Nobody Feels Comfortable in Front of a Camera. Here’s What We Actually Do About It.
Almost every shoot starts the same way. Someone stands in front of us, hands not quite sure where to go, laughing nervously, saying some version of “sorry, I’m terrible at this.” And almost every time, we say the same thing back: good, that means you’re normal.
Nobody actually likes being on camera. Not really. Even people who seem confident on socials will tell you, once the actual camera’s rolling, their brain goes a bit blank. That’s not a flaw in the person. It’s just what happens when you suddenly become aware of your own face.
We’ve learned over the years that our job isn’t really about lighting and lenses, even though that’s the part people assume matters most. It’s about making someone forget the camera’s there long enough to just talk like themselves. That’s the whole trick, and it’s harder than it sounds.
A lot of that comes down to not rushing. If we walk in, set up, and immediately point a camera at someone and say “go,” of course it’s stiff. So we don’t do that. We talk first.
Properly talk about the business, sure, but also just about their day, their dog, their favourite holiday location, whatever’s actually on their mind. Half the time the best answer to a question comes out in that warm-up chat, before we’ve even hit record, and we quietly make sure we get it again once the camera’s rolling.
We also don’t ask people to be perfect. We ask them to be honest. A slightly messy answer that sounds like a real person thinking out loud will always beat a stiff, over – rehearsed line that sounds like it was written by a marketing team – because it usually was. Audiences can tell the difference instantly, even if they couldn’t explain how.
There’s a moment on almost every shoot where something shifts. Somewhere around the third or fourth question, the shoulders drop a little, the answers get looser, someone laughs at their own joke instead of apologising for it. That’s the footage we actually want. Everything before that moment is just warm-up.
We think this matters more than people realise, because so much of what gets shared online now is stiff. Corporate sounding. Safe to the point of being forgettable. The stuff that actually gets watched, that actually makes someone feel like they know a business, is the stuff where a real person shows up looking like a real person a bit awkward, a bit human, genuinely there.
Here’s how one UniSC client described their experience on shoot day: “The team is excellent at what they do. They curate a comfortable atmosphere to capture the best of you on the day.”
So if you’ve been putting off getting testimonials done, or dreading being the face of your own brand video, that’s not a reason to skip it. It’s just Tuesday for us. We’ve sat across from hundreds of people who felt exactly the same way, and every single time, somewhere in that conversation, they stop noticing the camera.
That’s really all we’re trying to do. Not make you perform. Just make enough space for you to be yourself on camera, long enough to catch it.