914 – A new way to make videos: Tom talks Video Eye Contact

Episode 914 – Video Eye Contact
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody! It's Tom here with episode 914 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today, we're going to talk about a massive, massive breakthrough in video eye contact. And you might think, well, I just look into the camera. Well, there's a lot more going on than that I can tell you about in this episode. All right. I hope you didn't miss episode 913. That was the perils of unlimited emails. There's all kinds of programs claiming you can send this stuff out for one fee. Oh, boy. Just stupid stuff. And I tell you about it and it can really hurt you if you go with one of those programs. Now grab a copy of our automation e-book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree and check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com.

[00:01:14] All right, let's get into it. So one of the biggest troubles people have on video is saying everything they mean to say without memorizing it. And when you memorize, this is just like the Toastmasters stuff. If you forget one word, it throws you all off. You got to start over again. We never teach people to memorize stuff, and the other options are to have notes that you can read from. That's fine, but you're not looking into the camera. Now, I do this in my master classes, but I tell people up front I'm working from notes and then that negates that. And then I look back in the camera after I look at my notes and I look right into the lens.

[00:01:58] So that's good. That's okay. Another thing you can do is paste bullet points up near your camera. But you know, it's just your eyes are just slightly off so you can glance at them if their bullet points and then talk into the camera. But if you try to put a whole script up there and read it, your eyes will be just far enough off to make you look beady eyed and shaky and shady and untrustworthy. So this is no good to write it all out. So what I'm saying is, yeah, tell them you're using notes. If it's a longer presentation, use voiceover, which means you're not even seen on the screen. That's another way to get away from eye contact. But you got to have that eye contact. So people believe you and my gorgeous baby blues help people believe in me. All right. It might be unfounded, I don't know. No. It's very founded to believe in me. But. But, you know, the eyes are the windows to the soul or something like that. So? So pasting stuff up under your camera is a way to do it. As long as it's only bullet points and you glance at them and then tell what the bullet points said, you can't. If you start reading it, there's going to be totally obvious. All right. And another thing is the teleprompter.

[00:03:20] Now we have all kinds of teleprompters here that we've been using for years on things when I need to knock out a script and make sure everything is in there. And it's a short script. And so I got a blast through it. And so we have iPad teleprompters that are on a tripod, and the camera is behind it, behind a piece of glass, and the iPad is laying there and reflecting onto the screen, and I'm looking right through the glass. That's what teleprompters are. But I'm a Sag-Aftra member. That's the actor's union. And back in the day, we took extensive classes on reading from teleprompters, where it didn't look like you were reading from a teleprompter. You have to have eye movement and looks, you know, relaxed and and head movement and but you can't go too far because you'll be out of the shot. See? So so it's not easy to read from a teleprompter when they're seeing your face. All right. So so that's a troublesome. And there's all kinds of apps for your cell phones and tablets that do teleprompter stuff. You can put it on your screen. We even have a teleprompter here where it can. It hooks on the top of the screen right where the webcam is, and I can put stuff on there and look through the thing, but all of it is a massive pain in the patootie. Okay. So so something, uh, came up recently.

[00:04:52] Uh, and I haven't thoroughly checked it out, but I've seen some of the samples where it's a program where you can be, uh, kind of in front of your webcam, be reading with your eyes, looking at your script, but then afterwards, in editing, it moves your eyeballs to look at the camera. This is crazy, folks. So still, you can't look like you're deer in the headlights the whole time reading. You know, you need to practice and you have to. You can gesture. You can. You just have to look loosey goosey, uh, like nothing's going on, but you're actually reading. And that takes practice, even with this thing that'll take your eyeballs and stick them towards the camera. It's just a amazing thing there. And another thing I see all the time with people doing zoom meetings is and I got to fight it myself because it's so natural to want to look at the face of the person that's on the screen that you're talking to, or even if it's a big group to look at their faces. But the thing is, is you look beady eyed. Do a test next time. Do just a, you know, by yourself on zoom or somewhere and look at the screen instead of looking at the directly at your webcam, and you'll notice that you look beady eyed. You look shaky, you look like you're not trustworthy. So. And you're not making this eye contact that really connects with people.

[00:06:28] You have to force yourself, even if it's a one on one. I'll glance at their face for reactions to what I say, but then I will force myself to look at the webcam. There's usually a little light up there that tells you where it's at because I mean, on this iMac, you know, it's hidden in a, you know, this tiny little thing in a black, uh, ring around the iMac. You know, I can't really see where it is right now because it's not on. So the the little light tells you where it's at. And then I force myself to look at it. This is why connect with people. Very well if I, if I don't say so myself, or if I say so myself. And this is what you want to do, connect with people. So this program is called v e v e e d.io. It's a complete video editor and I haven't thoroughly checked it out, but that one feature alone was enough to make me say, you know, this weekend I'm going to thoroughly check this program out because I don't, you know, I don't very seldom have to do exact scripts anymore. But if I do, then this is amazing. And if you do, this is triple amazing. Okay, so so check it out video I think you can try it out for free. And then you have to look around. They have a YouTube channel.

[00:07:55] And I had to search around for the one um that talks about the eye contact edit correction. And I'll try to put a link in the show notes for you so you can go directly to that video because it's it's hard to find. Actually, I don't know why because that's one of their biggest. They use that. And the reason I, I even checked them out is because their advertisement showed that function. But then they make the video hard to find on their YouTube channel. I don't know, some people just don't get it. But but this thing is is a big, big breakthrough. And somebody that's been doing video now for 40 plus years, then this is a really thing that can help you. So so make that eye contact. Uh, you know, like I said, there's loads of teleprompters and you can still use the teleprompter app because if you have a long script, it needs to scroll up. You can't fit it all on one screen. So, uh, check out all the teleprompter apps if you're going to do it on your desktop or, or on your cell phone and then check out this program that moves your eye. So it's not so hard for you to connect with people. All right. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Check out my mentor program. GreatinternetmarketingTraining.com and I will catch you on the next episode. Use that eye contact.