Case Study
Getting real people to look natural on camera
Most people tense up the second a camera points at them. Trainers, gym owners, athletes, it doesn't matter how confident they are in the room.
Category
Production
Publish date
Stop giving them lines
The fastest way to make someone look stiff is handing them a script and asking them to deliver it.
Give them a topic they already know cold instead. A trainer can talk about form corrections all day. Ask that same trainer to recite a sentence about "our community" and they'll sound like a hostage video.
Roll before you say action
The good stuff usually happens in the thirty seconds before someone thinks you've started, and the thirty seconds after they think you've stopped. We keep rolling through both.
It also helps to give them something to do with their hands. Standing still facing a lens is unnatural. Have them coach, adjust a machine, walk the floor. Movement kills self-consciousness faster than any pep talk.
Ask the question twice
The first answer is the one they rehearsed in their head. The second one is honest. So I ask again, slightly differently, and use the second take almost every time.
Along the same lines, let them be bad for a bit. The first few minutes are usually unusable and that's fine. Budget for it. People settle once they stop feeling watched.
The takeaway
The goal isn't to direct someone into a performance. It's to get out of the way of who they already are, and be rolling when it shows up.
Plans matter. But the adapted version of the plan is usually better than the plan.
