Home is the new office
So for most of us, home is the new office. But it wasn’t really designed to be.
When we welcome people into our office we want to project a professional image that’s consistent with our brand values.
But for the time being, whilst we can’t get out to meet each other in person, most of our face-to-face time with clients, stakeholders and colleagues will be via video using built in web cams or smartphones and platforms like Skype or Zoom. But that shouldn’t mean you can’t look good.
In the same way you make an effort to greet clients into your office by dressing the part, keeping the office clean and tidy and looking good you should probably, now more than ever, be thinking about how to present yourself as best you can on video - only most of us aren’t used to doing this. So as well as making sure you dress the part for the new business environment and get rid of the dirty laundry basket from the background there’s much besides that we can do to improve your on-camera image without needing to come to you, such as:
Getting your eye-line up to to the camera level instead of looking down,
Putting blankets or a rug on the floor to reduce echo,
Ensuring there’s not a bright window right behind you and
Making sure the camera is in landscape orientation and not portrait.
Whilst good equipment counts for a lot aspects of lighting, framing, positioning and sound management can make a huge difference even with the most basic kit available.
At AOTV we’re happy to offer you a free consultation to help you establish the best set-up for video capture at home.
This video shows two examples - one good and one bad - of footage shot on the same iPhone 6 at home - that’s a pretty old phone with an average camera. The good version is about as good as we could make it and needs an investment of about £80-100 worth of kit available from Amazon. But if you value looking good and appearing professional we can help you get set up just as well without having to come to you (we may need someone in the house to be our remote assistant though)
Once you’re set up, as well as looking good for business meetings online we can go even further and accompany you through remote capture of video content for use in information or promotional videos ready to edit with stock footage, existing video content and animated text and graphics.
The world may feel for some like it’s stopped turning but it hasn’t. Being cooped up at home means our human need to communicate becomes even more intense and at AOTV we’re trying to innovate how we can help you to do just that.