Presentation Training for Researchers
PresentBetter Master Class
Improving your on camera presence
10+ Years, 500+ Workshops, & 10,000+ Researchers Trained:
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Lights, Camera, (in)Action
Unfortunately that's what happens too often when we replace a class or conference audience with a professional camera and bright lights. It's not that you don't know how to present effectively, it's jsut that you are unsure how to do it without an audience.
This video series is designed to fix that. I co-produced it with McGill TeleStudio with support from the McGill Office of Sustainability, both former clients. The intended audience is university professors working in the professionl studio at McGill, but anyone wanting to get better being on camera will find benefit here.
The series is entirley video-based. I've made some short remarks to keep you pointed in the right direction, but really any direction will do. Watch one, watch them all, you'll learn some of the things I teach in programs with researchers all over the world, and you can do it at your own pace, according to your interest in your own time.
Normally this is a paid program, but because McGill covered the production costs, I'm sharing it here as a special thank you to all the people who have supported my work so far and to some new ones who may be experiencing my work for the first time.
We grow strongest when we grow together.
Let's get started. . .
Table of Contents
Intro
Let's get 1 thing straight:
Being in video is hard:
Bright lights +
no audience =
hard to be engaging.
1. Tips and tricks
2. Mindset shifts
This series covers both. Have fun, and don't ever hesitate to reach out if you have questions or just want to chat. Here's the link to write a question or schedule a time.
PART 1: The mindset shift needed when we move to being on camera without an audience
Immersion 1
What is it we hope will happen for our audience when we are speaking? The answer is simple: fully listen and engage with the ideas we are sharing. This full listening, this full engagement is when learning happens because the audience is not only both listening and thinking about what is being said, but you are creating a shared moment that also includes feeling and being present with what is being shared. These shared moments are the high points of presentations and classroom teaching. And for this to happen, the speaker needs to be fully present, which is hard on camera with no audience. This video shares 3 tricks to help you get there.
Immersion 2
This continues the exploration of immersion with a quick story from one of my classes and reflection on what I am thinking about and what I actually see when I present. Doing these things will help you become more dynamic, more present, and more authentic. And when you become more present and more authentic, you'll be able to have a powerful, impactful presence even though you are on camera with no live audience.
PART 2: Critical Components to consider
Chairs, Podium and Voice
Let's get to some basics: how you choose to sit or stand fundamentally impacts how you sound. The video unpacks the impact of sitting vs. standing and the confection between how we sit and how we stand and our voice. These decisions you make form the foundation of your presence and set the base range for your voice. The first 5 minutes reviews options, the final 2 minutes explores more deeply the why behind the impact of our posture.
Activating Emotion for More Dynamic Vocals
In the studio, we lose our audience and with no audience we tend to drift into a vocal range that is overly dominated by trying to be professional. We slip into lecturing and lose the emotional richness of the more dynamic tones that naturally occur with a live audience. This video shares a strategy to bring that back by doing a mapping exercise to make us more aware of being emotionally dynamic which is the foundation of being more vocally dynamic.
Rethinking the Timing of the Stories we Tell
Traditionally most people use stories as examples and illustrations. And we share them after explaining the lesson we want people to learn. Flip the script and 2 great things happen: 1) you will become more dynamic earlier in your video when it matters more; 2) the story itself will be more effective as the audience will be more curious about what is going to happen. In this video I share a specific example and unpack why this happens.
Bonus Material:
More Effective Teleprompter
Using teleprompters can be helpful, but it can also instantly make us less vocally dynamic and less powerful. This video reviews 3 keys to optimize teleprompter use. They are the choices we make about how to scroll the information (paragraphs vs. chunks; passive vs. active), the style of the writing being read (formal written vs. more naturally conversational) and how our eyes move as we read (fixating on text vs. natural scanning).
Video Self-Review
Self-video review is a lot less painful and a lot more effective when you do it with this plan. And the plan I share in this video is one of the most effective. Here's the quick outline:
1. Only review a 30 second clip
2. Watch and listen as 2 separate exercises
3. Be very specific in finding 1 thing you want to do more and 1 thing you want to do less.
Repeat this process 3 or 4 times and you will dramatically improve your video presence.