Exhibitionists, performance artists, and newscasters aside, most people feel some embarrassment at watching themselves on video. A few months ago Arnold helped me prepare for a Toastmasters speech contest by videoing my speech and then analyzing it with me, and I spent most of the time cringing in embarrassment. It was painfully hard to watch how I gesture, move, and talk in such unflinching detail. For example, every time I pressed the remote control to change the slide, I seemed to be brandishing it like I was Harry Potter casting a spell!

I therefore have enormous respect for the students from the Center for Education Engineering Development, Hokkaido University who bravely let Michael Bayne and I film them doing presentations. Not only were they presenting on difficult technical subjects, they were also doing this in their non-native language.

The format of the classes was simple: students were filmed doing a presentation and then handling question and answers. We then played back the presentations, and discussed their strengths and weaknesses. My approach was to skip to the most interesting (painful!) parts of the presentation, advise them on how to improve, and then do a ‘take two!’ of the tricky areas. The idea was the Japanese kaizen (改善) approach: do, evaluate, and redo. Each class had two consecutive Saturday classes, which allowed for them to review the video at their own pace and figure out what to do to improve.

An unexpected surprise for the students came when they also saw themselves looking very professional. We all noticed that the best ‘performances’ typically came at the question and answer session. There was smiling, gesturing, great eye contact, and enthusiasm as the students wrestled with questions from their peers. The biggest smiles came at the very end.

‘Why do you wait to show such confidence until the very end?’ I asked over and over.

And the answer came back…’I’m happy because it’s over!’ and ‘I’m relieved!’.

Does this mean that you have to wait until the end of your presentation before you can start to enjoy it? If so, what a waste!　もったいない!

My advice is to prepare and practice as hard as you can in advance. The students at Hokkaido all noticed an improvement in the second performance in terms of fluency, confidence, and interaction with the audience.

Watching themselves on video showed them two things. One was when they did not communicate with the audience because they were struggling with the language or their nerves. This is good information about where to spend more time practicing. The second thing they saw was how great they looked when they just relaxed and enjoyed the chance to communicate their work. Even if they only smiled at the very end, I hope they’ll see how good they can look!

Watching yourself on video may not be a comfortable experience, but it is certainly educational. And if it spurs you to practice harder, it’s a valuable trigger too!