You will be able to set up a simple space where you look and sound clear on video.
Put the camera at eye level, face the light, and get a microphone close to your mouth. Those changes, plus looking at the lens at the right moments, fix most of what goes wrong when people present on a video call.
You have probably seen the problems yourself. One colleague is filmed from below, so you see mostly ceiling and nostrils. Someone else sits in front of a bright window and is a dark shape with a voice. Another person's audio sounds as if it comes from inside a bathroom, or drops out whenever the air conditioner starts. Even when the person's ideas are excellent, these problems make it hard to pay attention to them. When you present online, your camera, light and sound act as the room. They decide whether people can see you, hear you and stay with you. You don't need expensive equipment for a clear setup. You need a few minutes of thought and a willingness to move your laptop.
Wei Ling (an invented example) presents to the regional management team by video once a month, from a small HDB study room at home. Her changes are described below in the order she made them.
Put the camera at eye level or very slightly above. When a laptop sits on a desk, its camera is usually well below eye level and looks up at you. That angle is unflattering, and it makes it look as if you are looking down at your audience. Raise the laptop with a laptop stand, a stack of books or a sturdy box. If you use an external webcam, put it on top of the monitor and adjust the monitor's height.
Wei Ling made her first calls with her laptop flat on the desk. After watching one recording of herself, she raised the laptop onto two thick binders.
Frame yourself from around mid-chest up, with a little space above your head. This shows your face clearly and leaves room for your hands when you gesture, which helps the audience read you. If you sit too close, you fill the screen uncomfortably. If you sit too far back, your face looks small, especially to someone watching on a phone.
Light is the single biggest factor in how clearly people can see your face. Put the main light in front of you, shining on your face.
During the day a window is often the best light source. Sit facing it, or at a slight angle to it, so daylight falls on your face. If a bright window is behind you, the camera adjusts to that brightness and turns you into a silhouette, a dark outline where your face should be. Wei Ling's study had a window behind her chair, so she turned the desk round to face the window.
In the evening, or in a poorly lit room, put a lamp behind the laptop and point it roughly towards your face. You can also bounce a desk lamp off a white wall, which gives softer light than aiming the lamp straight at you. On cloudy days and in the evenings, Wei Ling angles a desk lamp at the wall behind her laptop. Avoid relying on overhead lights on their own, because they tend to cast shadows under your eyes.
Sound matters more than picture, so if you fix only one thing, fix your sound. People will put up with a grainy picture, but they struggle to follow someone they can't hear clearly. Bad audio is tiring to listen to: the audience starts missing words, then sentences, then the point.
Laptop microphones pick up everything: room echo, the keyboard, the fan, traffic outside, a neighbour's renovation. A headset with a microphone near the mouth, or a simple external microphone, makes a large difference. The earphones that came with your phone are usually better than the laptop's built-in microphone, because their microphone sits closer to your mouth. Arjun was told by a colleague that his laptop fan could be heard on every call. He fixed it with a pair of wired earphones that have a built-in microphone.
Choose a quiet room if you can, and close the door and windows. Rooms with soft furnishings such as curtains, a bed or a sofa have less echo than bare rooms with hard floors. On calls with several presenters, stay muted when you are not speaking and unmute just before you start.
Lesson 5.3, Eye contact, stance and gestures, covered eye contact in a room. On video it works differently. When you look at the faces on your screen, the audience sees you looking slightly down or away. To them, eye contact on video happens when you look directly into the camera lens.
You can't look at the lens all the time, because you also need to see your slides, your notes and the audience's reactions. Look at it on purpose at the moments that matter most: your opening, your core message, your key points and your ask. Look at the lens the way you would look at one person in a room, for one sentence or one thought, then return to your screen. It helps to place your notes or the slides window as close to the camera as possible, near the top of the screen, so your eyes never move far from the lens.
Most video call tools let you preview your camera before joining, and most phones and laptops can record a short video. Before an important online talk, record yourself for 30 seconds in your setup and watch it back. As you watch, check:
where the camera sits and how you are framed how the light falls on your face how you sound, including echo and background noise
Then fix the one thing that stands out most. Wei Ling's first change, the two binders, came from watching a single recording.
In the activity, you will set up your space this way and fix the one thing that stands out most.
Set up your space with the camera at eye level, light in front of you and a headset on. Record 30 seconds and fix one thing.
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