Being watched through a lens

Performing on stage does not scare me. I’m not sure it has ever scared me. I figure the reasons are as such: 1) I love attention, so I’m not afraid of having a room full of eyes on me; and 2) my early, care-free experiences on stage. (When I was in the Boy Scouts performing skits and songs in front of a few hundred people, it was a very low stakes situation to perform under. I wasn’t going to get booed, as long as I gave an honest effort. No one else wanted to be where I was.)

The other day, however, I was filming a sketch that I wrote (hopefully coming out soon) and with each take, I felt like I was doing better and better. As this was happening, I realized that I’m way more worried about being filmed than I am about performing on stage. It seems to me that for most people it would be the opposite. Totally fine filming things in a controlled environment, not okay in front of an audience. When performing on stage, I have the confidence to know that I won’t mess everything up too badly and that one the show is over, it’s over. When recording something though, I have to worry about that performance permanently. People can slow it down and take screen shots. Then those screen shots can be looked at in context and analyzed (unlike a photograph from a live show).

I’ve also realized I don’t know how to act in front of a camera. On a stage, it’s all good. On a camera, there are things like the invisible boundaries of the camera which don’t exist in a theater. There are microphones that I don’t know how to adapt to like I could with one for a stand-up show. The acting needs to be repeated over and over where I’m used to the rough nature of live sketch or the non-repeating world of improv.

This is why I’m going to start making more video sketches. I’ve got to get used to this kind of thing. And as that recent shoot showed me, I just need to loosen up more in front of the camera and the results will be better.