There are an awful lot of webinars out there at the moment because of the Covid-19 lockdowns and people needing something to fill their time.
They vary from those with great content and awful tech standards and presentation to those that are slick as hell, out to grab your money and vacuous and stupid.
It’s unfortunate that some of the worlds best, and most interesting, cinematographers seem to have no idea how to light and film themselves!
Of course their knowledge of sound seems to be less than zero.
Some basics:-
- Don’t shoot with your back to a window, auto gain in a webcam will make you a featureless silhouette
- If your laptop has the webcam at the bottom of the screen then please put the entire laptop on a box or a pile of books. I really don’t want to look up your nose and be reminded of the dreadful nose hair ads on Facebook.
- You may want to think about lighting! it’s what you do for a living and if you can’t light yourself…
- Don’t rock back and forth like some kind of deranged chimp, I can’t believe the number of times I’ve seen people do this.
- Think about the sound. An echoey Dalek is not the best way to communicate. A clip on neck mic cost about $25 from Amazon, or the Logitech gaming mic is also good. It really helps if people can hear you.
- Don’t waffle, get to the point! I’m bored, we are all bored at the moment. We don’t need you adding to the boredom.
- Finally, don’t plug your company, just don’t. Some of us have had to sit through your presentations at conferences and have learned to sit at the end 0f the aisle so we can make a rapid exit as soon as you go into corporate drone mode.
It’s so much easier just to click “leave session” and we do.
This has been a public health warning on behalf of bored camera crews everywhere.