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so there you are creating a video and you know that potentially thousands of people

could be watching that video one day but you're sitting alone in your office

looking at a wall or something and you're sitting there talking to an inanimate object

this is the same if you're recording into a microphone too it's inanimate it's just sitting

there and this creates a disconnect in your brain and that disconnect can create anxiety and that

anxiety can affect the most expressive parts of your face or your voice or both and that can result

in what actors call dead eyes. So if you're feeling awkward when you're staring into that lens,

you're actually correct to feel that way because you're talking to something that can't respond.

So in this episode, we're going to do a drill to help you override that internal thing that's going

on for you. And this is so you can look and you can feel more like yourself when you're making

your audio or video content. Welcome to the Podcast Performance Lab. I'm your host,

Janda Hahn, and in this show, we take the most effective tools from unscripted improvised

performance and behavioral psychology and apply those things directly to your video and audio

content. So let's get into the science of why things like dead eyes even happen in the first

place, and it has to do with your nervous system. We need to start with the anatomy, but I'll keep

it pretty quick here. So the polyvagal theory was developed by Dr. Stephen Porges, and that theory

explains how we connect with other human beings, and it has to do with that nervous system. And part

of this is that we have a social engagement system, as it's called, and this social engagement system

turns on when we connect actively with other human beings. Like when we see a person, we send

these signals back and forth of what's happening right now. And engaging that social engagement

system happens when we feel safe with that other person. And this also affects our physiology while

it's happening because we give these signals to the other person using our eyes and our voice.

Like our voices, they become more melodic. Our eyes, they have the muscle systems around the

edges of them engaged. They sort of crinkle when we smile and that's how we communicate

with other people and that's how it affects our feelings. So now think about your camera,

for example, it doesn't do any of these things, but you're still trying to engage with it. You're

looking at it. You're staring at it. It gives you nothing back. That can be really difficult

when we're recording our content. There's a famous experiment called the still face experiment,

and it was done by a Dr. Ed Tronick. And in this study, a parent plays with their baby and everything

is going great. Then the parent actually stops moving their face and just stares blankly at their

baby. And the baby tries naturally to get a reaction, but then that baby gets frustrated,

it disengages, and it gets upset. So this is a study where they discovered this still face thing,

And it can sort of happen to you too when you're recording.

Like, not long into recording a solo episode

where you're just trying to engage with that camera lens or microphone,

you're pouring all of your energy into that piece of hardware.

But the hardware is inanimate, obviously,

and it gives you absolutely nothing back.

And your nervous system will actually interpret that feeling,

that happening as some kind of rejection and then it reacts to that so your body switches gears and

it moves out of that really safe social engagement mode that's the one from the study where you feel

really safe with the other person where they're giving you these signals back and you're giving

them that this back and forth where everybody's saying hey we're all on the same page it moves

out of that into sort of a defensive kind of mode. And this switch happening is really expensive to

your metabolic system. You're trying to force a smile or force showing emotions or force showing

that engagement that you're not actually feeling. It's not actually happening. So that's where the

dissonance in your mind happens. Like your mouth is smiling, but your eyes are dead. And those dead

eyes just don't match the smile that you're throwing out there. Your eyes are flat because

the muscles around them aren't engaged. And to make matters worse, the lens kind of looks like a

threat, scientifically speaking at least, because predators in the animal kingdom in general, they

stare at their prey or whatever they're setting their sights on with this large fixed unblinked

unblinking dilated pupil, which is kind of like a camera lens in appearance. So even though it's

just a scientific thing, subconsciously you could be reacting a little bit to that as well. So I'll

put all the links to all of the science here from the polyvagal theory right through to the unblinking

eye thing in the description. Now that we know the biology involved in all of this, we need a way to

deal with it when we're actually making our audio and video content. And one way to do this

is changing how we perceive the camera itself. And the first part of this is acting theory.

