13223: Don’t Ever Use This Creepy Descript Feature On-Camera

Raw transcript:

I don’t know how successful uh
descript eye
contact uh filter is I I’m not sure how
useful it is they think it’s really
useful I’m here to tell you that
whatever story you’ve told yourself
about maintaining eye contact with the
camera be careful CU you might be
telling yourself a big fat lie uh uh
let’s talk about that in this episode of
the vo Heroes podcast
I hear a lot of people talk about
maintaining ey contact with the camera
as being something that you need to pay
very close attention to that you need to
have you know the ability to look at the
camera some people say 100% of the time
and never ever ever break eye contact
with your audience you can’t think about
things that may have happened in the
past or uh you know consider something
that may happen in the future you know
we have that human
timeline if you don’t know what I’m
talking about watch this and be ready to
cringe recording from a script is great
because it makes you sound like way more
coherent but the problem is eye contact
if you want to look at the screen you’ve
either got to memorize your script or
get a teleprompter which is not only a
pain but if you’ve ever tried it it’s
like a whole skill it’s not that easy to
do so surprise AI to the rescue with
this new eye contact effect that like
basically rotates your eyeballs in their
sockets so they’re looking at the screen
all the time it sounds creepy and it is
but you’ll be seriously surprised by how
well it actually works so now you can
just record yourself reading off of your
screen and it looks like you’re staring
at the camera but if you turn off the
effect then you can see that I’m not
actually looking at the camera and if
you turn it back on it looks like I am
off on off on off pretty
cool but does
it does it matter that you do that is it
a good thing I don’t think so I don’t
think so I I would be very
careful uh to avoid having constant
contact with the lens and you know I see
people asking about this online all the
time I is this one thing that I’m seeing
I’m trying to make live presentations
more engaging and curious if there is a
feature that makes it look like the
presenter
is staring directly into the camera I’ve
heard that there is some AI that can do
that but I wasn’t sure if this
particular software product ecam where
this was posted ecam live uh that they
have that feature and you know as I
replied is respectfully you’ve told
yourself a story that just simply isn’t
true you’re not going to engage an
audience
more if you consistently
stare at the camera and maintain eye
contact in fact it can get a little
creepy if you never ever break the Gaze
with the camera and even in that video
he wasn’t really looking at the camera
he was looking above the camera and then
back down to the camera but this is
getting this is getting annoying isn’t
it it really is getting creepy so don’t
tell yourself that story it you can as I
said in the in the reply I said you can
safely move this from the list of things
that you need to worry about over to
that list of things that you don’t need
to worry about just just
be uh friendly be
helpful uh be uh uh supportive there’s
no need to stare at somebody to maintain
contact there just isn’t and and whoever
has told you that is I’m going to say it
flatly mistaken
there’s a phrase for this and I’m just
going to warn those of you that might
have kids in the room I’m about to
swear uh that I that I created a long
time ago and has been actually picked up
by other people uh I look at maintaining
constant eye contact with the camera and
not looking off to remember things or
being natural about that I call that I
[ __ ] the
camera you don’t need to do that in fact
within my
community people have have uh taken that
as uh one of the the funny things that
they say about me yeah David says never
if the camera um people within the uh
online marketing Community within the
performance Community uh the writing
Community when they’re doing uh Zoom
sessions and stuff the natural thing to
do is the same thing that you do in
regular
conversations sometimes you look at the
person you’re talking to and sometimes
you don’t sometimes you’re trying to
remember things sometimes you’re trying
to imagine things as I mentioned earlier
don’t make this something don’t first of
all don’t use that filter or any version
of that that any other company might
create just be natural pretend that that
is a person and treat that meaning the
lens and treat them as such speak to one
person but don’t maintain such a
constant gaze that you make them
uncomfortable it doesn’t work and it
doesn’t work work in in uh working with
a camera either so I hope that helps I
hope it saves you a little bit of money
because you don’t have to spend it on
that stupid filter or any version of
that that AI might come up with this is
a
basement uh you know use of AI this is
something to avoid okay but I’d love to
know what you think maybe you disagree
with me I don’t know uh leave me a
comment below on vooh heroes.com which
is where the conversation is is
thoughtful and supportive and nice and
all that sort of thing and you can hit
the like button if you’d like there’s a
button somewhere on the page where you
can like this this uh this thing um and
you can subscribe to the channel and you
can uh hit the notification Bell you can
even share this with some other actor
who’s concerned that uh you know they
need to they need to maintain eye
contact one thing I forgot to talk about
was maintaining eye contact in an
audition you should never be doing that
you should be having an ey line it’s off
camera slightly off camera maybe even
that slightly off camera but certainly
not down the barrel unless you’re doing
a part that’s like a reporter who’s
reading to the screen or your character
is actually doing a zoom session then
you want to import that with your stuff
but you know anyway I said what I’ve
needed to say and I also want to wrap up
with I thank you very much for watching
and for listening I’m David H Lawrence
the 17th and I will see you in the next
episode of the vo Heroes podcast oh

(from YouTube)