#004 How To NOT Look Like An Amateur On Video
In this live‑broadcast episode of Personal Brand Breakthrough, video‑marketing strategist Sheryl Plouffe walks entrepreneurs through three immediate, low‑cost tactics to make their on‑camera videos look professional instead of amateur. She begins by emphasizing the importance of framing, demonstrating the rule‑of‑thirds and eye‑line placement for both landscape and portrait formats. She then shifts to lighting, urging viewers to prioritize natural light (positioning themselves facing a window) and offering affordable supplemental options such as ring lights, clip‑on LED lights (e.g., PicoGen) and soft‑box kits. Finally, she introduces simple branding overlays—watermarks, lower‑thirds, and text graphics—showing how to add them with tools like Switcher Studio. Throughout, Sheryl engages the live Facebook audience, answers real‑time questions, shares examples of other creators, and repeatedly invites viewers to book strategy calls, subscribe, and share the broadcast. The episode’s core message is that with a few intentional adjustments anyone can elevate their video presence and strengthen their personal brand.
Chapters
Hi everybody. Literally, I am finishing up my— this is strawberry cheesecake. I've decided to treat myself a little earlier in the day than I normally do. So glad you're here for Personal Brand Breakthrough. Let me just put this plate down. And on today's episode, we are going to be talking about some simple video production. How you can today not look like an amateur online. Who doesn't want to look more professional online? So let's get the show started. So really glad that you're here. I'm going to be following on Facebook as well since I broadcast this program live on Facebook. My name is Sheryl Plouffe. I'm a video marketing strategist and And Personal Brand Breakthrough is a show that's really dedicated to social media, to video production, and also to personal branding, hence the name. These are some of the essential things that we can use in order to sell more of our products and services and to build that dream business that we have envisioned for ourselves, right? So my whole thing is I love to help people really leverage video and leverage social media so that they could get their message in front of more people. That's really what I love to do. So today we're really going to be focusing in on simple video production, and what I would love for you to do is I would love for you to— let me just get this off, hang on a second, go back to me. There we go. I would love for you to post your questions. So I'm going to be following along. Make sure that you post your questions in the comments I'm going to be taking a look. I'm going to actually show you my computer screen today so that we can dive into 3 simple things that you can do today so that you don't look like an amateur online. And before I even started the program, I was thinking, this is all stuff that people can do today, which is really exciting. So make sure that you post your questions in the comments. And if you are watching on Facebook, of course, I always appreciate when you share the broadcast out. Maybe you know someone who is an entrepreneur, a coach, a consultant, maybe even an author or real estate professional who could really benefit from using video in their business to get their message out to more people. This program is, yes, broadcast live on Facebook, and then later in the day it also ends up on my YouTube channel. So you can also subscribe to my YouTube channel and then set your notifications, and then you can get the show that way as well. So let's dive in. I want to show you my computer screen so that we can start diving into this right now. 3 simple things that you can do, and let me just go first over to my Facebook page because I just want to make sure if you have any questions. And again, this is really intended to be a place where you can get some free coaching. So, okay, there's my video. Let me just go down and see if I have any questions. Okay, so I'm just gonna be monitoring that. If you have any questions, please let me know. And actually, I'd love to know who's on live right now. I can see We have several live viewers. Please post in the comments if you're watching live where you're watching from. I'd love to know. That'd be great. And I've got— okay, so it's coming in and out. More people are coming in. That's great. So let me know in the comments who's on, please. That would be great so I can put a face to a name. Let's take a look— or a name to a handle, I guess, in this case. So what I want to do, and I'll come back to this occasionally, what I wanted to do for you guys today was really just talk about 3 things that you can do so that you don't really look like an amateur online. And the first thing that I want to show you is, it's to do with framing. Oh, I don't need the free, I don't need the update right now. So hopefully you can see my screen. Yeah, I think you see it. This is a picture of me that I took of myself in my office, and I was creating a training, like a pre-recorded training about this, and this is a snapshot that I took of it. And what I really want you to get from this is is that framing yourself, in other words, how you are positioned within the canvas, if you will, of your video, is really important. So what I'm talking about here is the actual screen part, the part that's visible, that's capturing the background and yourself in the frame. How you position yourself within the frame makes a huge difference, and this is something that's so simple, but yet you can do it today. I see this mistake a lot. Now, the video you're watching right now in this broadcast, I have myself in landscape mode, right? So it's going horizontal. Now, in some cases, like if you're doing Instagram video, for