Great Nerves-Free Performances from On-Camera Talent: How a Video Production Company Works with Talent

Working in the Vancouver area since 1990, we’ve put together a fair number of corporate videos, safety videos, and TV commercials where the talent on-camera may be company personnel or clients, not professional actors. How do we get them to manage nervousness and be comfortable on-camera?

1. Get them to talk to someone, not the camera: If you’re doing a testimonial or interview, speaking directly into a camera is tough – it doesn’t react or provide any feedback as would happen in a real conversation (so its hard to be conversational), and 9 out of 10 people’s eyes will start to look elsewhere in the room, oftentimes to the camera operator or director (and the latter, for approval). Much better: get a person, preferably one they know, as an interviewer (even if the interviewer’s questions won’t be recorded).
2. A sense of humour & a dose of oxygen: Nerves on edge? Humour relieves tension, and laughter forces talent to breathe and release their diaghragm. Using a high-pressure, serious tone with a dictator-as-director approach never works: that only scares talent into being stiff, wooden, and flat. The director should keep things conversational between the talent and themself in between takes.
3. Lapel mics instead of Booms: Sometimes talent feel a bit less apprehensive when there isn’t a boom mic floating above their head; a lapel mic (whether hidden or not) can be a less prominent and less distracting way of capturing sound from them.
4. Keep crew sizes small: extra bodies = more eyes on the talent: Anyone non-essential to the shoot at hand can wait until the talent is done before coming back into their sight. A good video production company will also keep crew sizes limited when dealing with difficult or emotional subject matter for the talent.
5. Size Does Matter: Less obtrusive equipment can prove less intimidating for talent. Small LEDs take up much less space and rarely ever ‘blind’ the talent with excessive wattage. If the lighting design can limit the wattage and still work effectively, it may be the way to go.
6. Teleprompters are a last resort: Reading a teleprompter naturally takes practice and experience. News anchors make it look easy, but they do it daily. To a non-professional, a teleprompter removes the chore of recalling a memorized script, but it almost always results in a flatter delivery – one that seems read instead of genuine.
7. Repetition and run-throughs before filming: Give your talent the opportunity to practice while having makeup put on, while setting up peripheral items (like monitors and mics). They can try one run-through silently, but get them to do everything else aloud. People sometimes are putt off by the initial sound of their own voice when filming, so it’s a good idea to get them used to actually speaking the text aloud, as they will on-camera. Of course, it goes without saying that preparation and advance time before filming will help substantially.
8. Memorization Tips: Ever seen an actor who looks like their reading an imaginary floating script in front of them? Chances are they really are trying to read the script that's half-buried in their memory. Memorization should happen in groups of thoughts first, rather than word-by-word. Try to find the connection between one sentence and the next – why does that sentence follow that one? What’s the structure of the piece you’re delivering? Breathe at new points of thought or changes – don’t be afraid to pause! Try to highlight which word or words in a sentence you’re going to stress to help convey the thought clearly to the audience.