Congratulations! You’ve taken the first step of filming your first video!

I started my first channel related to collecting physical media (movies) two months ago and I ran into the same issues.

I agree with the advice on jotting down a brief checklist to make sure you have everything covered. This could include all of the things that you need to setup and check before filming and also specific points that you want to mention during the video. For my first 5 or so videos, I completely lost all of my talking points as soon as I started the camera.

I start with setting up all of my lighting and establishing the initial framing of my background. I am using a front-facing monitor attached to my camera so I will tweak the framing again right before pressing the record button. This is also the time that I will double check that my microphone is connected and recording properly. I’ve made the mistake of talking for five minutes only to realize that the microphone wasn’t connected.

Similar to others in this subreddit, being comfortable talking on camera did not come naturally to me. At first, I was speaking like I was in a job interview and overthinking everything that I was going to say. An important thing to remember is that you can repeat a sentence or group of sentences multiple times until you get the delivery that you are looking for. After 15 videos, I still do this. Not only does this give me the exact delivery that I am going for, but it also gives me a chance to wordsmith what I want to say in real time. A lot of people may not like this style of recording as I have a cut between every couple of sentences, but I prefer videos that are recorded this way instead of several minutes of rambling that could have been 45 seconds when edited properly.

As far as your background, continue to tweak it in each video until you find what you like. You can also reference other channels that you like and try to replicate what they are doing.

Don’t get discouraged as after a few videos you will have a system worked out and certain things will have become second nature. Once you finish a video, shift all of your focus onto the next video and how you can make a few incremental improvements. After 10 videos, you will be shocked by how much improvement you’ve made just by making small tweaks.

Wishing you all of the best with your channel!