Page 13 - Campus Technology, June 2017

TEACHING AND LEARNING
BBC commentator Robert Kelly’s “Video Dad” moment
1) Speak Into the Microphone
When setting up a space for good video and audio recording, sound dampening is key. You want to make sure you don’t get noise from people walking in the hall outside, for example, or from machines such as elevators or climate systems. While these factors can’t be avoided entirely, Burriel noted, they can be addressed with insulation
on the walls or a switch that opens or closes the air handling in the room.
Also, choose a quiet space to minimize ambient noise. Or as Burriel put it, “Don’t choose a space where there’s a basketball court upstairs.”
Next, Burriel said, pay attention to your microphone. If you’re creating a recording from a computer, for example, oftentimes
you’ll expect to use the “little pinhole” mic at the top of the PC or iMac monitor, which could be three or four feet away from where you’re sitting.
Burriel’s suggestion: Use a headset with a mic right by your mouth or a “boom mic” that you can have near you. Either of those options “is always better than whatever is built into your laptop or iMac,” he said.
If that exceeds your capacity, then at least do these two things: “Lean in toward the mic” to direct your voice and make sure it captures your audio “to the best of its ability,” and avoid “wiggling too much in your chair.”
2) Reconsider Whether You Want to be
a Talking Head
Lighting is a trickier topic, worth “deferring to professionals.” Burriel said he’s seen too many videos that come across “like some person hunched over a laptop looking to the camera recorded at two in the morning where it’s really dark behind them and the only light you see is the glare of the monitor on their face.”
His advice: Ask yourself if you need to appear in the video in the first place. “Oftentimes as a professor doing a presentation, what is paramount is the screen content,” he explained. “In most of our recording scenarios, we simply do not have cameras. It is not relevant to the content, and it boils down to a question of vanity.” When it comes up, he added,
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CAMPUS TECHNOLOGY | June 2017
BBC TV