Lauren Bateman shares how to look confident on camera even when you're nervous. Show up consistently, make small mistakes on purpose to seem human, and use animated gestures and eye contact with the lens. Most people need 30 to 50 videos before it actually feels natural.
Being on camera is not easy. So I'm going to share with you some tips to help it look a little bit more effortless and give you some ideas on how you can look better on film. Now, I used to hate being on film, actually. I used to hate getting up in front of people. I don't know if you guys remember when you were younger, you had to do book reports, and that was, like, the worst thing for me to do would be to get up in front of people and. And make a presentation on something. That's basically what being in front of the camera like this is. You are doing a presentation to a bunch of strangers, and inside the back of your head, you're wondering, are these people going to hate me? Are they going to make fun of me? All right, do I look fat? How's my hair look? Those are all the things we worry about when we put ourselves on camera. Now, while it takes time for those things to go away, my biggest tip that I can give you is to be consistent and show up, all right? Showing up and checking off the box helps build confidence. When I made my first YouTube videos, they were horrible. I didn't really edit them, so I left in a lot of mistakes, and I said a lot of the wrong words, and sometimes I would say the wrong diagram, and I'd be like, I'm so sorry, guys. I made a mistake. And you know what? People realized that that made me human, and it actually made people like me more. A lot of YouTubers are out there trying to get the perfect take and the perfect setup, and it takes some of the human, human out of it, all right? People want to know that they're interacting with a real person. So leave those mistakes in. Don't be afraid to laugh at yourself and just be like, hey, guys, you know what? I screwed up. I misspoke. But here's what I really meant to say. Bottom line is that you showed up, you've got your content done, and you're out here trying to help people be better in their life. You get a lot of confidence by doing something. Confidence comes from being comfortable. And the first time you get in front of a camera, you're really uncomfortable. You know, what do I do with my hands? You know, where do I look? And here's a tip for you guys. If you are talking to a camera, look right at the camera hole, okay? You can tell the difference of when I'm looking directly at the camera versus when I'm looking at the screen. See how my eyes shift so I'm Looking at the screen now I'm looking at the camera. So talk to the camera like, like it's a person. It's very weird in the beginning, all right, I felt very, very awkward talking to my phone in my first YouTube videos. All right, no one's there. We're talking to an inanimate object. But you start realizing that, you know, the camera can be your friend and you should talk to the camera like it is your friend. Because people always tell me, they're like, lauren, I feel like I'm in the room with you. And that's because I talk to the camera as if it is the other person. So the more you do this, the easier it's going to get. The more comfortable you will be on camera and the more confident you will look. Now a tip for being on camera, especially on something like YouTube. You can see here. One, I'm Italian, but two, I move my hands a lot and there's a lot of animation, A lot of time, content creators just kind of sit there and they look really dull. And if you mute the volume on your videos and it looks kind of boring, and that means there's probably not enough energy in your videos. And again, that's something that's going to come out more with your personality. That energy will start coming out that I'm a pretty animated person anyway, but I wasn't very animated in my first videos and that started to come out more as I became more comfortable being on camera. But watch your videos, put them on you. Do you look excited? All right, Are you getting people excited about your content? Because if you're just sitting there and you're talking monotone, people are going to get bored. Alright? So you want to make sure as you build that confidence and you get more comfortable, that more of your personality and energy comes out and goes into the camera. Remember, the only person who's going to be paying your bills is you. So people are going to say mean things, people are going to say stupid things, but you really got to put those behind you and focus on checking off the boxes. I'm going to get my content done this week and every week I got to get one long form video out and onto my YouTube channel. And when you start checking off that box, becomes easier to do the next one and even easier to do the next one. Alright? It takes about 30, 40 to 50 videos to really start getting comfortable on camera. So get out there, check the boxes, build that confidence, become more confident on camera. And if you're wondering what type of content you should be making when you're just Getting started on YouTube. Go check out that video right over there.
