How to speak on camera: a guide for company spokespeople

It is a scene that repeats on every corporate shoot: the manager who presents effortlessly to two hundred people freezes when the camera comes on. It is not shyness. Public speaking has a public — nodding faces, laughter, reactions — and in front of a camera there is none of that. The good news is that preparation solves almost all of it.

Before the shoot

• Prepare three messages, not a script. Memorising a text word for word is a recipe for disaster: the moment one sentence goes missing, everything collapses. Three clear ideas let you rephrase on the fly and sound natural.
• Ask for the questions in advance, but do not write out the answers. Knowing the territory is calming; reading it is not.
• Say the ideas out loud the day before. The first time you hear your own explanation it always sounds worse than you expected. Better that happens with the camera off.
• Sleep. Tiredness shows in the eyes and cannot be fixed in the edit.

What clothing works on camera

• Avoid very fine stripes and small checks: they cause an annoying flicker on video (the moiré effect).
• No green if you are shooting against a chroma background, or the person disappears.
• Mid-tone, solid colours rather than pure white or absolute black, which force a choice between blowing out the shirt or darkening the face.
• Watch out for necklaces, bracelets and earrings that make noise: the lapel mic is centimetres away and records everything.
• If the video spans several sessions, note down what you wore. It has to be repeated so everything looks like the same day.

During the shoot

The first thing everyone asks is where to look. The rule: if you are addressing the viewer — a greeting, a direct message — look into the lens. If you are answering an interviewer, look at the person asking and forget the camera; the final edit reads perfectly that way and the gaze looks far more natural.

The rest are details that make the difference:

• Fold the question into your answer. Instead of “five years”, say “we have been working on this project for five years”. The question disappears in the edit, and a bare answer becomes incomprehensible.
• Speak slightly slower than feels necessary. The camera speeds up the perception of pace.
• If you stumble, do not go back to the beginning. Pause for two seconds and retake the full sentence; the editor will cut exactly there.
• Hands forward and visible. Gesturing is fine; hiding them creates stiffness.
• Finish and stay still for two seconds. That tail of silence gives the cut room to breathe.

The three-take technique

Ask to record each block three times. The first one burns off the nerves, the second is usually the keeper, and the third comes out shorter and more confident because you now know what to say. Nobody nails it first time, and knowing there will be another go lowers the tension immediately.

For whoever runs the interview

Ask open questions rather than ones answerable with yes or no. Leave silence after each answer: the best line almost always appears in that uncomfortable second when the person feels they should add something. And do not nod audibly or say “mhm” while recording: it lands in the audio and forces a cut.

About the teleprompter

It is right for institutional messages with text approved word for word, protocol greetings or figures that leave no room for error. It is wrong for testimonials or anything that should sound spontaneous: a reading gaze is noticeable, and what you gain in accuracy you lose in credibility.