One of the beautiful benefits of Zoom is that it is an equalizer. There are no tall people, short people, people sitting in the back of the room, people at the head table. We have our grid of participants. The lovely gallery. When we interview people, most of us use Zoom, Riverside, or similar because it’s a more engaging conversation with video. It also gives us more pieces of content to use to drive people to our full episodes. Isn’t the point of podcasting to engage with a wider audience? Do you care if they come from audio-only or video? I just want them to show up.
This brings me back to the gallery or interview. When you show up to interview your guest, do your sound check. Are they using the best mic option? Test them all. Are you in high res on Zoom or did someone dial back the account? Are you reducing the room noise by checking a box? Good!
A story: About 15 years ago we bought our first BIG television. Our screen had been 24″ in the living room. Flatscreens were coming down in price, and we splurged. We went as a family. Our children were 4 and 8. It was an exciting adventure to Best Buy. We carefully unpacked it set it up on the now-too-small stand and connected it. Our children were so excited and were sitting in their usual spots. Then the 48″ screen came to life with a newscaster in the center in full HD glory. Our children shrieked at the sheer size of the person speaking to them in their house. The head was 3 times that of a normal human. They retreated behind the sofa and eased their way out.
This reminds me of big and small heads in a room to command the audience’s attention. I highly recommend that you even out your guest’s and your heads.
You should both be taking up about the same amount of space with your heads. I realize some of us have bigger hat sizes than others, but you still want it relatively even. This leaves room for gestures and cropping. I had a host that was doing close-ups. Her head was being cut off on the top. She’s super beautiful and lovely, but her face was … REALLY BIG on the screen. Her guest was sitting back – perhaps because she was so big he was trying to get some space so they were side by side, but not balanced. It was distracting, and we missed her gestures. I had to layer their videos and then crop and stretch his to somewhat even it out. Then I lost his great gestures.
If you have a Logitech camera, you get the HUB with it. You can mess with the zoom there for optimum cropping and position. Search your computer for the camera app – whatever it is and mess with the position. Sometimes you can move your mic closer to you allowing you to set back a bit, or move in a bit more to tidy up your background. Better to clean up your background than to have to blur or use a virtual background.