example, you're gonna want it to be portrait, which is vertical, right? So there are— again, we're talking about aspect ratio. That could be an entirely different— we could do a whole episode on that. In fact, I might make a note of that. Aspect ratio, is, is another thing. But whether or not it's portrait or landscape, the rule of thirds still applies. So back to this image that I was showing you, right? You see that yellow line on the, on the frame? My— if you were to draw 3 imaginary lines, so here's the frame and I've got a line that's pretty much like here and a line here. Like, imagine an imaginary line like right there and an imaginary line right about there. In fact, my— see my framing? I should come up a little bit. I want my eye line to be on that top imaginary line that we're drawing on the frame, just like I'm demonstrating in this picture. If you do just that one thing, if you do just that one thing, and that's something that's pretty easy to correct, you could start framing yourself properly today in your videos, and it's going to make a huge, huge difference. Because it, in my opinion, it's the fastest thing that you can do to correct, but it's also kind of a dead giveaway of amateur video when you don't frame yourself properly. So that's how important it is. Let me just go back and just see if we have any comments about that. Okay, okay. And who— you know what, I might not be on the right— just give me one second. I'm gonna go back to my page because maybe I'm not able to see the comments until I go back. So just give me one moment, please. I'm a business manager, so I have to go into my— I have one extra click. I have one extra click. Okay, so if you have questions, please post them. Okay, what is your fear about the— about videos? You know, is there something that you're afraid of doing or unsure of that I can help you with. So let me just go down here. Okay, here we go. I'm seeing the comments now. I didn't see them. From Iowa, very nice. Harvey, nice to have you here. Carol is watching from Cambridge, Ontario. That's great. Marty is watching from Ottawa. Thank you so much, and thank you for the shares. Thank you for the shares, really appreciate that. So now I'm on the right place where I can watch your comments. So what I wanted to say about that is that the framing piece of it is really important. And I would challenge you that now that you know this little trick, and if this is new to you, start watching other— start watching videos, start watching the news, start watching people on TV in the, like, on video. And newscast, I think, would be a really good example. And you'll see that the Law of Third applies no matter whether they're close up to the frame, or far away, or here, or there, it doesn't matter. The rule of thirds is going to hold true. The only exception to that would be like in some cinematic, like in movies, for example, where there's something artistic going on and things like that. I'm talking about direct-to-camera live-action video. In other words, talking head. I don't really like to use that term, but talking head, that's the kind of of thing that I'm talking about here. I actually wanted to show you a few examples of some people who I think do a good job with the framing. Wilco de Craig is a person I wanted to show you, a variety of different people. Wilco doesn't have really a ton of videos, but here's a good example of a guy who, again, you look at the framing in his thumbnails, even you can see that his eyeline is still pretty much in line with that top imaginary third line. You see the, the framing here? He's really utilizing the rule of thirds. And so it's a really good example of that. So let me go into the next piece of this, which is lighting. Lighting is, in my opinion, the best light— again, the best light that you can use, that you can start doing today, is just natural light. It's the sun, right? I actually have a client that I work with at a car dealership, and they're really fortunate because almost the entire dealership are windows— big, huge pane windows. So they have a ton of natural light, which is fantastic. And so when I went in to start working with them, like, this is fantastic because you don't need to even have any additional lights. You've got all the light you need. You need to make an assessment and let me know, actually let me know, let me go into Facebook right now. Let me ask you that question right now. What is your lighting situation? You know, what is your scenario? So let me know in the comments what your scenario is. Do you have windows? You know, are you in a basement? I have another client whose business is in the basement of the home. Well, that's a little bit more challenging because there aren't as many big windows. So we, in that case, did have to bring in some additional light. Although we did do a video once where we positioned ourselves right close to the one window that was in the basement, you know, so that we could try to maximize and capitalize on that. So what is your situation? Take an analysis and look around your spot. Is there a window that you can position yourself in front of and have the light coming toward you so that you can take advantage of natural light. It really doesn't have to be as complicated as you've probably been led to believe, um, but natural light is really gonna be your friend. Now, there are some things that you can do to augment that in certain situations. If you need to go into some, um, softbox lighting, uh, Cowboy Studios, for example, has one. There's a ring light. You can get a great ring light from Stanislas Stellar Lighting— what's this— Stellar Lighting Studios, I think it's called. Lighting systems. Stellar Lighting Systems has ring lights, but you can find all this stuff on Amazon. And then you've got the little Picogen light, which is just a