From Camera Shy to Confident: Find Your Authentic Voice

1. Introduction: Feeling confident on camera feel like an impossible dream only for those blessed with natural talent? If that's been holding you back from communicating your message, then this class is for you. My name is Aaron Palabyab, and I'm an award winning filmmaker and content creator. I've been doing public speaking since I was 7-years-old, but even so, developing a confident authentic presence on camera didn't come naturally. I had to work on it for years. So I want to save you a little time and jump start your journey to having a confident, authentic presence on camera. And here's the good news. You already have the ability, and I know it because you're able to carry on conversations and communicate in real life. And the key is to bridge that gap in confidence by adjusting your mindset to bring that to the camera. We'll start by finding your real voice within a few seconds. And then from there, we'll learn what being authentic on camera actually means. And then we'll address the most common problems of not being yourself, lacking confidence, sounding robotic or performative, or just generally like someone you're not. So this class is for anyone who wants to communicate their message more effectively and comfortably, whether via content creation or even public speaking, but has been held back by a so called lack of natural talent. Anyone can learn to be good on camera with regular practice and some help from this class. So if you're ready to break through the blocks, let's begin. 2. Class Project: Class project will be to create a short video, about 30 to 90 seconds of yourself speaking naturally and comfortably on camera. You'll apply the principles you learned in this class and pay special attention that you speak naturally as if you're just talking to a friend. Stay attuned to the greater purpose behind what you're saying. Stay mostly physically still apart from normal hand gestures that you do not rush, and you allow pauses. And most important, you aim for comfort and presence, not perfection. It's essential that you share your class project to close the learning circle and so that I can give you helpful feedback that will point you in the right direction as you continue to practice this skill. In fact, I would even encourage you to post a new project after a few months or even regularly so that I can continue to check on your progress. Alternatively, you may also post any of the several short exercises in the lessons in this class as your class project. To share a project, all you have to do is upload YouTube video and set its privacy to Unlisted and then embed it on your class project post. I've posted instructions on how to do that below. I just suggest that if you use one of the earlier exercises as your class project that you repeat it upon completing all of the lessons so that you can benefit from everything in the class and see a bigger change. And with that, let's dive into the class. 3. Find Your Real Voice in Seconds: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the class. Thanks for spending your time with me. I want to start you off with something instant, effortless, and yet possibly life changing. Let's find your real voice. The fact is that many of us, for whatever reason, speak in a register that's higher and thus more constricted or tense than where our voice naturally sits. So, this exercise that I learned from singing lessons brings us back to that home pitch. Are you ready? All you need to do is say Ah, starting from a slightly higher pitch and let it naturally drop with no conscious effort to where it actually wants to be. And it should feel effortless, like so. You'll know it's the right note when there doesn't feel like there's any effort to go up or go down in pitch. So one more time. Alright. Hopefully you've done it by now so that we can process and talk about the experience. In my case, doing this exercise for the first time revealed two things to me. First, that my voice actually sits on a significantly lower register than I thought it did. And second, more important, even, is that it taught me how effortless speaking is actually supposed to feel. For reference, I used to speak more in this register. Can you hear the difference? It's a bit subtle, really, because I still sound like me, but you can hear that I'm slightly more constrained, that I seem to be making more of an effort to push my voice outward as if wanting to be heard instead of staying down here and being relaxed and confident that I will be heard. So now, let me know. Was there a big difference or did it stay mostly the same? Did you have a similar experience as me? And how do you feel about it? Are you surprised and maybe trying to figure out now how to use the voice that you actually have? Because that's what happened to me. I've been speaking with a different voice for so long that I was really trying to figure out, how do I now re learn something so basic as how to speak? So let me know your experience in the discussions and even feel free to share the video doing this exercise as a class project. I'm very curious to see where most of you will end up. And hey, that's it for the first lesson. Hopefully, many, if not all of you found your real actual voice. In the next lesson, we'll go further and talk about why you might ironically have a hard time being yourself on camera and, of course, how to fix it. 4. Why You Can't "Be Yourself" On Camera: In the previous lesson, we found your real voice. In this lesson, we'll find out why it's ironically hard to be your real self on camera. For many of us, I assume that the goal isn't to speak like a news anchor, but to have an authentic presence on camera. But what does authentic actually mean so that we know how to achieve it? For our purposes, I'll define it as being on camera confidently in a way that resembles how we engage with others in real life. But on a deeper level, it's really more about being present and connected when you speak instead of being self conscious