How To Talk To A Camera
By James Allpass
Content Playbook #1
This playbook is designed into 3 sections.
1.
Importance and explanation of proper speaking tones, dialogue sequencing, and authenticity signals.
2.
The common mistakes & bottlenecks natural presentation cadence.
3.
The biggest, and easiest secret to completely revamping how you talk to a camera.
This playbook should take no longer than 30 minutes to read, start to finish, and should completely change the way you think about presenting to a camera.
The majority of speaking towards a camera is purely mindset. You already have the skill to talk authentically and with ease to a camera, you just need the right thought focus to step over the barrier that has you stuck.
Section 1
Importance and explanation of proper speaking tones, dialogue sequencing, and authenticity signals.
The biggest needle pusher when it comes to making engaging and converting content is your speaking tone. No one wants to watch a robotic talking head video of someone hard selling a product, and it’s the No. 1 thing that makes people click off the video before the first minute passes.
But why listen to me?
Last year, I flew across the world to work with a select few clients to tackle this exact issue. All it took was the simple techniques you’re about to learn, and the way their audience resonated with their content completely flipped in a positive direction.
And I'll be honest, I’ve worked with clients where not all videos resonate with the audience. They get low views and don’t convert.
But the common trend in every single one of those videos is the speaking tone is robotic, and the retention suffers due to it.
For those unaware, “retention” on YouTube is viewed as a graph, showcasing where viewers retain or exit from videos. With some parts of videos being more entertaining and having spikes. You want to strive for a flat, and high % curve. A good speaking tone is exactly how you achieve that.
We’re operating in an environment now where everyone is trying to sell something.
Every scroll, every video, every ad, there’s always an underlying intention. Because of that, trust is naturally low.
People are constantly filtering what they see, deciding very quickly whether they believe the person in front of them.
Your speaking tone is one of the first things that determines that decision.
Once someone’s trust in you is diminished, through any factor (could be voice, could be controversy, etc), it doesn’t matter how good your offer is, how valuable your insight is, or how strong your message is, it won’t land.
Talking through, instead of into, is the biggest mental rewire in all of your content. There’s a very clear difference between someone who is presenting to a DSLR camera and someone who is communicating through to a viewer, and audiences pick up on it straight away.
That difference shows up most when it comes time to transition into deeper topics or into an offer.
When the delivery is natural, you can speak about more personal or more complex areas of business; things that aren’t always openly discussed, and the audience stays with you. It doesn’t feel like you’re selling to them, it feels like you’re guiding them.
But it’s very difficult to explain taboo, harsh, or difficult topics to a group of people that haven’t already established a natural trust with you.
Section 2
The common mistakes & bottlenecks natural presentation cadence.
There are common mistakes & bottlenecks people run into while trying to present and talk to a camera.
First, it’s that staring into the camera and its lens can feel quite daunting, isolating and foreign to most.
Because there’s a fundamental difference between working on big shoots, with large cameras, crews, and lighting, and sitting down in a room with maybe one other person (if you’re lucky), and talking into a smaller camera.
The level of personable vulnerability you require for the second scenario is vastly different. The talking style is also less produced and more personal, something completely foreign to most people.
Second, what breeds in discomfort is pace.
Most business owners are used to being uncomfortable, and fighting their way out of it. It’s a pillar of entrepreneurship.
But in this scenario, rambling through your talking points like a robot, or someone who doesn’t want to be there, reduces any power in your speech.
The whole situation is a push and pull between fighting against being uncomfortable, but also sitting in your uncertainty and slowing down your presentation in order to relate, control your tone, and fine tune your impact points for each phrase.
Let’s define some of those terms.
Obviously “relating” is appealing to your audience, speaking through to the camera TO them instead of AT them. It’s to make yourself feel authentic and personable to the viewer.
To “control your tone” is to think deeply about what you’re saying in a phrase, and change the tone of your voice to best reflect the subject matter.
You’re not going to be screaming, shouting and energetic while talking about traumatic or hard times in your life.
In the same way you wouldn’t be soft spoken when trying to pitch people on why they should listen to you.
Each sentence requires it’s own unique thought behind how it should be presented best to the audience.
And to “fine tune your impact points for each phrase”, is to think actively about how the inner-workings of a sentence are constructed.
Take the phrase:
“It took me over 4 years to learn every secret in my business, and I’m giving it to you”
Different parts of this phrase have different levels of importance, so robotically reading through each word doesn’t give any weight to what you’re saying.
The parts of this phrase that SHOULD have the most vocal strength are the important facts.
“4 years”, “secret” and “giving it to you” should be said with more inflection to the rest in order to create a punchy, impactful speaking tone.
I’ve talked to many founders that have this naturally in their meetings to big teams, or at conferences, but they forget how imperative it is in a YouTube / content creation atmosphere.
Actively thinking about constructing your vocal tone is going to do more than any other tip I could give you.
The third mistake people run into when speaking to a camera is beating themselves up and getting in a negative mindset around fumbling around words.
The editors you hire, that make your videos what they are, and perfectly trained in cutting together dialogue.
If you mess up a sentence, just start the sentence over.
The most difficult thing is being stuck in a negative feedback loop of failing a paragraph over and over, even when you can say half the paragraph at a time, and an editor can stitch them.
There’s a certain level of pressure most people in front of a camera put on themselves when recording videos, and it’s pressure that instantly leads to all the other presentation techniques falling apart.
Cause I get it, it’s hard to focus on how you relate to the audience and how you’re crafting your phrases when you feel stupid for not being able to get one right.
But all can be fixed in the post-production process, and you maintaining calm and level-headed is how you have a successful recording session.
That’s why I encourage clients to have their favourite drink, whether it’s coffee, tea, whisky, or whatever you enjoy, be in a comfortable environment in a nice chair, relax, feel at home, and record with a stress free environment.
The way you construct your surroundings and your mindset around recording content is crucial in how authentic, calming and personable the final result comes out.
Section 3
The biggest, and easiest secret to completely revamping how you talk to a camera.
The one simple exercise that transforms speaking tone is so simple, you’ll probably hate me.
You’ll probably read it and think, “fuck this guy, that’s so obvious”.
But paired with everything else already talked about, it’s the one mindset shift I’ve seen make a world of difference for creators.
Have someone sit behind the camera, directly behind the camera, and talk to them, not the lens.
And I understand that’s not possible for some people.
So talk past the camera, pretending there’s someone behind it who’s listening. Just one person.
The reason? It’s easy to look into a camera and imagine a crowd of people, but those on the other end don’t see it that way. For them they see one person, you. So it’s vital that you only see them, causing a conversational presence to the video.
The second I sit behind the camera, and ask creators to talk to me, not the camera, the whole atmosphere changes.
And pair this with them already being comfortable, and feeling able to talk slowly, it creates a friendly, genuine, and conversational matter to the video.
This is what viewers latch onto, this is what they relate to, this is what makes them trust, and buy.
The even better way to frame your videos, is to take scripting and video outlines, and convert them into questions that insight value talking points.
For example, instead of writing a full explanation of a secret to your business, instead have someone behind the camera ask you;
“What’s one thing you’d tell yourself 5 years ago, that would completely change an aspect of your business”.
Then have the creator answer that question to someone behind the camera. What you’ve just created is an authentic, powerful, informational driven conversation that converts.