Are You Media Ready?
Cameras are everywhere. No matter what format--security, photo ID, analog or digital, cameras are invasive, and pervasive these days. Get ready. A still photograph, or even seconds of a moving picture, can change a life for better or worse. Prepare to meet the challenge.
Celebrities, politicians, and power players are used to the limelight. After hours of media training and experience, however, some of them still fall short of putting their best face forward. Behavior and attitude are important. Clothing is equally significant, but how a person communicates is what truly matters. Delivering a single, congruent message through facial expression, dress, posture, movement and vocal tone and inflection communicates with such power that anyone who does rarely meets with inattention or lukewarm responses.
The question: Are You Media Ready? Can you hold your own in the spotlight? Take time now to become aware of how to handle yourself when you are on the receiving side of media attention. Learn what to consider when being interviewed or photographed. The camera quickly reveals your level of comfort with yourself, and the situation you’re in when you are being photographed. While there is little that can be done to control the situation once you’re in it, there’s a lot you can do to prepare yourself.
A wide variety of assignments and experiences in photography and television production taught me that one must start early and work on developing the behavior required to shine when that 15 minutes of fame Andy Warhol promised everyone announces itself. For starters, awareness and practice of the three points below will put you on the road to being ready for your close up.
1. Build a list of professional advisors and personal supporters from which you can choose to help you manage an unforeseen or frenzied media experience. Waiting until it knocks at the door is too late to make appropriate, well-examined choices--the choices right for you and the situation. This is crucial and calls for a particular balance of logic, due diligence and intuition.
2. Relax. Learn what it takes to bring a sense of internal calm to yourself when all around you is a swirl of emotion and commotion. That deep breathing you learned in yoga class--do it. You need a few moments of escape from the external chaos to redirect your thinking before deciding on the next step or what you want to do about the moment at hand.
3. Maybe the most difficult thing to remember, let alone to actually do, is to take nothing personally. Stay in the moment. Make the effort to discover and understand what is happening. Then, respond to immediate events as calmly as possible.
These are tall orders, but if you give them consideration, prepare and practice, your 15 minutes in the spotlight may not be perfect, but you will shine much brighter than you thought you could under the pressure of a stressful media event.
Questions, comments . . . ?
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Cameras are everywhere. No matter what format--security, photo ID, analog or digital, cameras are invasive, and pervasive these days. Get ready. A still photograph, or even seconds of a moving picture, can change a life for better or worse. Prepare to meet the challenge.
Celebrities, politicians, and power players are used to the limelight. After hours of media training and experience, however, some of them still fall short of putting their best face forward. Behavior and attitude are important. Clothing is equally significant, but how a person communicates is what truly matters. Delivering a single, congruent message through facial expression, dress, posture, movement and vocal tone and inflection communicates with such power that anyone who does rarely meets with inattention or lukewarm responses.
The question: Are You Media Ready? Can you hold your own in the spotlight? Take time now to become aware of how to handle yourself when you are on the receiving side of media attention. Learn what to consider when being interviewed or photographed. The camera quickly reveals your level of comfort with yourself, and the situation you’re in when you are being photographed. While there is little that can be done to control the situation once you’re in it, there’s a lot you can do to prepare yourself.
A wide variety of assignments and experiences in photography and television production taught me that one must start early and work on developing the behavior required to shine when that 15 minutes of fame Andy Warhol promised everyone announces itself. For starters, awareness and practice of the three points below will put you on the road to being ready for your close up.
1. Build a list of professional advisors and personal supporters from which you can choose to help you manage an unforeseen or frenzied media experience. Waiting until it knocks at the door is too late to make appropriate, well-examined choices--the choices right for you and the situation. This is crucial and calls for a particular balance of logic, due diligence and intuition.
2. Relax. Learn what it takes to bring a sense of internal calm to yourself when all around you is a swirl of emotion and commotion. That deep breathing you learned in yoga class--do it. You need a few moments of escape from the external chaos to redirect your thinking before deciding on the next step or what you want to do about the moment at hand.
3. Maybe the most difficult thing to remember, let alone to actually do, is to take nothing personally. Stay in the moment. Make the effort to discover and understand what is happening. Then, respond to immediate events as calmly as possible.
These are tall orders, but if you give them consideration, prepare and practice, your 15 minutes in the spotlight may not be perfect, but you will shine much brighter than you thought you could under the pressure of a stressful media event.
Questions, comments . . . ?
### ### ###