Ten mistakes people make filming themselves talking to camera

You have spent years explaining difficult things to people in a room. On camera, the same explanation can look and sound less assured than it felt while you gave it. Start by checking the setup.

The natural conclusion is that you are bad at this. You are not. Almost everything wrong with that recording was settled by where the laptop sits, what is behind you and where the lamp is pointing, and all three were settled before you said a word.

The list runs to ten because the job is narrow: one person, at a desk, talking to a camera. Make the subject that specific and ten separate failures fit without padding, each with its own cause and its own fix. None of the ten is a purchase: each is a position, a habit or a phone you already own. The one thing worth buying comes later, and it is optional.

Ten things that go wrong at a desk

1. The lamp on the desk, pointing straight at your face

The light arrives, goes next to the laptop, points at you, and the result is flat, shadowless and faintly startled. Light from directly in front removes every shadow on a face, and shadow is the only thing telling a viewer what shape that face is. Slide the lamp off to one side and above your eyeline until one half of your face is plainly brighter than the other; "Where to put your light when you only have one" walks the whole arc.

2. Sitting with your back to a window

A bright window behind you can leave your face dark, especially with automatic exposure. Try turning the desk so daylight falls from the front or side, or control the window and light your face separately.

3. The camera below eye level

A laptop camera often looks up from the desk. Try raising it to around eye level and sitting back until the framing feels comfortable. Compare the result before settling the position.

4. Using the laptop microphone

Compare the laptop microphone with a phone recording placed nearer your mouth, clear of clothing rustle. Listen to both before choosing. If recording separate sound, clap once at the start to help align the files.

5. Sitting close to a bare wall

Two faults arrive together here and both get blamed on the camera. There is nothing behind you, so the picture flattens and reads as a corridor; and the wall returns your voice to the microphone almost as strongly as your mouth sends it, so the room ends up inside your words. Pull the chair forward, away from the wall, before you change anything else; "Background and atmosphere lights" handles the depth and "Why your video sounds echoey" handles the sound.

6. One take, and no alternative opening

Most people record once, reach the end and accept it, which means the whole video rests on a first sentence delivered before you had warmed up. Openings are the part everybody is worst at on the first attempt and best at on the third, and they also decide whether anybody stays for the rest. Record your opening two or three times, changing the first line each time, then film the body; "Film three hooks, not one" is about exactly this.

7. Reading from a script placed off to one side

A script off to one side can make your eyeline travel away from the lens. Try prompts near the camera, or a teleprompter if you need exact wording, and check whether the delivery still feels like you.

8. One angle only

A second angle gives you another way to cover a trim. With one camera, a cutaway, screen recording, suitable crop or deliberate jump cut can also work. Choose the extra view for what it shows, as well as where it hides a join.

9. Filming a series in a different room each time

Each video is fine on its own. Watched as a set, which is how anybody who begins to trust you will watch them, they look like the work of several different people at several different firms. Choose the room, mark the chair position on the floor with tape, photograph the whole setup once, and use it every time; "Why wardrobe decides whether a series looks like one" makes the same argument about what you are wearing.

10. Spending the opening on your name, title and company

Nobody arrives at a video wanting the introduction. They arrived because something in the first few seconds suggested you were about to say a thing they needed, and your name is not that thing. Start on the subject itself and let your name turn up later, or leave it in the caption where it can be read at no cost to anybody; "How long is a hook?" covers what has to happen before that.

Three checks come first

Start by checking camera height, light on your face and the sound of a short test recording. Choose the changes that solve the faults you can see and hear.

Those three move more than the rest of the list combined, because they repair the framing, the exposure and the sound in a single sitting. After that, tape the floor where the chair goes, photograph the room, and stop re-deciding the arrangement every week.

The one thing worth buying, once the free changes are done, is something to soften the lamp you already own. Not a brighter lamp: a bigger, softer one, or the lamp you have moved closer and put behind something that spreads it. Hardness is set by how large the light looks from where your face is sitting, not by how bright it is, which is why a small bright lamp and a small dim one throw the same hard edge.

Is any of this about confidence?

No. The worry that brings people to a post like this is rarely a worry about cameras. It is the worry of putting something into the world with your name on it that looks less capable than you are.

The setup is not a verdict on you. Learn what works in this room, record the positions and keep a reference image. A repeatable arrangement leaves more attention for the delivery.

Which leaves the work itself, which is the part you were already going to do.

Sources and evidence

What here is established acoustics and optics, and what is our own working order for fixing a desk setup.

What is established. DPA Microphones' explanation of the proximity effect documents that a microphone's tonal response to distance depends on its design and polar pattern, which is why moving a phone close to the mouth changes the sound more than switching which device is recording. The Institute of Professional Sound's account of critical distance sets out that a room's sound depends on the balance of direct to reflected sound rather than on distance alone, the acoustic reason a bare wall close behind a speaker returns their own voice to the microphone. ARRI's own lighting handbook states that the hardness of a shadow is set by the physical size of the light source relative to the subject rather than by its brightness, which is why a small lamp throws a hard edge however bright it is run.

Our method. Raising the camera to eye level, turning the desk so daylight falls in front rather than behind, and recording sound on a phone in a shirt pocket, are this studio's working defaults for a one person desk setup, not universal rules for every room.

References.

• DPA Microphones. Proximity effect in microphones explained. dpamicrophones.com. Distance response depends on microphone design and polar pattern. Manufacturer education.
• Institute of Professional Sound. Critical distance. ips.org.uk. Room sound depends on direct-to-reverberant balance, not distance alone. Technical reference, not peer-reviewed research.
• ARRI (Arnold & Richter Cine Technik); author Bill Holshevnikoff. ARRI Lighting Handbook, Fourth Edition. arri.com. Shadow hardness/softness is set by the physical size of the light source relative to the subject, not its brightness. Used in the two lighting pieces and the talking-to-camera piece. Text dates to 2016 (fourth edition); general lighting theory, not a claim about any specific fixture.