We Need to be OK With Not Looking OK on Zoom — For Now
Recently I’ve decided to make it my life’s mission to help people look and sound better on video calls. Mainly because this format is becoming more and more common in my life and I’m getting tired of talking to empty black boxes.
It’s a real novelty when someone turns their camera on, but it almost always comes with an apology for “how bad I look”, which then segues to a conversation about how long its been since your last professional haircut.
But here’s what I’ve discovered — we actually don’t look that bad.
Maybe you need to get better lighting? Turn your desk to face a window.
Maybe you’re looking down and have a double chin? Put your monitor on some books to bring the camera up higher so you can look straight ahead.
In my years in TV, there are countless ways you can tweak a shot to make it look better. Film and television have done a very good job at making people feel like it’s “magic” to make people look good on screen.
It’s not magic. It’s years of skill, practice and knowledge passed down among the industry. In our current creator culture, it’s passing between traditional TV and Youtubers. But now, in the Zoom era, we’re expecting people who have never had to consider aspect ratios or head room or key lighting to suddenly know how to look and sound their best on a video call.
The platforms are deceptively simple and user-friendly, which makes people think the rest is just as easy. And that’s where we’re messing up this opportunity to use this platform to the best of its ability.
I was on a client call recently with an on-air expert who was at her wits end figuring out her TV setup. The odds are stacked against her: the house is small, in her words its messy (I prefer the term “lived in”), she shares bandwidth with her husband and two kids.
She’s committed to the process and proceeded to show me the equipment she purchased on her own to try and improve the quality of her hits. She has two lights, a streaming camera and wireless headphones. Then she showed me a podcast mic and that’s when I realized why so many are struggling.
Technically speaking, podcast mics capture great audio. But they only work if the mic is directly in front of your mouth. Great for audio platforms, but not for TV. Television likes to make things like microphones, lights and cameras invisible. It’s the “magic” of making it feel like your favourite TV host is in the room with you.
I’m sure this client looked up how to get the best audio, and rightfully a bunch of articles showed up with this item. But that doesn’t mean the advice has the added filter of making it look suitable for TV. This way of making television is still very new, so of course the material hasn’t caught up with what people are actually looking for.
Even as an industry vet, I had to stop and really think through how to improve my own shot. So why are we expecting industry outsiders to feel their way around in the dark?
There are things you can to improve the quality of your video calls, but this information is being held in the vault of the minds of TV professionals who either make things too complicated or technical for the average person to understand. It’s slowly getting out and we’re sharing advice on how to amp up production values.
But in the meantime, let’s be a little easy on ourselves. We never expected to spend this much time by ourselves connecting over video.
