to the lens.

I call it the Three Videos exercise.

I want you to think of a story. Something that happened to you in the last year maybe. Maybe this is a story you have told anyone who will listen, maybe you have told no one because you are embarrassed. It doesn't matter because this will not be posted (unless you want to). It can be about getting turned down for a promotion against a duck or tripping off a curb or a customer that called you a loser for forgetting their extra pickles. So long as you feel you know the story well.

Now write it down. The whole thing. Not just the interesting parts but all of it. It helps to write like you are sending this in an email to someone. This is your script.

Now set that aside. Write down just the main points, a roadmap. How did it start? How did it end? When did you know you were going to throw the game-winning pass before you did? This is your outline.

Now you are going to set up your phone or your camera or Samsung Smart TV that for some reason has a camera and you are going to record three separate videos.

One using the script.

One with your outline to just keep you on track but where you fill in the gaps.

And one where you don’t use either and only tell the story to the camera.

You can watch these all back once you're done, but I recommend waiting for at least an hour or even till the following day. Your eyes and ears will be fresher and this will help stave off boredom of hearing your story so much. (not saying your story is boring but trust me once you watch it over and over again it will become boring to you, this is a normal reality of the content creator experience)

You will probably be shocked at what you see. You may think your eyes look unfocused when watching the Script test, or you may see how you take on the persona of a reader at the library. Maybe the outline looks clunky or maybe you are more confident in having a roadmap you can veer off of whenever you want. Maybe you forgot details in the no-notes test but you now realize those details slowed your story down.

This exercise is to help you find a format you like, but also to give you an excuse to talk to the camera without the thought that people will eventually see it. Maybe you will decide one of these videos is perfect, so you decide to edit it and then upload. That’s great! But if you decide these are best to live on your computer, that is completely fine.

You could also tweak this method to fit your desired style of content. Want to make tech reviews? Make three versions about the same camera. Movies reviews? Same thing.

Lifestyle content or vlogs? Play around a bit. You could rigidly plan out your day based on what you want to film with included shot lists, or you can have a vague plan, or even just spend the day recording B-Roll then sit down at the end and tell the story of your day(basically what I do for my event reviews because my audience likes to see me more than vlog footage).

Maybe you don’t like the first test results. Pick a different story or topic and give it another go!

(this was originally published to my Medium blog in 2022)