Last Wednesday, at an online Toastmasters club meeting via Zoom, I evaluated a speech given by one of our most experienced members. The Pathways evaluation form has a section for General Comments with headings titled You Excelled At, You May Want To Work On, and To Challenge Yourself. I was worried about coming up with anything to put under You May Want To Work On.
But his hand gestures were not completely visible because he was sitting too close to the camera (on his laptop computer), as is shown above. His hands were visible, but not his entire forearms. He needed to be further back, where the frame went from the top of his head to below his elbows. That’s what he was used to when speaking in person behind a lectern. I have this problem too. When I move that far back my hands can’t reach the keyboard – because I am not a gorilla. And then the built-in microphone does a poor job (so I got a headset). If you are using PowerPoint with a Wireless Multimedia Presenter, that is ok.
In some YouTube videos of professional speakers like Brian Tracy part of their gestures also are hidden. Back on December 15, 2013 I blogged about his Illegal use of the hands? It looked like the cameraman was afraid the audience would get bored, and alternated from a frame showing head-to-waist to one a bit too close-up.
What else can you do to improve your gestures? First, take advantage of the smaller frame, and change to make gestures using just one hand, as shown above.
Second, also use your facial expressions in that smaller frame, as shown above.
Online speaking is different from live presentation where Gesture size usually should match audience size, as I discussed in a 2010 blog post.
Images of hands and facial expressions came from a 1912 book by J. Campbell Cory titled The Cartoonist’s Art which I found at the Internet Archive. A cartoon of a clueless man was adapted from Wikimedia Commons.
No comments:
Post a Comment