Making eye contact is critical when you’re utilizing your camera. Guy Kawasaki was sharing how he places his web camera on a tripod in front of his monitor so that it’s a more comfortable conversation when he’s speaking with people on hangouts. Scott Atwood of Google chimed in and pointed out a terrific little device to make things much easier.
ProPrompter Desktop is a periscope-like device that you can mount on your laptop or desktop monitor that redirects your camera’s vision from the top of the screen to where you are looking. Whether you’re running a teleprompter application or talking on video, you simply position the window within the boundaries of the device.
Now you can record videos or hold video sessions where you’re making eye contact with your audience!
“SeeEye2Eye … redirects your camera’s vision from the top of the screen to where you are looking.”
Actually, it looks as if it mirrors the video image of the person with whom you’re video-communicating and presents the mirror view in front of your own cam. So as you look at the mirrored image, your gaze is more on target toward your cam. Unless I’m misunderstanding things. 🙂
You may be right @markfrisk:disqus ! I’m looking forward to getting one and trying it out!!!
Douglas, did you?
Honestly, no. I actually don’t like scripting any of my conversations online whether via podcast or video. It just doesn’t “feel” natural to me.
My company makes spokesperson video (http://www.liveonpage.com). The 6 years we’ve been doing this, we are about the only company that tells clients to use half-body presentations. The reason is the eye-contact that is made. We find that the conversion rates, watch times and bounce rates all reflect that eye-contact makes the difference. The full-body is basically a gimmick. The only time we see a head to toe shot is when someone is across the room, and therefore we ignore them.