Episode #124: Presentation Visuals Mastery Part Five

We continue our series on presentation visuals mastery.

Using visuals when presenting helps us to relay the key messages. However, sometimes you don’t need to have things up on the screen at all. You can show the visual and then disappear it. You do this because you don’t want to have the screen images competing with your verbal message. Just hit B. Then the whole screen will go black and there is nothing to distract your audience. They have got to listen to you and look at you. And you can get the screen back up by just hitting the space bar. If you want to go to an all-white screen, rather than black, you can just hit W. It might be a dark room and you want to have a bit of light. Hit W for white. I you want to black it out then B for black.

Remember, your own visuals can be a distraction from your message. Make sure they are relevant. Make sure they are not overpowering you. Think of how the visuals will look on the big screen when you are creating them. Make sure that the audience is looking at you, not what’s on the screen. Design it so in two seconds they can get it, then they can come back to you to hear commentary on what is on the screen.

Be careful about waving your hands around with the projector in front of you and the screen behind you. We can start feeling like shadow puppets. People get easily distracted by the shadow of your hand on the screen, so be careful about that. That’s something you don’t want happening. You might be speaking in a relatively confined space, so without knowing it, your shoulder is casting a shadow on the screen. Cut these distractions down be being self aware of your body positioning and always try to give yourself some space around you.

Be careful of other distractions. Don’t hold your notes in your hand. When we are teaching people how to give presentations, sometimes people want to hold the actual document they’ve prepared in their hand. The rub is they give their talk and don’t even look at it. Actually, we tell them they don’t need it. Leave it on your desk or leave it somewhere close. You can look at the notes, but don’t hold them in your hand. Waving notes around becomes a competitor for audience attention. We want to eliminate as many distractions as possible from our message.

If you do have an exhibit or something that you want to show the audience, that’s great. Pick it up, use it and then put it down again. You don’t have to hold it the whole time. After about fifteen seconds, the power of the exhibit dies and it is now restricting you from employing gestures. Also don’t have things in your pocket. If you must have them then bring them out, show the audience and then just put them away so it is not distracting.

Power is also a tricky thing because the power supply can go down. This can happen. Suddenly you lose the screen entirely and your whole visual presentation is gone. All those great graphs, photos, key points for you to follow in your talk. Soldier on. Your laptop was not connected to the power supply and then your laptop battery dies, just as you start presenting or part way through. “I was sure I had plenty of battery power”, you say, as the panic sets in. Check all these things beforehand so that you are on track to have power. As I said, if you do lose power, charge on. Keep going. Don’t worry about it, unless you have to evacuate the building for some reason. But keep going. If power fails, be prepared. Have a Plan B in your mind, about what you are going to talk about. Be prepared to wrap it up a little early if you have to. Don’t look stuck, don’t look lost. Keep going. Even smart people forget this rule to their peril.

Michael Bay is a top director in Hollywood, famous for the Transformer series of movies. He was presenting for Samsung at a promotional event in Las Vegas. The power to the teleprompters suddenly went down, about ten seconds in. He had no plan B. He was unable to continue. He left the stage with his tail well between his legs, totally humiliated. Look for it on YouTube and see the whole catastrophe. It can happen to you too, so always be ready to carry on with no visuals if something goes hopelessly wrong.

Mysterious things do happens to us too. I was giving a presentation recently. I got there early, fortunately. I went through everything, checked my visuals, it was all working like a charm. And then suddenly, suddenly the visuals were not working. No matter what I did, I could not get the computer to work. I do not know to this day what was wrong.

I had to reboot the computer and reset it. You know it takes time to go through the whole process. Test everything and always give yourself some time margin. In that particular case, with about ninety seconds to spare, I got it back up again and we were away. Here is the key point though. I could have presented without the visuals. It wasn’t a big deal, I wasn’t stressed, I had my Plan B. I could have done it without the visuals, but it was more powerful with the visuals, giving some extra buzz to what I was talking about. But these things do happen, so get there early and check, check, check.

Remotes are useful for clicking through the presentation slide deck. You can move away from the podium or the laptop and use the stage to your full advantage. I have a bit of a love-hate thing with visual remotes. Often they don’t work or stop working. I try to hold it in my hand in a way that it is not obvious to the audience, that I’ve got it. I want to use my hands for gesturing. I’ll try and put it down if I don’t need it, so both hands are free for getsures.

Laser pointers are dangerous. Some people go nuts with the laser pointer. The worst thing is when they point the laser at the audience. We have all seen that. Let’s zap a few corneas with that laser beam. No, don’t do that. They lack self awareness and are whizzing the laser beam around all over the place. It’s like they’ve forgotten that the laser is on, so the laser is doing some sort of laser light show in the venue.

Or they try to use the laser beam to indicate something on the screen and they are whipping it around at a very rapid pace, all over the place. No. If you are going to use the laser, go to the word or the section on screen and use the beam slowly. Move it very slowly, if you are going to circle something or move it across something that you want to underline. Very, very slow movement is the key.

Next week we will continue with Part Six of our series on Presentation Visuals Mastery.