and forced with the result of looking authentic, being a mere byproduct of this attitude. In my work, directing and shooting professional talents and celebrities, I've noticed how effortlessly they can just lock in when the camera rolls. And this isn't a state of tension like being locked, but of relaxed, yet focused confidence. They can easily speak from the heart and hold genuine conversations even with the camera and all the lights and all the crew. And sometimes they'll even sound exactly the same as they did when we were chatting off camera a few minutes ago. Though at other times, the energy will be anywhere from a little to a lot higher. It depends on the persona they choose to project or the nature of the actual project and what it needs. Now, you might ask, isn't choosing a persona to project inauthentic? Not necessarily, because no matter what, a video can never capture every side of you. And so it's all about choosing which of them is most relevant to present according to what you're saying. So here, in this class, I'm presenting myself as relatively serious and authoritative because I'm teaching something. But I also have a silly side, like most of you, which not only would be a distraction from this lesson, I also, honestly prefer to save that mostly for my friends. So think about what side of you you want to present. It's not about having a mask or being fake, but just choosing which of your multifaceted self you need to be able to show for your purposes. Now, here's a secret that I've learned. Looking neutral as in simply just not sad on camera. Almost always requires that you put in what feels like ten to 15% more energy into speaking than a real off camera conversation. And I think that's just natural because being on camera triggers self consciousness in everyone, even the pros, more on that later. However, it is true that many people, especially if their niche is in entertainment or comedy, especially, choose to be more animated and louder because being larger than life works for the genre. But be careful because it takes a lot more than being loud to be funny. So we'll aim to hit this zone of natural plus 15%. This better addresses errors on both sides of the spectrum, namely, on one hand, lacking confidence. As in, Hey, guys, I'm Aaron, and today's video is about my travels. And on the other hand, overperforming. As in, Hey, guys, what's up? It's Aaron here, and we've got another video about the latest YouTube drama. Neither of these is the way. Let's start with a natural baseline, and then you can add more if your test videos reveal that your message would be better served that way. So now the exercise. I'll ask you to record yourself on camera, reading this in four different ways, and then review it to see the difference. And then you may share the video for feedback as a class project or work on it on your own. Here are the four ways. First, no direction, how you want. Second, as if addressing your 100,000 loyal YouTube subscribers. Third, as if you're talking to a friend. And fourth, as if you're on stage, talking to an auditorium full of people. So please pause the lesson now and record, and then play it back. I'll wait. So what did you notice? What version did you like best? Here's the secret. None of these is necessarily the best version. It depends on you and what you think is truest to how you want to communicate. These are only guides to help you find your sweet spot. It doesn't matter how you get there just as long as you find it. Now, how would I do it? Well, I would go for something a bit neutral, like I didn't expect a day to turn out like this, but I'm glad it did. Some things only make sense once you stop trying to control them. I could also opt for something a little more theatric but still relatively natural. Like, I didn't expect a day to turn out like this, but I'm glad it did. Some things only make sense once you stop trying to control them. If you're having a hard time kind of getting all of these different tones and emotions in your voice, it's okay. I think what I would do is try more active listening to good speakers to train your ear to hear these differences so that you can figure out how to do them yourself. It's kind of like speaking a hard new language. You can't learn to produce a sound that your brain can't process yet, so you have to listen. In a way, this is sort of like learning to identify different pitches in music so that you can sing in tune. It's the ground floor. And it's totally normal to have to start on the ground floor, so don't get discouraged. In the end, we can't be exactly as we are in real life on camera. We can only present a glimpse of ourselves, and finding that isn't a matter of thinking about it so much as of practicing it. There's no wrong answer as long as you're telling the truth and being true to yourself. In this lesson, we learned how to approach being more authentic on camera. In the next lesson, we'll focus specifically on how to overcome being robotic, having low energy, and talking too fast, which are all symptoms of lacking confidence. 5. Addressing Lack of Confidence: Previous lesson, we practiced being more natural on camera. In this lesson, we'll zoom in on the more common problem of most people, which is sounding robotic, talking too fast or a weak delivery, all due to a lack of confidence. A lack of confidence leads to excessive self consciousness, which leads to overthinking, which leads to robotic delivery, weak projection, and talking too fast, as if these will help you to escape being heard saying things wrong or saying the wrong thing. But again, don't feel bad about that. Oftentimes, it's not even your fault. The thing is, when most people are given directions to say things this way by some well meaning director, it makes the problem even worse. The pressure of having a whole crew waiting for you to get your lines perfectly memorized and then perfectly delivered as the lights bear down and the cameras roll causes many people to freeze. So instead of speech being an effortless, unconscious