Performance DevRel
Amelia teaches how to connect with your audience, communicate clearly, and embrace your fear as a form of energy that will enhance your performance.
Summary:
What are the various types of performances?
What are those “tips and tricks” for each kind?
Live stage performance
You may need to memorize a script.
Warming up or cooling down before going on stage.
Connect with the audience.
Practise tongue twisters.
Drink water.
Try out different registers.
Performance for camera
That could be TV, a tutorial , a pre-recorded talk.
Live camera with a teleprompter.
Get help from a friend.
Performance for a camera with a live audience
Important to know your cameras are
Make eye contact with the audience and look at them but you really got to keep an eye on your cameras.
Other types of performance
For an audience that’s non-technical -- avoid a lot of buzzwords.
There’s performing through a translator.
Performing with an interpreter for the deaf community.
Performing on camera live, like for TV for interviews.
Performing on the radio live.
Scribbles:
Live stage performance
You may need to memorize a script.
Very frequently we perform using improvisation, bullet points, notes.
Take a tape recorder and say your entire script into the tape recorder, and then you can play that back almost like hypnotism to learn the script over time.
Take out chunks from that so that you almost have prompt words.
Speak back to the tape recorder.
Helps you get a way of rehearsing your lines with yourself and a tape recorder.
Warming up or cooling down before going on stage.
Some people need to warm up
Getting really hyped, doing push-ups, jumping jacks, yelling with your teammates, screaming backstage in the green room.
Other people need to cool down
They need to take a deep breath, they need to have a little bit of yoga or meditation.
Connect with the audience.
It really helps you calm your nerves and it also helps your audience feel more connected to you.
Making eye contact with an audience member
Asking a question seeing those hands raised in the back.
Any time you get stuck or you get trapped or you start like, “I forgot what I was going to say,” look out into the audience, make eye contact, smile at someone.
Vocal performance
Podcast, voiceovers for tutorials, calls, sale calls, pitching over a deck, studio recordings.
Practise tongue twisters.
Helps you not stumble on your words as much.
Exercises those vocal muscles.
If you need to do a quick introduction, you can make sure that you know about how long that takes.
Drink water.
Try out different registers.
Experiment with what voice you want to give your audience with pre-recording.
You could try something really high energy, or you could go down to something that is very calming and a question that is very slow.
Performance for camera
That could be TV, a tutorial , a pre-recorded talk.
Live camera with a teleprompter.
LED screens that can actually sit over a camera.
You can actually see the words and not break contact with the direct lens.
Might be something you want to invest in.
Helpful for things with live data.
Get help from a friend.
Some people feel a lot more comfortable, it can be read as more realistic, can feel more connected to the audience if there’s a person on the other side of the camera.
Performance for a camera with a live audience.
It’s a webinar, a TED Talk.
Sometimes where your primary audience may or may not be the audience that’s sitting physically in the room with you today.
Important to know your cameras.
Giving a TED Talk -- they generally have two cameras.
Rehearse it with the studio ahead of time, so you know exactly which one to switch to.
Make eye contact with the audience and look at them but you really got to keep an eye on your cameras.
Other types of performance
For an audience that’s non-technical -- avoid a lot of buzzwords.
If you do have acronyms, contextualize them rather than just say what this means.
There’s performing through a translator.
Speaking in your own native language and then you kind of have to wait for the translator to speak for the audience and then it’s your turn to speak again.
Rehearsing with that translator can be really important.
Performing with an interpreter for the deaf community.
Performing on camera live, like for TV for interviews.
Performing on the radio live.
Stage fright?
Everyone should get a little bit of stage fright.
Embrace that fear as a type of excitement and energy because at the end of the day, that is what keeps us connected.
Nerves can really be a fire that drives us. .
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