So in this lecture, I want to talk a little bit about recording speech videos. So this is a speech course, I hope you know that by now. I hope you're not like watching this, like, this guy's the worse chemistry professor ever. But, if you want feedback on your speeches, we need to see him. Now, maybe you're just watching the videos in this class and you're not participating in the assignments, that's fine. But if you want feedback or a certificate, you going to need to submit a speech. And, this speech course, I think we've covered that. It's not a video production course though, so as you're filming your speech video, I focused more on the practical necessities. Is the video there? Can we hear you? Can we see you? At least enough to give you feedback. So, let's begin by talking about equipment. So basically, anything that produces online video will work. So, a digital camera is nice if you have it, a webcam works too though, so does a phone. If you have the technical equipment to watch this video, you probably have the technical equipment to participate in this course. So, once you've got your equipment set, I would say focus on three key things. Make sure we can hear you. Make sure we can see you. And, think about the type of feedback you want. So first off, make sure we can hear you. So if the cameras far away, you're going to need to speak up. If you're in a room and maybe it's kind of echoey or I got a window over, so I'm going to want to shut this. Right, I've buses that drive by so I don't want those getting into the audio track. So, the goal is just to make sure that we can hear you. I'd say one thing to keep in mind is, before you submit that video, take a listen to it. We should be able to hear the words that you're saying without having to really crank up the volume. So, make sure that we can hear you. Okay beyond that, make sure that we can see you, so obviously, you're going to want to have some good lighting, we should be able to see you enough to provide feedback. So again, I've got this window here, so I wouldn't want to be directly in front of the window, and so it's really backlighting me so you can't see my face. I don't want to just be a silhouette doing the speech, so you should be thinking about how much that we can see you. You can also blur your face, so I had one guy, he had his kids take the course, a very young kids and he blurred their face for the videos that they submitted and they were very good speakers for such young kids. So, make sure we can hear you, make sure we can see you and then finally, just know that what you record affects what you can get feedback on. So, I want everyone to submit a video that they feel comfortable with. And this could simply be an audio track with no video at all, if you don't want to show your face but that would greatly limit what an evaluator could provide feedback on. So, think of this more as a sliding scale on one foreign of the spectrum, we have speakers who stand speaking with the camera far away, this is sort of a maximum setup. It allows us to evaluate what you say and how you move. Maybe closer to the middle of the road or to the middle of the scale, we have speakers who speak sitting with the camera up close. That's fine but we can't really evaluate movement. But maybe look at some gesture. And, for some people that might be what's physically possible, that's totally fine. Then on other end of the spectrum, we have speakers who only upload an audio recording. And this is an option too, but here, we can only evaluate some of the oral qualities and absent, gesture and movement the message at times can be a little bit more difficult to evaluate. So, what you choose to submit dictates what others can provide feedback on, and you need to decide what's comfortable for you. So, let me end with one last word of advice. Don't re-record your speech 1,000 times. The goal is never to be perfect. The goal is not to avoid saying ever. The goal is to be a good speaker and that requires getting yourself out of jams. So if I get lost in a main point in front of an audience, I going to get myself back on track. I don't get to stop, erase that memory from everyone's mind. No, a dynamic speaker needs to be able to adopt and respond. Because ultimately, this is a class on puppetry. No, should be, it'd be awesome. But no, that's not right. As a speech course, the videos are really just a means to an end. Practicing speech, getting feedback, participating in a global discussion of good speaking, that's what we're here to do. [MUSIC]
