Yet my experience is that most people find talking to a video camera makes them feel self conscious, uncomfortable, awkward and anxious. Why should this be the case? After all, if you don't like what has been recorded, it can be deleted.
What you see on the screen is neither remarkable or unusual. It is no more than everyone else sees every time you meet them.
Yet there appears to be a natural aversion to the whole talking to camera experience. It causes mouths to dry, palms to sweat and exaggerated unnatural behaviours to unfold even when the interviewee is a confident and regular public speaker.
In my view the key to gathering natural content is to take the time to just have a chat.
Video content that is recorded during the course of a structured conversation, about a subject that the interviewee knows inside out, helps to remove some of the stress. The most usable content tends to be recorded towards the end of the conversation when the interviewee has relaxed and the questions posed have already been more formally answered.
It also helps if the recording equipment has been chosen for its small size rather than to impress and one accepts that, provided the audio recording is good, then the lighting of the subject can be less than perfect.
This is in part due to my belief that the real power behind video is in its ability to provide visual reference in support of what is being said by the speaker. Without the combination of the two then one might as well use a Podcast that frees the listener's imagination to provide the visual tapestry.
Acquiring visual references to support and reinforce a story can not always be practical but it should be the "Gold Standard" one always tries to achieve. Budgets permitting. ;-)
I recently provided the following testimonial for Sparkol whose software I use. It was filmed and produced by Nick Jones, a young film maker whose work I like.
