13281: Remove Distractions So Your Audience Sees Only You

Raw transcript:

This isn’t my usual studio space, but it
really is my usual studio space just
with a different background. And how
this background came to be is kind of an
interesting situation. Um, I want to
talk about removing distractions and
questions
from your presentations. And we’ll do
that in this episode of the VO Heroes
podcast.
So, I I’m not expecting any of you to be
clocking this in your personal lives,
but for the last several years, I’ve
used a brick background for all of my
videos, all of my auditions,
uh, all of my podcast episodes. And with
the auditions, just in the last couple
of months,
I’ve had casting directors ask my agent,
ask me if I’m on with them live, is that
real brick behind you?
And uh that question
came up for some reason again and again
and again in the last month. And almost
always it was like, “Wow, that looks
really good. I really like that.” And um
but it struck me that when we’re
presenting our abilities to work, when
we’re presenting our options for an
audition, when we’re presenting uh a
speech, a podcast episode, etc.
What you want people to be paying
attention to is you.
That’s it. What you have to say. Nothing
else. nothing else should be engendered
in their mind. Uh and it appeared that
my brick background was, you know, like
a a point of interest. What I want them
to do is have no other options but
looking at what I chose to do for my
acting and that’s it or listening to the
message that I have in my podcast. Now,
after a while with a podcast episode
that goes on for, I don’t know, 5, 8
minutes, what’s going on behind me isn’t
even a second thought. And it may never
even have occurred to you. You just
looked at it and said, “Oh, this is
where he he records his stuff.” And
that’s great.
But when three or four within a month of
the casting people that I’d worked with
either mentioned it to my agent or to
me, I was like, “Why are they asking
this? And what can I do to remove that
as a distraction?”
Again, honing and refining and pulling
away the stuff that is unnecessary
is going to give them more bandwidth to
just simply concentrate on what I’m
doing. Now, it’s dark. So, uh you know,
maybe it’s not appropriate for comedic
roles and maybe I’ll find another
background to use for that. I don’t
know. But what I am sure of is that
nobody has said, “Hey, is that really a
dark background behind you? Is that a
real dark?” Nobody cares anymore. So,
I’ve been using this for a while for my
audition. Nobody’s asked any other
questions. And
I I bring this up not to be picky or to
um or or to, you know, say you’re
distracting people, but note that when
you try to give people something else
because you’re being generous or because
you’re being creative or because you’re
bored with what you’ve been doing, been
using for a background or whatever. That
may or may not be helping you. likely
wasn’t hurting me. But what I wanted to
do and what I continue to want to do is
to hone and refine my process so that I
do nothing to take their eye off the
ball.
And this can happen in many ways. When
you send out a marketing email, you want
there to be one thing that they do, one
thing, one link, one action that you
want them to take. That’s why when I
send out a marketing email, I don’t send
it out from my normal email account,
which has my signature in it with all
the links to my my uh my my uh reels and
my profiles and my websites.
It’s simply signed. Hope this helps,
David. That’s it.
That leaves them no other option than
either doing nothing if they’re not
interested, which is fine,
or clicking on the link or one of the
links that all go to the same place in
that marketing email. I don’t distract
them with other things to do or
potential things to do, right?
So it’s a concept of um just just you
know realize that you can simplify
things and cast a bigger brighter
spotlight on what you’re capable of
doing and help the person that’s
watching your audition or listening to
your audition
uh not have to decode everything else
going on and just simply pay attention
to what you’re doing.
Tell me if that makes sense to you. For
those of you using really busy
backgrounds, you know, because that’s
all you’ve got. I get it. But there’s a
reason why they say put up a a sheet or
or paint a wall and just do it in front
because you don’t want to give them that
distraction. Uh tell me what your
thoughts are about this in the comments
below. Uh just below the comments. Once
you do that, there’s like you can join
my mailing list if you want to. You can
hit the like button. You can subscribe
to my channel. uh you can uh uh you know
get notified when a new episode comes
out. Hopefully you’re on vioheres.com
which is where the conversation is nice
and polite and safe and and if there’s
another actor or voice talent or writer
that you think would benefit from this
this concept of simplifying things so
they can concentrate on you. Um feel
free to forward this along. Feel free to
share this with them. I’d appreciate
that. I’m David H. Lawrence 17th. I
thank you so much for watching and for
listening and I will see you in the next
episode of the VO Heroes podcast.

(from YouTube)