 So it's not the easiest thing to do when you have to sit by yourself sometimes and actually talk to a device, talk to the camera, and even worse, you have to pay attention to a particular part of that device, which is the lens and look directly into it and actually try and make sense of your thoughts if this is your first time ever trying it. Just remember that it is not an easy task and the fact that you are taking a lot more takes than usual is very normal. Even the pros, the supposed pros of doing it for years actually do make mistakes and tend to take again or retake. So if you see any slight jump cut in a possible video that you're watching, then this could be the reason why there was a jump cut. The person had to retake something or take a thought that they probably didn't say well enough or as well as they wanted to do. So today I'm just freestyling usually, I mean not usually, I'm just freestyling actually on camera without actually putting anything down. But letting you know that in speaking to the camera, there are different ways to get comfortable talking to the camera and the different tricks to get comfortable talking to the camera. There are many schools of thoughts, if I should put it that way, about how to talk to the camera. But essentially you have to find what makes you really, really comfortable. I'm gonna talk about certain devices that you can use, not certain devices, it's actually just one device, which is a teleprompter you can use. Or you go actually really, really manual whereby you just freestyle, which means that you're really good at putting your thoughts together and knowing exactly what you want to say and how you want to say it. Or you go the other way of actually pre-producing whatever you want to talk about and using pointers and steps and memorizing those things and making sure that you talk to the camera and still get everything out there without having to take several takes or hundreds of takes to get exactly what you want. So there's a teleprompter, which I own but I barely use, which is the Parrot Teleprompter, which essentially will give you the means to actually use your phone to write whatever you want to talk about and have it scroll on the screen while you just look directly into the lens and talk. That's one way to go about it. What I find wrong or what I find difficult with that is the less of a natural feel that you get when you're using a teleprompter. No matter how well I write or I try to write in my own voice, the teleprompter doesn't work for me. It feels slightly mechanical and my emotions don't really show when they have to show. So I think teleprompters take a lot of time, which I haven't had the patience to explore to actually use to my own favor, even though I own one. So I think it's the Parrot, I'm not remembering the, I'll find the name and I'll put it on the screen. But yes, there's that one. And another way to go about being able to talk to the camera or to the lens properly is to actually put a sticker or a mark on the lens where you need to look. Just maybe a red sticker, just cut a small piece of red sticker and put it where you need to look. And that would be the reason of where to focus your eyes whenever you're talking to the camera. Now the other part is your thoughts where you need to make sense and talk from start to finish without going off topic and just bouncing here and there. So that part is where the pre-production comes in. What exactly do you want to talk about? So with YouTube, for example, usually when you open up your conversation, you want to tell them who you are, if it's a new channel or if there are new people coming to watch. If you have a very big channel already, then people might already know who you are. You don't need to introduce yourself or what the channel is about. But if it's new, if it's fresh, then it's always good to actually start by introducing yourself and what your channel is and what the channel is about. That's your first thing you need to do is your first chance to actually sell whatever you do before the person switches off or tunes off from your channel. And then you introduce the topic that you are about to talk about on that particular day and what it means to you. So that's step two of putting your thoughts together. And the step three is actually talking about that particular topic. Now, what makes step three the most filling and the most important part is the infusion of personality. So whatever you're going to talk about, whatever story you want to tell, how are you going to present this particular story that people keep watching and listening to it from start to finish? It is that part that is where I would say the juice is. So step three is making sure your thoughts are cohesive, cohesive, the cohesive, cohesive, cohesive. Enough for people to follow. If it's a story you're telling, then you know it needs to follow a certain trend. If it's instructions you're given, you need to know that it follows a certain trend as well, chronological, that's the word. So that is that one. And then there's the other part of talking to the camera where you just freestyle because you don't want to feel hindered by any, you know, unnaturalness. That is what I'm doing at the moment. I'm actually just sitting and talking to the camera. This topic I thought off, but not fully. And I'm just spewing whatever is coming into my mind. And hopefully it doesn't make sense when I look or when I finish and I put it in my editing suite and I see whatever I've recorded. So just remember, I just want you to remember that talking to the camera is not an easy task, especially when you have to set up and record by yourself. You know, it feels weird in the beginning because it's like madness. What the hell am I sitting here and just staring into a camera and talking to myself? Another trick is to imagine talking to someone like, you know, you have FaceTime, you have phones, you can put it there, you know, you're talking to someone. Another trick is to imagine that maybe your phone is that far away from you but you're actually talking to someone about something in the same way you'd be excited to tell the person about whatever it is that you're gossiping about or whatever it is that you want to share with the person. You can imagine talking to someone like that. I don't use that trick because I find that I just want to talk to the device because I know I'm working. So I don't usually have to talk to someone via but these are some of the tricks to talk to the camera and it won't come naturally the first time. It won't come naturally the second time. It won't come naturally the third time. You have to do it over and over and over and making mistakes is part of the learning curve. It's essential. I think it's actually the most important part of learning and you need to make loads and loads of mistakes and find your own comfortable space or comfortable place that when you set up the next time over time, you realize that you can actually just spew whatever is on your mind to the camera. So today in my showing you how YouTubers do stuff, I'm talking about how to talk to the camera and there's no hard and fast rule to talk into the camera. Like I mentioned before, another thing to also do is to recap. Yes, I didn't add that in my previous thing. This is me bouncing ideas off because it's freestyle. It's to recap exactly what you've been talking about. So you either use a teleprompter which you find one which will work for you. They're very affordable ones. The Parallel Teleprompter that I talked about, it comes with an app which helps you to project what you want to talk about onto the screen. There's that, which I don't find very helpful for me. And there's the pre-production and knowing exactly what you want to talk about and memorizing the step-by-step of how you want to tell your story. And there's the last one which I'm doing now which is freestyle, just talking about exactly what you want to talk about, how you want to talk about it. And going with the flow. Either way, none of these steps or ways of talking to the camera is easy. In the end, you have to remember to have personality in there because personality cues people watching is your personality and style that will have somebody relate to you easier than the fanciness of your gadgets or whatever it is. So this is one thing I want to point out today on the vlog. It's okay. And I guess I'll see you again next week with another video. And today I was trying something new with my light and where I'm sitting to talk. So hopefully I do more videos like this and hopefully you do like what you hear and pick something from it. If not, then there's always the part where you can also research further if this doesn't speak to you. But if it does, don't forget to check out some of the videos that I've put out about things to note when you are starting your YouTube and things to do and setting up and everything. There's just a couple of videos you can check out on the screen. In the meantime, my name is Kwame and welcome to you. It's okay if this is your first time here. And adios for now. Stay safe, wash your hands. If you're in Ghana and this quarantine has been lifted, I think you should still live like you're in quarantine. Be vigilant, be safe, be mindful and catch you again on the channel another time. Peace, peace, peace.