little clip-on. Although recently I've had some trouble finding that Picogen light, but there are many different varieties of those types of clip-on lights, like clip on to your phone. In my case, of course, I specialize in smartphone video production, but you know, you could be using that. So in the case of right now where I'm doing my show, I actually am using the one that's on the left-hand side because in my kitchen I want to be facing you right now, but my light is behind me. So I can't position myself with that light at me right now. When I'm in my office, on the other hand, that's a different thing. I'm facing right at the light and I don't have any artificial light. It's all natural. So, so far we've covered framing. Step number 1, get your framing straight, and it's something really simple to correct. Number 2, utilize natural light as much as possible. It's a great light, especially on a cloudy day. It's, it's even better. You can be outside on a cloudy day and there's not as many shadows, and it's a really great day to go outside and shoot a video, but also utilizing natural light coming toward you. Frame yourself properly, be facing the window, and have that light flooding your face. If you do those two things, you'll be way ahead of the game. Okay, so let me just go back to that. So really, oh, in essence, just look. Okay, so, um, Pat says she's watching from Ontario. Hi Pat, nice to see you. Harvey says, I have windows but not great natural light. So Harvey, I think if you don't have— you might be surprised at how much natural light you may have even if you have a small window. Try it, you know, try positioning your camera in between you and the window, right? Because you want the window facing you, the light coming in at you, and just try it. Do a little test with your camera, with your phone, and Phones are amazing now in that they record HD video, obviously, but there are a lot of function— there's a lot of functionality in the phone from like automatic focus, automatic exposure, like things like that that make video production all that much more simple. I would encourage you to give it a try, and if you want to send me a little sample of it, I'd be happy to look at it and see what, what that looks like. But you might be surprised at how much light comes in from one window. Carol says, "I use the PicoGen when I don't have enough light." And so do I, Carol. I know you, I think, learned that from me, and I appreciate that because it's just so convenient and it's affordable. Harp says, "Hi." She actually says, "Hello, beautiful." Hello, beautiful, back. Nice to see you. So that's that. Now, the other thing that I would bring up for this is that— and actually, let me give you an example of Lloyda Velasquez, who— hope I'm pronouncing it properly. She is one of these kick-butt digital content creators, but I wanted to give you sort of an example of— she does an amazing job with her thumbnails, and that, that could be a whole other episode. But from the standpoint of lighting, like, look at how well-lit she is. We're just looking at the thumbnails here, right? You can see how well-lit she is. She's probably using some artificial light from time to time, but I bet you that a lot of these are natural light and and she's positioning herself in front of windows and things like that. So just to kind of— and also, um, Loida is another good example of the law of thirds, right? Look at the framing that she has herself in all these thumbnails. She does a really good job of that. So the third thing— so what have we covered? Framing, light, natural light, try and use it as much as possible. Those are things you could do today. Those are things you could do today. What I'm really trying to help you to see is that your excuses are no more. Right? Right? I really pride myself on simplification. And for those of you who are new to watching me and have never seen me before, welcome. This is Personal Brand Breakthrough. And this is a show where it's dedicated to insights on marketing, you know, specifically video marketing, video production, social media, and personal branding. Because my opinion is that simple live action, in other words, on-camera, you know, videos where we show ourselves, where we put ourselves out there, where we're visible, which scares a lot of people. I get that. But this is— personal branding is about visibility. It's about putting yourself out there. It's getting your message heard by more people. And that's really the premise of the show. So I pride myself on simplification. Now, there are some other things, and actually the third piece of my equation for today at least is branding. It's video branding. Now, these are things like watermark. In fact, if you look up— see this? See my symbol up here? See my logo up here that's watermarked on this broadcast? That's an example of a watermark. You can add a watermark for a branding element on your videos. You can add— let me give you an— remember at the beginning when I showed you my lower third, my title, it came up? That is a branding element. Notice that my color, my branding color, my magenta color is incorporated in that. So that's another example of a branding element that you can add to your videos. You could do other text overlay. Let me give you an example. So like this one, ask your questions, or I guess it's this way, this way. Ask your questions. Text overlay like that, other images like I showed you earlier. There's— these are just simple branding elements that can really help to tie your brand together and give you a visual identity on your videos that help elevate the perceived value of your videos. Also, in addition to that, it helps you to break out of amateur land. We don't want you— most people that I talk to, they say the reason that they're not doing video is because they do not want to