Humor Power

I recently saw a terrific feature on Speaker Net News titled Getting Good Promo Photos.

Here are some techniques I’ve used to get good audience reaction photos.  The challenge with getting a good reaction shot is that even when a photo is taken while an audience is laughing and having a good time; in almost every photo the audience members look stone-faced.  The trick is to catch them when they’re REALLY laughing.

The first (big) challenge is to have some belly-laugh segments in your talk.  Although I have lots of laughs in a one-hour talk, there may be only five huge laugh spots.  These are usually the key punchlines of the main stories, custom-written lines about the group and audience participation segments.  Since I know precisely when these moments are, the technique is to provide the photographer a “map” of the talk pinpointing exactly where the photo opportunity spots will be.

I give the photographer an outline of the talk.  Within the outline, I give word-for-word cues of the lines which lead up to the photo ops.  I orchestrate exactly where I want the photographer to stand (at an angle behind me) to best catch a full-looking audience.  As I deliver the line, I’m mentally preparing myself for the photo.  At the moment of the photo op, just after the key punchline, I turn my head so the photographer can catch my profile with the audience reaction and not shoot the back of my head.  I’ve told the photographer in advance that I want my profile.

I’ve used a similar technique for capturing good video.  When I have a video crew I usually prefer a four-camera shoot, with two of the cameras on the audience for the entire talk.  I instruct the operators of the audience-cameras to study the audience for those who are very expressive and responsive (who like to laugh and show it).  I’ve also given the camera operators a map of the talk.  They know precisely when the best reaction spots are coming up.  First, I tell them to be on a wide shot (not a close-up) as the target line of dialogue approaches.  Second, they should be centered on someone or some cluster of people who look good when laughing.  I hit the laugh line.  The wave of laughter starts.  And the camera operator slowly zooms in for a close-up to center on the person having he most fun.  I’ve captured some great video footage.

This may sound like a lot of work, but even a humorist’s talk isn’t loaded from start to finish with gales of laughter. If you want to capture the few magical moments, you have to work at it.  You’ll find it a challenge to capture the gems and that the great shots just don’t happen by accident.  The reward is worth the effort.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 27th, 2007 at 10:10 pm and is filed under Humor In Speaking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.