Looking Good On Camera

Hi, this is Dave Kats, therapist consultants and I have a tip for you.

If you're going to do a lot of tele-mental health, you've got to look good on the computer because it's hard to communicate with somebody if they have a bad image on the computer. I want to talk to you just a little bit about the simple things you can do to make yourself look good on the computer. The first thing is to make sure that the picture is level. So many times we see somebody shooting at an angle with the doorframe, instead of running like this runs up at an angle, make sure you have your camera level. The second thing I want you to do is make sure that the light is in front of you shining on you. You're not a harsh light, but just some soft light that's shining in front of you shining onto you.

Don't have much for background lighting at all because if you get a bright light behind you, it'll make you turn dark and they'll see just an image. Make sure your light is always in front of you. The third thing. Well, that's the third thing don't have any light behind you. The fourth thing I think is very important and that is don't shoot just from the neck up. That's one of my pet peeves. I see so many therapists doing tele-mental health and they shoot right from here. Now you just think about that. If you ever watch TV and shoot right from here and have all the white space up above and all you see is her head and neck. No, when you see commentators or somebody like that, you see them down just above their waist or a little higher about upper waist or mid-chest.

Make sure that you have your camera position so they can see part of your body and your arms and your hands too because you can communicate so much more if they can see the actions of your hands and your body. Don't just be from a neck up type therapist. Then the next thing I would suggest that you do is to make sure you have a new enough computer, that you have a really good camera and video card in it. If you don't have a good camera, you should go to the store and buy like the Logitech C920 or some video camera like that, that improves the quality of your video, because they want to be as close to being with you as they can. Then, of course, you're going to be on the computer, but the liver you look the better you're going to be.

The next thing I would suggest you do is to be the right distance from the camera. The farther away you are in distance from the camera, the more it will feel like you're not connected with them. If I were shooting this and we were shooting clear across the studio, you'd see me as a long ways away. Wouldn't be very interesting but if you get up to a normal range like we are now, you would see that it's easy to communicate and we can see the person, see the expressions, see the movements of their hands and things like that. And that makes for a good video. Then the last thing I would suggest you do is should record one or two of your video sessions and then take it and play it somewhere on a computer. You can see how you look and see what the patient sees. If you do those things, I think you'll do a good job. Now. It only takes once to take 15, 20 minutes to do all the things we've talked about and just get it set up once and it will be good forever. I think it'll really help your patient's compliance.

This is Dave Kats. Thanks for listening.