How to Make Videos Without Going in Front of the Camera

A small selection of people reading this right now will be thinking no way. For some people, the thought of going in front of the camera is absolutely terrifying. Either that, or they just don’t have the presentation skills they need in order to make something compelling.

So then, what do you do? As it happens, you can actually create some great videos for YouTube without needing to set foot in front of the camera at all!

One example is to make a slideshow. You can do this with Excel and then simply save as an MPG. You then simply record some narration over the top and you’re good to go.

Likewise, you can make tutorial videos demonstrating internet marketing, coding, web design etc. simply by using some screen capture software. Or how about filming ‘let’s plays’ of video games – some personalities such as PewDiePie have been highly successful doing this. You can also use tools like Explaindio to create videos such as whiteboard animations and other business-like creations.

One Final Tip

Doing all this will mean treating your YouTube efforts like a ‘real’ business and seeing the success that comes from that. You’re investing the time, resources and effort that you would with any other type of business and this is how you’re seeing returns.

But another part of treating your YouTube projects like a real business is to optimize. That means cutting back overheads, creating systems and generally streamlining the process of video creation and uploading. For instance, having a spot set up in your home/office especially for filming can help you a great deal to save time setting up, which will lend itself to the creation of more videos. Likewise, finding a way to port your footage across automatically can also help.

Over time, you will develop habits, strategies and tools to help your videos become more professional with less effort on your part. This might determine where you place your script and how you read from it without breaking eye contact and it might mean thinking about things that can help you with editing subsequently.

For instance, do you know why Hollywood movies use those clappers that say ‘Scene 1: Take 3’ on them etc.? It’s because this enables the editor to see what they’re working with quickly while they’re editing. They don’t have to search through the footage and keep playing it back because they can simply cut from the start of the scene they need. This way, you could film in one go even and make notes of which ‘takes’ were successful.

Clappers also help you to sync sound and video if they have been recorded separately. That’s because the clapping sound creates a spike in the audio and that means you can simply line the two spikes up in the editor. This is a strategy you can adopt, or maybe you’ll work out different tricks to help yourself get set up more easily.

I use a piece of bluetack against the wall for instance to help ensure the camera has me in the frame before I begin filming!