TJ Walker shows why your voice gets quieter on camera: turn off the lights during playback and you'll hear it drop. He prescribes rehearsing like an infomercial host to reset your natural energy level for TV and larger rooms.
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Welcome to speakcast. This is the one place on the web where you'll find all the information you need on any aspect of speaking. If you have to speak to the news media, give a public speech, talk to clients, customers, even one on one speaking, we have news information and learning tools for you. Television is a cool medium. Now, we've all heard that. Be cool, man. Right? Be cool. You don't want to seem like one of those 1950s preachers, screaming and sweating and all that. It's a cool medium. Well, it's cool because it actually cools you down. Here's the problem. I work with CEOs, politicians, leaders all over the globe. What happens is that light goes on and all of a sudden they kind of shrink up. Well, yes, I'm very excited to be here today. I want to tell you about our new product. Their volume goes way down. Their voice, instead of being conversational and up and down, it becomes more monotone. So what happens is they're cooling people down to the point where they're ice cubes. They're frozen, they're stiff. So if you are going on television, or for that matter giving a speech in front of a larger group, make sure your nerves don't shut you down and make you quiet, reduce your volume. Here's what I do with a lot of clients, and you can even do this with your colleagues at your own workplace, is I'll do a sample interview with someone, or I'll have them stand up and give a speech, videotape it. Then I'll turn the light off, still roll the tape, still roll the camera. And what happens? 99% of the time, the second I turn that light off, I say, how'd that feel? Oh, that went really well. I think I did this and that. And their volume is all of a sudden twice as loud. They didn't even realize it. You have to show them. Once you show them how they're tightening themselves up, lowering their volume, they get much better. Here's something else you may want to try. If you find that you're getting too low in volume, becoming monotone, overdo it. Do a practice session. Pretend you're Crazy Eddie selling stereos. Pretend you're a late night infomercial guru. Now you may think, well, what is he talking about? That sounds cheesy. If you practice at home or your office, no one will see it. Here's what happens though, because I've done this a thousand times with people, they think they're overdoing it. They think they're way over the top. They look at the video and they say, hey, that sounds pretty good. It sounds like me. They sound like themselves. What's happening? Again, you get nervous. You tighten yourselves up by overdoing it. You get your energy level just back to the normal place. So be very, very careful in front of an audience, in front of a TV camera. Don't lose your energy. Don't get flat. Don't cool yourself down to the point where you're ice. Speaking with TJ Walker is brought to you in part by Media Training Worldwide. For all of your media and presentation training needs, go to mediatrainingworldwide.com that's 3wt.