And then I'm going to give you a drill that borrows from improv. So Stanislavski, who's best known for

method acting, had this concept that can be pretty useful in this context. And it's called the

circles of attention. Now imagine three circles, a small one, a medium one, and a large one.

And the small circle is just you alone. So you're focusing in on yourself, like you're wondering,

how do I look? Is my hair okay? How do I sound? All those sort of things.

The medium-sized circle is just you and one other person. And this is where the connection really

happens. And now the large circle is the whole room. It's the whole audience, really, or the

millions of people watching your video, potentially. So the dead eyes, they happen in acting when

you're thinking about that large circle, the one with millions of video watchers, because

that audience is invisible. Even if you're on a stage, those bright lights effectively do the

same thing because you can't really see the audience too well but you still like even without

seeing them and all of these cases you feel the weight of all of those eyeballs all of those

potential viewers who are judging you and that puts a ton of pressure on your nervous system

you can also get stuck in that small circle that's one with just you in it because you can get really

self-conscious about like talking at a wall, for example, like what I'm doing right now with the

microphone. And even if you're just alone talking at that wall, you start monitoring your own speech,

even though you're the only one there to hear it. So the fix for this is to just stay in that

medium-sized circle, the one with you and one other person, because this way you can sort of

trick your brain into believing that the lens is actually another person that you're talking to,

right? So in improv and acting, we use a technique called personalization. And that means like that

we're not talking to an audience, a whole group of people like we're doing in a show or in a podcast.

you're not talking to listeners the whole demographic you're talking to one person

the individual the one listener you and that's because we can only really talk to a person and

worry about what that one person thinks now actors and other professionals who speak to the lens like

news broadcasters really noteworthy ones you've heard of they'll use a technique where they're

Imagining a person that they're talking to specifically, like they'll take somebody that they really like in their life, like a partner or a really close friend, and they'll imagine that they're delivering their entire newscast or their monologue or whatever it is to that specific person.

And that's what adds the connection, that feeling, because if you're talking to a whole group, that becomes really performative.

Like when I was a dance fitness instructor, I taught a group of around 20 people or so at the same time.

And when I was up on stage, most of the time I delivered all of my teaching to all of them.

It was very performative. It was very big.

It wasn't very personal, except when I did do personal stuff within, but most of the class was very performative in nature.

But when I'm doing a podcast, I imagine that I'm talking to you, one person on the other side of the lens or the other side of the microphone.

And that's a very different feeling for me and hopefully for you, the listener.

And when I deliver these, I'm always thinking about what you, the individual, thinks.

You, the listener, who I'm delivering these things to.

And that's when we get more of that social engagement, that theory, that system back.

And it will change our voices.

It will change what our faces look like.

So here's that drill to make this happen for you, if it's an issue.

So just a quick note, if you want these tips and the drills that I do in these podcast episodes as written text-based instructions,

you can always subscribe to my newsletter at StereoForest.com to get them delivered to you in that format.

So this is the drill I call talk to the face, very literal,

and it kind of creates an external safety cue for your brain to use while you record.

The first step is to pick someone you actually like or love,

somebody that you really trust and someone who makes you smile and feel good and feel safe

because that's where we're getting those right emotions from.

So you're probably not picking someone from your professional life for this one.

And the next step is to print out a photo of that person

or pull it up on your phone and put it directly next to your hardware.

And you could do this using something like a phone holder,

some kind of stand if you're using your phone.

Just don't cover the lens with whatever is holding this photo.

put it right next to the lens or the microphone.

Now, research shows that looking two to five degrees below the lens,

below the center of the lens,

looks like the eye is actually making direct eye contact with the viewer.

So if you're making like a video podcast, that will be relevant to you.

Because you do want to make it look like you're making eye contact

with the person listening to you.

So having that photo right next to the lens, even for videos that you're actually going to put online, can work.

And I'll also link the study with that information about the degrees and the eye contact and the lens in the show notes.

So now for the next step is to just start recording and ignore that lens.

