Getting in the right mindset

Hey guys, I'm Jonathan Novack. I'm a TV host and a weatherman. You can catch me on ABC ,as well as on Tennis Channel. And, I'm here today to talk to you a little about confidence on camera and connecting with your audience. So let's start off a little bit, talking about the mindset you should get in before you go ahead and put yourself on camera. The way I see this, this is an art form, like a lot of other types of art forms, and the purpose of which is to connect with your audience. So, if you play music, you write songs, a lot of people go out and they want to share that with people. They play out at bars or something like that and it's a form of expression for them to go ahead and then connect with an audience. There's art galleries that have people's artwork up and then there's the poetry nights that people with the jazzy hats get up and do the poetry. Different forms of express in order to go ahead and connect with an audience and this is just one way to do that. So the easiest way to go ahead and do that in front of a camera, which can be very intimidating for a lot of people, is to just be yourself. Seriously, that is the main thing is to be yourself, not try to fit into some kind of mold or fit into some type of parameters of being, you know, I'm going to be a host and fit x-y-z, but just be yourself. Okay, but the problem is a lot of people get up in front of, say, some lights, they get up in front of a mechanical, cold camera and they can't connect with their audience directly because they can't see them and they think they need to fit into something. They become self-conscience. If you can just kind of get into the mindset that I'm just going to be myself, then you're going to be steps ahead of the game in connecting with your audience. You can be pretty much almost guaranteed to connect with them if you can bring a lot of energy and just be yourself in front of the lens, really. So, that's number 1, number 2 and this is what I tell my students when they go into auditions, a lot of students will kind of freeze up and they get in front of a producer or a casting director and it becomes sort of a pressure thing. They feel a lot of pressure and they're not having fun. So, I tell my students, just have fun. If you can be yourself and have fun on camera, 'cause this is your chance to get away from all the stresses of life and just have fun. If you can do that, it's going to come across through the lens and your viewer is going to love it. They are going to see you having fun. They're going to like you for it and they're going to hopefully connect to you as a result and want to come back and see you again for the next web series and the next episode of your web series. So, just think of it like this, if I had you off camera and you were telling me about your day, and you're really excited and maybe something really great happened and you were conversational and you had a lot of energy and you were connecting with me, you were making eye contact and then I put a blindfold on you and I bring up here in front of the camera and you would continue to tell me just in that same way about your day, when I take that blindfold off a lot of people again would kind of freeze up and they would change their attitude. The goal is to take how you were off camera and just bring it here on camera for everybody to see and that's going to be your best bet at connecting with your audience. So, here's a few items that you can do for homework. Let's put them up on the screen. Pay attention to how you are off camera in everyday life, the way you use inflection, the way you hold yourself. Then, record yourself on camera and compare the difference. See if sound the same or if you tend to sound on camera, less natural. Before you hit record, get excited that you're going to be performing on camera, get pumped up and spike that energy up and that's going to help you out, honest. Up next, how to sound more conversational.