act, every word suddenly feels like it needs to be closely monitored by your brain. You stop trusting yourself to do it right when the job was simply to sound like a human being. This inevitably makes you sound unnatural. In my experience as a director, telling someone exactly how to say something is one of the least effective ways to help non professionals because it just destroys their self confidence. And professionals may hate it, too, because then you're encroaching on their craft and authenticity, all of which is to say, I don't believe this is primarily a talent problem. It's a mindset issue. And thus, we can adjust it. So instead of telling you exactly how to say something, which will never work because only I have my voice. I'll instead help you to teach your nervous system to relax. And then over time, speaking naturally will just come naturally. So how do we do this? I would start with breathing. That's the easiest thing to forget when you're nervous. You have to make sure it's through your belly, not your shoulders or chest because breathing like this increases tension. What you want to do actually is observe yourself from the side, put your hand on your belly like this and make sure it's rising. And falling. Just breathe in. It rises, and breathe out. It falls. And that will help you to just relax your muscles and feel comfortable. The goal really is to just make everything slow down and to get out of your head and into your body. Less pressure, more presence. And another effective hack. Take a second, laugh. If you've taken one of my previous classes, you know, I keep recommending this. 'cause I don't know, after all, it's a ridiculous and downright magical thing that we get to do this, put ourselves in front of this machine and then be seen by an infinite number of people all over the world. I mean, oh, my gosh, that's insane. And I think that's worth a laugh to just absorb all of that. So basically, again, slow inhale, slow exhale, through your belly, relax your muscles, do that as many times as you want, I need to prime yourself. And then, let's do our next exercise. You know the drill, record, review, and get feedback. Your task now is to record yourself speaking on any topic for just 30 seconds to a minute. If you can't think of a topic, then just introduce yourself in what you do and why you're taking this class. That's simple. Again, you'll do it in three different ways to discover where you sound most like yourself. So first, do it the way you do it now with no guidance, but applying what we've learned so far about relaxing and breathing. Second, now, imagine that you are the expert on the topic, even if you're not. The goal is just to kind of imagine the confidence you would have and then bring that into your delivery. And then finally, breathe and relax yourself for a minute or two, laugh at yourself a little bit, and do another take. The secret to being great on camera is simply to do enough takes to get it right enough to splice together in an edit with no mistakes. That's movie magic, baby. So as you do this, don't forget to regularly sip water to keep your throat fresh and relaxed. Your throat is getting tense and hoarse really easily, then maybe you want to go back to the first lesson and recheck if you're using your natural voice register. Because for me, for years, whenever I would record long talking videos like this, after maybe just half an hour, I noticed my throat would be so tired, and it's only now that I'm speaking in my natural register that I'm able to last longer without having to drink water. You can also revisit the exercise from the last lesson and see if you notice any difference or improvement. Now, just another note on tracking your progress. In my singing lessons, I sing the same three songs week after week to be able to track my progress. And sometimes progress won't necessarily be sounding much better. At times, it'll just be finding new ways to use my voice to convey different shades of emotion and meaning, or it could be achieving exactly the same sound, but with half the effort. So similarly, you're not looking to improve in leaps and bounds, though you definitely might. Rather, the task is to explore the different dimensions of your voice and find which ones work best for you. In this lesson, we learned how to address the self consciousness that keeps us from speaking confidently. In the next lesson, we'll address the opposite problem overperforming. 6. Addressing Over-Performing: This lesson, we'll address the seemingly opposite problem to lacking confidence, which is overperforming. While this does translate better on camera, the problem is that it sounds equally inauthentic and can actually be more jarring to the viewer. Remember, we no longer need to sound like news anchors or daytime TV hosts. By and large, audiences today prefer a more casual, relatable delivery. Now, overperforming can manifest in various forms. It can just be trying to sound like somebody else, whether someone famous or adopting that infamous influencer voice. It can be trying too hard, talking too loud, or gesticulating too much. So instead of trying to be the next generic, loud, annoying YouTuber, what we want to do is to be relax, be ourselves, take our time and sound conversational. Even when and especially when reading off a teleprompter or reading for a voiceover. I see overperforming as just a different manifestation of the same problem as before, which is self consciousness. But this time, it's an overcompensation in a different direction. Basically, you aren't confident enough in your real self and what you have to say, so you compensate by being loud. But remember, volume is not comedy, and volume is not authority, despite what society shows us lately. In fact, real authority is the opposite. It's quiet confidence confidence that doesn't try to hit anyone over the head to get attention. So when on camera, basically, you don't have to project as if you're speaking on stage. But the thing is, it might be hard to identify this tendency at