Just look right at the photo.

Speak your video's intro to that person in the photo directly and practice directly doing that, literally, by using their name.

So I might go something like, hey, Carissa, I've been waiting to tell you about the fact it actually snowed on Christmas Eve.

And my new husky mix absolutely loved it.

I've never taken her out in the snow before.

Anyways, that's just an example.

And you can cut out the part with their name or you can just keep this particular step for practice only.

And then compare your output and notice what changes in your content.

Like you might notice your voice changes, your pitch might drop when you're talking to this person instead of talking directly to your hardware.

Or notice any visual changes.

If you're taking video, like pay attention to your face and how your face might change

or your body language overall, how you hold yourself on the chair.

It might change.

So you're probably overall notice yourself getting a little bit less performy or a little

bit less stiff.

Now, it's not going to look like you're delivering something to a large audience, and that's good.

You're just kind of talking to that person that you know, that person in the photo.

Once you've done this a few times, you can then remove the training wheels, as it were.

The advanced version, the pro version of this is to just remove that photo and stare at that lens or just a few degrees below it.

And you're going to use your visual imagination at this step.

So this is an acting technique where you're endowing an object with human qualities.

You're visualizing your friend's face, where the lens is, and you're just kind of projecting

that mental image onto the lens.

And you want to try to actively look at them like you would naturally in person if you're

doing video.

And on this note, humans have a huge range from not being able to visually imagine things

to being able to really hyper visualize things in their mind.

And most people are somewhere in between those two things.

So that's probably statistically you.

But if you can't visualize at all,

which is like up to 3% of the population,

you can keep a photo there

until you're comfortable to remove it

or you don't have to remove it either.

You can always have it there.

It does work.

So an important thing here

is that you don't want to like passively stare at the lens or your visualization on top of the lens

if you're at that point. Think of it this way. It's like if you're thinking about your notes or

your script, you're really in your head. And when people are really in their head, their eyes sort

of just fixate on the person that they're talking to in this sort of passive way because they're in

their head. They're thinking about what do I need to say, right? It's kind of this distraction when

you're trying to remember a line or you get this glazed overlook like I'm not quite there. Like if

you, for example, notice somebody who's not really listening to you when they're talking, it's kind of

like that look as well. So instead you want to scan the person that you're envisioning, like you're

scanning for their reaction to what you're saying and that can kind of give you that body language

or the signals in your face that you're really engaged.

You're really paying attention to their reactions.

And those micro movements in your eyes,

they make you look more alive and more engaged

and they remove the dead eyes look.

So now a couple more things about those dead eyes.

So make sure that you remember to blink if you're making a video

because if we stare, we sort of change how we naturally blink.

So we want to make sure we aren't reducing our blink rate too much, and we want to keep that part natural.

And also your lighting.

If you're making videos, make sure that people can even see your eyes in the first place.

Dead eyes is biology, really.

It's human nature.

And if this happens in your videos or it happens in your voice, if you're making audio content,

you'll pick up that something is slightly off when you listen to it.

Your listeners will be as well.

And it will make your content a little bit harder to connect with.

There's going to be that disconnect there because you aren't your natural self.

So you can use these tools from acting and from improv to help you out to come across more natural when you're talking to the camera or into the microphone because you'll feel more natural doing so.

if you can imagine visualizing a person that you know that you're just talking to that person

get that picture next to the camera to help you out give it a few tries and see what happens

see what the difference is and see if that will work for your next episodes and if you're still

here i just want to mention before i go the great podcast series that's actually called dead eyes

It's by a really well-known improviser and actor called Connor Ratliff.

And it's about his experience of being told that he has dead eyes.

And then everything that went from there.

It's a really great series.

It's a lot about how we deal as humans with things like rejection.

So there's a lot of learning to be had in that series.

It's also just a great story.

Really great guests as well.

So I recommend that one.

And that's all I have for this episode.

Bye for now.