5 Ways to Optimize Your Video for Depositions

• Publication year: 2022
• Citation: Vol. 35 No. 1
• Author: By Shelley Golden

5 Ways to Optimize Your Video for Depositions

By Shelley Golden

As Zoom trials and depositions continue to be conducted online in this COVID era, it's critical to control how you, and everyone involved in the case, show up. Whether it's you, your client, your deponents, or expert witnesses, each must come across polished, credible, and trustworthy.

Since people decide within 100 milliseconds whether to trust another person, according to the 2006 Princeton University study by Todorov and Willis, it's important to be intentional in aligning all the visual aspects in the Zoom box, which can make or break your court case. Willis & Todorov, First Impressions: Making Up Your Mind After a 100-Ms Exposure to a Face (2006) 17 Psych. Sci. 592. Credibility is more challenging on Zoom since you usually don't generally see one's entire body, thus, making it more difficult to read the non-verbal cues.

Your expert witness knows that opposing counsel is scrutinizing every behavior, comment, and gesture, and you're paying them for their professionalism, not just their expertise. And they may not be aware that being deposed on Zoom requires that they pay additional attention to how they show up.

Your client and deponents may be even less aware that their background, lighting, camera angle, and clothing can factor heavily into which way the case goes.

The 5 Zoom Makeover Steps to Increase Credibility and Trustworthiness

To ensure each participant intentionally shows up the way you want them to, you can suggest they follow my five-step process. Remember: video catches everything — it's a permanent record of each person's words, behaviors, and emotions. Understanding the principles underlying the steps will give you an even better chance to win your case.

For participants who are nervous about appearing on video, these steps will act as a positive safety valve that helps to improve their confidence level.

The burden is now on the individual.

1. Camera

Empirical research in many fields, such as film and education (virtual classrooms), generally conclude that the subject speakers were rated as most trustworthy when videoed from eye-level, and that low and high-camera angles were often associated with less trust.

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Set the camera just at eye level. Make sure to look directly into the camera. This shows the audience you are looking and talking directly to them.

• Sit about three feet from the camera lens.
• Frame yourself so that your eyes are in the top one-third of the Zoom window.
• Leave...