first and how far along you are on it, which is why the next exercise is designed to help you. So again, record yourself and then get feedback, whether just from yourself, the video or from me or somebody close to you. Now record yourself speaking the following phrase. On Take one, speak normally without thinking about it. OT two, pretend now as if you're talking to a friend who's just across from you. Now is where things get interesting. Ontake three, decrease the volume by 50%. Ontake four, decrease it by 90%. And now, do it again in a way that you think feels natural now that you have the perspective of how loud you're actually talking because we try to decrease the volume. So, did you notice a difference? Which take worked best for you? Again, feel free to share your videos in the class projects if you'd like feedback or just to show your progress. The purpose of this exercise was really to get some perspective. By lowering the volume, we found out if there was actually any volume to lower. And most of the time, bringing it down a bit makes us be more natural while at the same time, makes speaking more physically effortless. But in the end, curbing overperforming really entails letting go of any idea of how you should sound. In fact, I would say, stop focusing so much on yourself and think instead about being a present and empathetic communicator. Don't aspire to be a man or woman of the masses because this isn't about popularity or attention for its own sake. It's about connecting with real people in whose lives you can bring some good with your message. So instead, think about moving and speaking as if you're talking to someone whose concerns you've listened to, and you're compassionately in conversation with them to try to help them through the same problems you've been through. And that entails, of course, being thoughtful, not rushing so that you can just be connected and present because basically being present is how you develop presence. In this lesson, we learned how to pull back from overperforming and about ultimately the power of empathy in good communication. In the next lesson, we'll address something not nearly enough people talk about when learning how to speak, which is how to actually have something to say. 7. Have Something to Say: The previous lessons, we focused on the how practicing to become better speakers on camera. In this lesson, we'll talk about the what and the why. That is how to actually have something worth saying. There are far too many people on social media with loud voices whose messages are empty at best and harmful at worst. So this class actually exists for a single purpose, which is to empower good people like you to spread your message to help tip that balance towards the meaningful and the good. But good intentions are only a start, and you need to infuse a sense of purpose into this and driven by that, create and deepen your personal well of ideas to draw from. That way, even without any form of script, you'll never run out of things to say that are worth hearing. So for this lesson, we'll take a break from being on camera and spend more time thinking and writing. So, of course, you want to start by building a strong foundation, which I'm sure many of you already have, and you get that by being curious, by being the eternal student. You get it from reading books, watching quality content and movies, listening to people smarter than you, and equally important having silent time without your phone or other distractions for reflection to process all of this input and discern what's meaningful for. The next step is just as essential. And in my experience, it's what allows me to always have something to say, answer questions, share insights, even if the answer might just be. You know, I don't know. And it's writing. Simple, unstructured journaling or reflecting in the medium of your choice. But particularly, I think, writing long hand with a paper and pen. This is easy, gentle exercise for your mind, which is the engine for your ideas. So care for it, use it, tune it up, and it will take you far. Neglect it, and it'll let you down when you need it the most. And I'm sorry to say this because I'm as guilty of this as anyone. But constantly being on social media and keeping up with the latest irrelevant drama works actively against you and your ability to think and generate good ideas or even any ideas at all. So for your exercise in this lesson, I'll just ask you to write why you're practicing to be better on camera. It could be an overarching mission or purpose or if that's too deep, then just about a topic for which you have a lot of passion. If you have a hard time, just think of it this way. Your target audience is a community or maybe just a single person who has the same problems as you that you have had a chance to work on. As such, your purpose is to help them because you've put in the work to think about it and try to solve it for yourself. At the end of the day, the biggest problem when being on camera is having nothing good to say. So in this lesson, I hope I helped you realize that you have something good worth sharing. In the next lesson, we'll do one more exercise to help you work on developing presents. 