Tips to Make Your Remote Presenters & Videos Look Professional & Polished Without Ever Leaving Home
We’ve all been there: you’re watching a virtual event when suddenly the speaker's WiFi starts to fade in and out, or their lighting is so bad that they appear as a dark silhouette against a backlit window, or (maybe worst of all) the audio is so poor, even the wisest words can't be heard. Just one of these issues is enough to make you want to move on—and chances are you aren’t the only attendee who’s given up and moved on either. So, how do you avoid these easy-to-make mistakes during your own virtual event? Check out this video featuring KE Partner Paige Buck and our go-to videographer K'Dee Miller as they discuss how to make your virtual presentations and events shine.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
Paige Buck: Hi, I’m here with one of our trusted video production companies that we work with for in-person events and she has a special solution for online events. Hi K’Dee.
K’Dee Miller: Hey Paige. Thanks for having me. First of all, before we go into the solution, can we just talk about the last six months? What a whirlwind. You know, if I can look back, my team has done so many different online events right now, and if I have learned anything, I think it’s to say that these are not going away. My clients who are used to seeing maybe 500 to 1,000 people in the seats are now getting like 6,000 logons from across the world. I think when we go back to gathering in person, I think there will always be some sort of component of online hybrid with the actual event. I think it behooves us to really have these kinds of conversations and figure out how to do this well. In March, my clients were sending me a whole bunch of Microsoft Teams footage and Zoom recording footage, and saying “here, can you please make a video out of it?”
There are quite a few problems, like inherent problems with that footage. It is recorded in a variable frame rate so it is completely dependent on the person’s computer like the speed of their computer and the speed of their internet. When I take that footage and throw it into any sort of professional editing software that’s used to being 30 frames per second consistently, then it becomes really glitchy and that footage breaks down so fast and there’s such a limit to what you can really do with it. Second, we’ve all witnessed that moment, that unstable internet connection moment, when somebody’s frame gets frozen in an awkward position or their audio track is completely delayed. We needed to move past that. My team and I put our heads together and said, okay, how can we get away from this compressed footage that we’re all seeing so much of?
So, how we’re doing that is we are sending them a speaker kit that is an in-home studio. It comes…in this box comes with like a few tripods, a light, a nice mic. Honestly, everything can be sourced from Amazon quite simply, and it all runs about $300; a lot of my clients have actually opted to just gift this $300 gift to their speakers because everybody needs an in-home studio right now and those speakers are thrilled. Once they get all that, those goodies from us, we set up an hour-long tech rehearsal and we show them how to appropriately use this material and use this technology. More importantly, we actually show them where to set up their studio.
So, Paige, we’ve seen the Zoom recordings where somebody’s really backlit in the background, and they’ve got a whole lot of shadows on their face, or somebody has overhead lights turned on, which is just like shining spotlights in inappropriate areas. So, we have all of our speakers take us around their homes and we are like, “oh, there.”
Paige: Nice. I also really like that that kit serves in place of a speaker gift, like a bottle of wine or a gift basket. You get to give them something that's super useful right now and is going to facilitate the shoot.
K’Dee: I’ll tell you firsthand, the speakers are stoked. They’re always very surprised and we’re like, “you don’t have to give this back. This is yours to keep.”
Paige: Can you just share, K’Dee’s down and dirty tips for looking your best in your home studio.
K’Dee: Yeah. I’ll give you some easy ones that you don’t even need equipment for. Overhead lights, you always want to turn the overhead lights off. I’ve never seen one that’s flattering. And then secondly, you want to look towards a window where you get some really nice diffused light and actually set yourself up so that diffused light, like I’ve got a window right here is falling across your face and that will be the most flattering light. Another simple one is just to raise your laptop up; mine's on two yoga blocks right now. Raise it up so the camera isn’t coming up to your chin and looking up in an awkward angle.
Paige: Yeah. I know another thing, and that you help people within your shoot, is making sure they’re looking into that camera, not anywhere else on their monitor where the meeting’s taking place.
K’Dee: Yeah, and that just takes practice. Like that is actually quite hard to do because we're also used to looking in the middle of our screen and yet the camera is actually picking us up right here. So, we coach people through that during their filming session. The other thing is all these speakers are so used to being on stage and presenting on stage, you’re presenting to an entire sea and an audience of people and it’s very, very different than this medium. So, we really kind of coach them through the idea of you’re really just talking to one person and you’re bringing them towards you. You’re not coming towards them. You really want to engage with that one audience member. Then that will be universally felt by everybody who's watching.
Paige: So instead of that, like I’m speaking to a stage like as if you’re in the audience, which isn't the experience we want right now, you’re helping them find a way to make like an intimate connection.
K’Dee: Exactly, and it comes off across so much more powerful when it’s just one-on-one this one-on-one connection.
Paige: So, first you take them through how to set up their equipment and the space and find the best space for the shoot to happen in their home. Then you direct them through their presentation or their panel discussion. But then what happens? Like what are they recording on? And then what do they do with it.
K’Dee: Well, then we give them a Dropbox link. They just click on that link, upload the footage, and then my team has everything and all the assets we need in order to produce a high-quality video.
Paige: So from this, just from our shoot today, you’ll take a file that I send you and a file of yours and you are going to splice those together into what everybody will be watching when they see us, but a much more meaningful and delightful looking back and forth than just two little boxes on Zoom.
K’Dee: Exactly.
Paige: We advise our clients to really break things up into snackable bites because our attention spans are so limited. And I know a technique we really like is to have this prerecorded content that you produce in advance along with a live Q&A or discussion that takes place immediately following. How do you help the prerecorded piece feel live?
K’Dee: Yeah, that’s a good question. We have kind of adopted sort of an editing cadence that feels like a normal conversation. Sometimes you have little hiccups or sometimes you have little “ums” in there, but it really does come across as this like a natural conversation between people. So that’s the main thing that we do, and then a lot of our clients are still doing a 10-minute Q&A afterward and we direct the clients or the speakers to be in the same outfit, in the same light, in the same space that we did the prerecords for. So, then it looks like they’re just walking back on stage and having that Q&A.
Paige: I love, and I know you get this all the time, that longevity of that, right? It lives beyond the event and the session and serves as a really excellent piece of marketing.
K’Dee: Exactly. I think it just gives us a little bit more of visual variety. I mean right now, I think we’re all a little tired of being on Zooms and we’re all a little tired of seeing Zooms. So, we have that 1080 high-quality video that we can just mesh and make into whatever we’d like. So, yeah, it becomes a little bit more evergreen.
Paige: So given all of this and what the last six, eight months of this has looked like, what’s your major takeaway?
K’Dee: I think maybe it’s not a major takeaway, but I think the biggest feeling I come walking away from after all this is I’m super humbled by this entire process. I mean, I have been, like I said, our team has been doing a lot of these, probably around 150, all across the globe. I’ve been invited into people’s homes from everywhere. When they say we’re all in this together, I mean, I’ve seen that firsthand. We are definitely all in this together and it’s not always easy and it’s definitely messy. So, I feel super grateful to be able to find a process, to kind of help them clean up just a little bit of that mess and make it a little bit easier. I just feel super grateful that my clients have invited me into their homes.
Paige: I think you’re such an empathetic, thoughtful guide through that process so it really is…we are all in this together.
K’Dee: Thanks, Paige.
Paige: Thank you, K’Dee.
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