look unprofessional. Right? Who wants to look unprofessional? Leave a comment below. I don't think you're going to get many. Who wants to look professional? Give me a, a yeah. For sure, everybody wants to look professional and put their best foot forward when they're doing video. And branding elements such as the ones I've just mentioned are really simple ways to do that. So right now, let's review. Let's recap what we've talked about, right? We have talked about Framing. Simple framing using the law of thirds. Position your eye line on that top imaginary third line of your frame, whether landscape or portrait. Natural light. Use it as much as possible. It is your friend and it's free. It is something you can utilize today. Third thing are branding elements. A watermark, a lower third key. There's different terms that we can use for that, but I'll use the simple term, a text overlay. On your video. That can be your title, it could be a call to action, it could be many other different elements. So those are the 3 things that you can do today to start breaking free from amateur land and help to really make your videos look fantastic. So I'm gonna open it up to Q&A right now, and let me go over to my Facebook and see if we have any questions. I'm happy to answer. Yes, I know PikaGen, Harvey, is— it's a bit of a weird name, but that's what it's called. There are a whole host of others on Amazon. In fact, later after the broadcast, I'll come through and I'll put some links in there for you of a few different ones. Yeah, Robin asks, what is PikaGen? Well, it's just the name. It's just the brand name of the actual— it's just the brand name of that particular light. But regardless of what brand you choose, what we're really looking for is just a clip-on LED light, and it clips onto your smartphone in this case. So there are a whole variety of them, and you can find them— in fact, I might even have one here. Oh, I don't have one near me. Okay, but, um, they're easy to find, and you can get them on Amazon. But, uh, but that's really basically what it is. So let me look at the— let's see. How do you get your branded name on the live video? Okay, Robin, great question. In this case, I'm using a tool called Switcher Studio. And by using Switcher Studio, it allows me to switch between a bunch of different elements to do this broadcast. And one of the elements I've added is this watermark. So, This is the tool that I'm using for this broadcast. But again, from a strategic standpoint, we'd have to look at your situation. We'd have to look at, Robin, what is it, you know, that you're trying to accomplish? Are you doing a show like me, or are you doing a standalone video? And then if you're doing a standalone video, here are the ways that you can add a watermark like this to your video really simply and efficiently. And what I would say to that too, Robin, is, um, you know, if you wanted to book some time to talk about that in terms of a strategy session, We can talk about what that looks like so that we can get you where you want to go. Calendly.com/cherylplouffe is where you can go to book a free 30-minute strategy call with me if you're serious about video and you're really looking to start adding it to your marketing. You know, that's really the best way to sort of look at how— what is an action plan for me so that I can start using things like watermarks on my videos. And be happy to jump on a free call with you if you're serious about getting started with this. Videos. Um, let's see, Robin says, yep, got 2 of those. Let me just go back over to the messages here. Carol says, definitely want to look professional. Yeah, no doubt. Um, let's see, Pika Jen, yes. So there you go. So I don't think we have any more questions. I hope I didn't miss any. I always go back in afterwards and I look at the comments. And for those of you who are watching live, then you've had an opportunity to ask me questions live, But of course, we have lots of people who come in on the replay. And if you're watching the replay, just type replay in the comments so that I know that you're watching the replay. I go in and then I'm able to follow through with any questions or comments you may have after the fact so that I can answer them for you and be of the highest service to you in answering your questions about simple video production, which is really my specialty. It's funny because, um, you You know, I, although I was on TV for a long, long time and I have talked to the camera for years and years and been in the homes of millions of people across the country over the span of my TV career, video, making videos, the actual technical part of it is actually new to me. I actually taught, I'm self-taught. I taught myself how to do all of this over the span of the last probably 4 or so years. And in that process, I've learned the what to do and what not to do. I've learned how to do it hard and I've learned how to do it easy. And I prefer easy. So really what I now do is help entrepreneurs and, you know, purpose-driven entrepreneurs primarily to use video in this way. Simple, efficient, get it done. Done is better than perfect. And those are the things that I think these branding tips that I've shared with you, or video production tips that I've shared with you today, can help you to do. So I hope you've enjoyed the program today. If you love what I've shared today, please do me a favor and share it with your audience because it helps me to get my message out to more people. And if you want to know more about me, please visit me at CherylPlouffe.com. Connect with me on social media. I'm pretty much everywhere on social media at Cheryl Plouffe. So have a great day, you guys, and I'll talk to you soon. Go out there and build your brand with video. See you later.
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