Inside a coaching session: how we work on your delivery to camera
A look at how one-to-one on-camera coaching actually runs, from the first recorded take to the notes you keep, and what Helen looks for when she watches a reporter speak to the lens.
Helen Marsden · · 6 minutes to read
Starting with an honest first take
Every coaching programme begins the same way: you record a short piece to camera on your own, with no preparation from me. It might be a forty-second report on something you covered recently, or a stand-up about the street outside your window. I ask for it before we speak because it shows me how you really sound when nobody is steering you.
You send the file, and I watch it twice. The first time I watch as a viewer would, noting where my attention drifts. The second time I stop and start it, writing down what happens to your pace, your eyes and your breathing at each point. Most people are surprised that the problems they worry about are rarely the ones I flag.
By the time we meet online, I already have a short list of two or three things worth changing first. Nobody improves everything in one afternoon, so we choose the changes that will lift the most.
What I watch for on the screen
When I review a take, I am looking at habits rather than mistakes. A reporter who rushes the opening line is usually nervous about the first sentence, not careless. Someone who glances down at a notebook mid-sentence has often written lines that are hard to say aloud. Reading the habit tells me where the cause sits.
Eyes come first. A viewer feels it immediately when you look slightly off the lens, and equally when you stare at it without blinking. Then pace: do you speed up on numbers and names, which are exactly the words the audience needs time to catch? Then your hands and shoulders, which often tighten when a sentence runs long.
I also listen with the picture off. If the piece still makes sense and sounds like a person talking, the delivery is working. If it sounds like reading, we have found where to begin.
Rewriting the script so it can be spoken
A large part of the work is not performance at all, but writing. Scripts that read well on a page are often awkward in the mouth: long clauses, stacked figures, a verb waiting at the end of a sentence. I ask reporters to read their lines aloud and mark every place they run out of breath.
We then rewrite together, shortening sentences, moving the key fact to the front and trimming anything that only exists to sound official. Often a line of thirty words becomes two lines of twelve, and the delivery improves without any change to how you speak.
I never write the piece for you. My notes suggest a direction, and you choose the words. A script in your own phrasing is the one you can still say calmly when the wind picks up and the producer is counting you in.
Practising calm in front of the lens
Calm is not something I can hand over, but it can be built through repetition under mild pressure. In the live sessions we do the same piece several times, changing one thing each round. First we slow the opening. Then we hold a second of silence before speaking. Then we deliberately lose our place and recover.
That last exercise matters most. Reporters tend to dread the stumble, so I make it routine. When you have practised dropping a line and picking it up with a plain pause, the fear shrinks to an ordinary event.
We also work on the minute before recording: where your feet are, how you breathe out before the first word, what you do with your hands. Small physical routines give your mind something steady to hold on to while the red light is on.
Recorded feedback between sessions
Live sessions are only part of the arrangement. Between them you record fresh takes in your own surroundings, on your own equipment, and send them to me. I reply with a written note and sometimes a short recorded comment, pointing to the moment in the clip I mean.
This gap is deliberate. Skills settle when you use them away from the tutor, in the conditions you actually face. A good take in a quiet room tells us little, but a decent one beside a busy road tells us a great deal.
Each note is short, with one thing to keep, one thing to change and one thing to try next. Keeping the list that brief means you remember it when you pick up the camera again, which is the point of the whole exercise.
How a session ends and what you take away
We close each live session by recording the piece one last time and watching it back together beside the first take. The difference is rarely dramatic, but it is usually audible, and seeing it is more persuasive than anything I could say.
You leave with your own marked script, a short list of habits to watch and a recording you can compare against later. Many reporters keep these and return to them before a difficult assignment, which tells me the material is useful rather than decorative.
What we do not do is promise a transformation. Coaching sharpens what is already there. If you arrive with a clear voice and a nervous habit, you leave with the same voice and a habit you can see coming.
Behind the polished piece to camera sits plain, repeatable work: an honest first take, a script written to be spoken, practice with small stumbles and short notes between sessions. None of it is secret, and all of it can be learned. If you are thinking about coaching this autumn, start by recording forty seconds of something you know well and watching it twice. You will already have the beginning of a list.
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