How to Look Professional on a Zoom Call

This is Matt with Pack Films We're a video production company based in Nashville and today I'm going to share a few quick tips on how to look more professional on a Zoom call. These tips are going to be more from a technical perspective and and related to the setup, so you already look professional; I'm sure you look great, so if you needed a compliment today, there you go! And we're going to work on your setup and taking it to the next level. Our first tip is about lighting. Lighting is super important especially on you as the speaker on a video call. Our goal is going to be to find nice soft lighting to help you look your best. One of the easy ways to do that is to locate the windows in your room. Whenever there's not direct beams of sunlight coming through, those are great indirect, soft lights that you can use. So, you're going to want to position yourself a couple feet away from a window, and then, not facing straight towards it but about 30 degrees off to either the left or right of it which will give you a nice directional, soft light onto your face, and since your closer to the window, you're going to be brighter than the background, which is also great for helping you stand out. I'll put up a diagram here showing the orientation of the window, your computer or camera, and where you should sit. Once you have your lighting set, take a look at the background. Make sure there's nothing distracting, make sure everything is clean and well-kept, make sure there's not too much busyness right behind your head, these are all things that people will notice and comment on later, so just take care of it now. Also, don't sit right against a wall. Leave a few feet behind you, enough space so that it doesn't feel like you're trapped in the corner, it feels more open and spacious. Another huge part of looking professional is having good audio. Your microphone doesn't have to be expensive, it's a lot more about the placement of the microphone, than how much it actually costs. This microphone cost about $25 and it's easy to plug in and get much better audio than I'd get through the computer speakers. Other things you can do are use a headset or headphones that have a built-in microphone, anything to get the microphone closer to your mouth will help you sound better. While we're talking about sound, another really easy thing you can do is get rid of outside noise. Turn off A/C units, fans, nearby refrigerators, anything else that is putting sound out into the room that you can turn off will help you sound better. This next tip is maybe my favorite one because it's so easy. All you have to do is get the camera at or above eye level. You'll notice as people look down, we gain chins, so if we can look up a little bit, we can help slim that down and make you look great. Because you're looking right into a screen, chances are, if you're wearing glasses, it will reflect some of that light back into the camera. So, if you have the option of not wearing glasses, then don't. Because it will look better just to get rid of some of that glare. And last but not least, think about your outfit. Clothes with small, intricate patterns don't always pick up well on camera. Especially as the screen gets re-sized down to be really small, somebody is watching it on a phone, something like that. So, go for solid colors, go for neutrals, these are really safe choices to help you look professional. So that wraps it up for our video call tips, some of these are really quick and easy and you should be able to use them as soon as your next call. And now that you're looking professional, if you want business to look professional too with high-quality video content, we're happy to help anytime. But until then, we'll see you on the next video call. Thanks and talk to you soon!