8. Developing Presence: So far in this class, we've practiced how to be more confident on camera and also learn that knowledge, curiosity and empathy are an indispensable part of that, as well. In this lesson, we'll work on developing that X factor, your presence, and we'll do that by trying to slow things down and becoming more comfortable with slowness and pauses. Remember what we learned earlier. Authority is not volume, and neither is it speed. It is quiet, purposeful confidence. A person with power can hold silence for a reason. And if you have to pause to think, that's not a failure, and you can turn that to your advantage. What I want you to do now for your exercise is to read this and then deliver it on camera, focusing on slowing things down. You will feel the pressure to rush through it, especially if you're not that experienced, and that's okay. This exercise is designed to ease you into slowing down and being present. So on the first take, do it without any additional directions. Second, do it in a way that you think is slow. And for the third take, try to do it in twice the amount of time. Draw it out, make yourself uncomfortable. So pause the video now, and please record yourself doing the exercise. Watch takes again a notice which of these three comes across most confidently. As before, the goal isn't to say which of these three methods is correct. It's to find out what works best for you, while training you to be comfortable with slowing down and making natural pauses. This will serve you well, particularly in real life, public speaking. Okay, now hopefully you've done the exercise because I'll just give you an example of how I might do it. But still, I encourage you not to copy my delivery as the sole basis because what's natural for me can be totally unnatural for somebody else. I'm going to take a moment before I say anything else. Not because I've forgotten what I want to say, but because I want to be here while I'm saying it. There's no rush. And nothing is chasing after me to speak faster. If I pause, it's on purpose. If I breathe, It's because I need to. And if this takes longer than expected, that's okay. I'm not trying to just get through this. I'm actually trying to say. I guess what I realized from how I did that is that lesson was less about speaking slowly, although you should, I was just more about meaningful pauses. But again, this will differ from student to student because some students will definitely be speaking way too fast. But if you already have more or less a natural speed, then it will be much more about the pauses. Alright. In this lesson, you slowed things down and worked on developing presence. In the next and final main lesson, we'll put it all together and work on your main class project. 9. Making Your Class Project: This lesson, we'll try to put together everything we've learned in this class and work on the main class project. So I invite you now to write a 60 to 92nd introduction to yourself and your story and or mission, which we discussed in the previous lesson. You've done all the exercises, and the challenge now is to use your own words as you would if you had your own channel or social media account. You may read it to make it easy or memorize it if you have that talent, or you can also just speak from the heart guided by a few talking points. Now, I really encourage you to try speaking from the heart if you can. You don't have to use that if it doesn't work. But basically, I want you to keep in mind that the goal isn't to be perfect. Is to be present and to be real. That's the real test. So I really it doesn't matter to me as your teacher here, if you memorize it perfectly, if it's perfectly written. But I just want to see the real you being as sincere and natural as you can be on camera, helped by everything we've practiced so far. You practice and deliver your spill, don't forget the tips from the previous lessons. Of course, first, breathe into relaxation, two, pretend you're the expert, three, lower the volume, and then set it back to normal if you need to four, back off the speed, and then set it back to normal if you need to. Aim for a minimum of three takes and have a glass of water nearby to refresh your throat. But also, don't kill yourself trying to make it perfect. Do what makes sense for you to be able to best practice everything you've learned. And of course, please share your projects with me as unlisted embedded YouTube links, or you can also make it public if you want, because I always strive to give helpful feedback. Let me know in the discussions below if you have any trouble uploading, and I'll be glad to help. With that, I have some parting words for you as we wrap up the class. 10. Parting Words: Congratulations on taking your first steps to transforming how you speak on camera. Some of you might have had instant transformations, while some might find their progress slower. But regardless, this is a continuous journey of finding and honing your authentic voice. I am still constantly learning and discovering new things about mine as I grow in knowledge and experience. So as you submit your class projects, I encourage you to keep in mind that the goal with sharing your progress isn't to be, like, the best student in class. So don't fall into the trap of comparing yourself with your classmates. Please. The reality is that talent isn't evenly distributed. Some of you will be better at this out of the gate, but I don't care about that. What I care more about is that time and effort reward anyone that invests in them. So it takes that and consistent work and trust in the process to reprogram your nervous system so that this can someday appear effortless. I promise if you do the work, you will be able to look forward to being on camera as a chance to share your message instead of hearing it. So stay focused, keep practicing, and celebrate all the small wins. And, of course, feel free to leave me and your classmates any questions in the discussions plow. If you're really committed to improving, you also have the option to book one on one sessions with me here on Skillshare for personalized guidance and because having a coach can really supercharge your progress. That's totally optional, though I'm not forcing you to do that, but it's just something that's there if you're interested. Or also if you'd like to take the next step into content creation and have some other great classes here on Skillshare as well to get you started. As a final request, please leave an honest review for this class once you've finished it, and it not just helps me but also your fellow learners. With that, thank you so much for investing your time and energy with me in this class. I sincerely hope it helps you in whatever you're striving for right now, or at the very least, that you had fun. With that, again, my name is Aaron Palabyab and I'll see you again soon.