Cam Hauser breaks down ALF: Audio, Lighting, Framing. Audio matters most, so kill appliances and add soft surfaces to cut echo. Light your face from a window, position the camera at eye level, and frame tight. Your phone works fine. Good audio alone makes you sound smarter.
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It's actually pretty easy to look amazing on camera, but I bet you didn't realize that everything that you need is probably already in your house. Today's episode is with Cam Hauser. He's a video creator, founder, teacher, and entrepreneur who helps people look great and feel comfortable on camera. Cam recently joined a live call in the Hey Creator community to share his ALF or ALF video production framework. He even managed to get a couple of roasts in on my home video setup. So watch this, apply the lessons, and immediately get better at video.
Let's talk about production. Big question: what camera do I get? Well, it doesn't matter. It's not important. The best camera is the one you have on you. It's very odd that we're carrying around basically a production studio in our pocket these days, but if you have a mobile phone, if that's what you're carrying. There is an Academy Award-winning filmmaker who has a film on Netflix right now filmed on an iPhone 6. MrBeast, the biggest YouTuber in the world, regularly uses iPhone footage. So if you got your camera, that's fine. The other thing is that we don't even need to start with big fancy production. I've got this nice studio, but that's 'cause I teach this stuff. Normal people don't need that. The walk and talk is great. I put a walk and talk on the internet, last week and they have something that's built in interesting about them is that the background changes. But that being said, let's jump into how to get a little more production. I'm going to share a framework called ALF. And if you're my age, you might recognize ALF, an alien who eats cats. It's a sitcom from the '80s. It's terrible, but the acronym is great. Audio, lighting, framing. Let's hit them real quick. Audio. Audio is actually the most important thing, and that's because audio really has a big impact on how people perceive us. There's research that shows that good audio Makes people think you're smarter, you're more likable, and what you're talking about is actually more important. Basic tips: shut the door, y'all. It's an easy one. Turn off your AC if you can. We want to try to make— if you have a really loud appliance or anything like that, let's keep that quiet. One of the easiest ways to get good audio is just to have the surroundings be quiet. Another way to get that is to have soft surfaces. So pillows and blankets and things like that in your room, they absorb sound. So there's less reverb and echo. Everything sounds better if you have soft surfaces in a room. So those are the 3 things for audio. Let's jump into lighting, the L. First thing is that we might have some really cool sculptures or paintings in the background. Don't worry about those. What we want to do is we want to light the face. Eyes are the window to the soul. The face is how you're communicating, and it's this beautiful thing that allows people to feel connected to us, right? Your facial expressions do that. I find it so hard to make good tweets and to write elegantly and to write in a way that feels true to me. But I know how to smile if something makes me feel good. And I know how to give a disinterested, I don't care look at it, or sarcasm through facial expressions, right? If we like the face, that can come through. Facing a window, a great start. Facing a window makes everything look better. Look at how on the left here, when the window's at the side, looks terrible. On the right, direct facing the window, Nice, even, natural light. Another tip is to drape a sheet over the window. It gives us diffuse light, soft light, and that's what we're going for. I don't want to go too deep into that, but another thing is to avoid backlighting. That means if we have a major source of light behind us, we're going to look like we're in a procedural crime drama getting interviewed as a mafia boss. And well, we don't want to have that look. The other thing is that if you have really bright overhead lights, they give us raccoon eyes, which is not something we want. So turn off your overhead lights. If you want to have this setup I have behind me, it's just put a, put a light source there. You can get a basic light from Amazon, buy some gels, everything's fine. Let's get into framing, which is super important. Framing is how we fit in the frame. We want to fill it up. That's the problem here is that this shot here, this guy is not filling up the frame. Okay. What we want to do is we want to have our headspace be really tight. So whenever I get in front of the camera, the first thing I check is my headspace. What is the distance? From the top of my head to the top of the frame. I want it to be really tight. Next up, just be centered. Simple, straightforward, easy to do. The other thing is we want to have the camera at eye level. And the reason we want to have the camera at eye level is that's how we get connection and a sense of trust. It's how we connect with the audience. Here's an example of the camera not being at eye level, where the camera's a little bit too low. She looks like she's looking down at us, like she's condescending to us, like she's a giant telling us that, you know, something that like that, that is not creating a sense of connection, right? If we want people to buy into our trust and our expertise, eye level is where you want things. Backgrounds, the beautiful thing about them is they say things before you even open your mouth. They can suggest professionalism, like this person. The international symbol for I'm a smart person is to have a bookshelf behind you. Makes you look smart. Can't go wrong. This was Lilly Singh back when she was just getting started. This was filming in the back of her closet. It's fun. It's got this vibe that It's true to her. Comic book guy.
Yay!
I'm a dark, serious filmmaker. Everything I say is really important, and I read a lot of philosophers like Kant and Nietzsche. Your background is conveying things before you even open your mouth, which is important if we want to get people to get an understanding of who we are, what we do, and how we can help them. And clean up trash, unlike the people at Game of Thrones said.
Kim, one of the things that I wanted to ask you about my setup— sometimes I feel like I've just got too much going on. At one point, would you say like, hey, Matt, you've probably got a little too much going on? When I really film, it's cropped. A little bit more, but sometimes I feel like, am I over— am I overthinking this? Am I making one of the same mistakes that you tell us not to worry about?
Yeah. So one overarching thing, y'all, is good storytelling, being interesting, being able to convey a good vibe. All of this beats everything else. It's in many ways more important than the camera, the background, anything else. So I would certainly urge that before I would say obsess over your background. For those of us who are kind of new to this, the international symbol for I'm a professional is bokeh, which is a term for a blurry background. And for a lot of people, if they see you have a blurry background, that's enough for them to think that you're a professional. You have a blurry background, so we're great. If your background's too busy, well, the blurriness can actually make that manageable. If your background's not blurry and there's too much activity happening in your background, it can be fairly confusing. So that's my answer to that. It would be, first off, you know, Work on the storytelling, work on feeling good and being yourself on camera, but your background to me looks great. It's straightforward. You've got books. Everything looks good.
