Fighting Your Silence: Turn On The Camera | Win $100!

[Tay Zonday]

Tell about a time that you were put "on the spot" and had to create.

The best story posted by midnight PST on December 27 will win $100! I will e-mail that person a $100 gift-certificate to Amazon.com! ( http://www.amazon.com/Amazon-com-Gift-Card/dp/B00067L6TQ )

[Roger]

When i was around 6 years old i had to create something for a show we had at school, and the show was about jesus and religius things like religions. This show tok place right before christmas and was going to be showed of in the mainhall where we used to play football and basket. We got told everything the teacher sayd and everything we had to do was to make a show the parents would like wich was about christmas. So i started to train and we got into a group on 6 and we spilited up the sentences so everyone could atleast say something. We trained everyday to remember the long sentence we where going to say on the show. One of the members on my group decided to mix some music for ur show so he found some cind of a relaxing music since it was christmas. At the showday we all waited exited behind the wall just to like get out there and get done. I was the last one who had the last sentence of everyone on my group. And my sentence was to say "Thanks for watching the show and may you all have a great christmas and happy new year!" So the first one went out and came back completely red around his head, i started to wonder what he had seen. The other one went out on the stage the teachers had made. Finally after seeing all the other come back with huge red heads it was my time! I walked out on the stage and when i came out i completely got shocked! I saw a camera standing out there like not far away at all but like in the midle of the hall. I started shacking everywhere and couldent even say the stupid small sentence i was supposed to say. My parents stod behind there and screamed up to be "Do your best sun we trust you!" I started shacking more and got all cold, at the end i started falling tears. That day was the worst day i have ever had at school, i dident even want to come on tv.

When i came home again my parents started going wild on me and asked me what my problem was, and i completely ignored them that day. The next day i came to school everyone in class started to laught at me for starting crying when i was in shockmode. They just keept on laughting, after a while they all stopped and i screamed out "What the heck is your guys problem? You all came back with red heads, like u guys did it so much better?"...silence came on and the teacher came into the classroom and sayd fast "Alright everyone! Im very disapointed about yesterday because noone could say the'ry sentence they where supossed to say" And everyone in my class looked at me like i knew that noone else in my class could say a sentence at all. I had right and that made me happy again even though i had a bad day the other day.

[Dylan]

Going from something recent.
Watching peope frolick around about the Youtube black out and sitting back and just wanting to shout out all that you feel but holding back because you know talking on such an issue could get you in troube you don't want to respond.
Then you turn on the camera say hello and your train off though about saying you have alot to say about just goes out fine and you produce your thoughts nice and freely. Then you don't care about anything anyone says because you said what you have to say and thats all that matters.

[Albert Van Otto]

It started from how i am excited with the vlogger on YouTube like renetto, nalts, and shaycarl. I was wondering myself was watched by a thousand, no... a million people around the world. Then well... my camera rolls for me.
But as you all know how you can feel when you at camera... Nerveous? Shiver? Sweaty? NO! it's pain...
When i was at camera, the first thing that i feel was excitment, so excited till your camera rolled so badly, and must do some re-take. Second take I started to lost the word you going to say. Okay, maybe it's nervous? NO! It just the excitment you just lose.
You see camera was just another eye you don't need to be scared of. OK say i never make a Vlog on the Internet. But I'm trying one. And the best will not folled your eye.
Say Tay Zonday. Are you do another retake on your Vlogging? If not, WOW! you're professional. cause everyone including renetto, nalts, or shaycarl was do another Re-take i think.
So well that's it. If you wanna silence me? well you gotta silence me now.

[The_Pinker_Sax]

Well... I remember when I wrote a song for a district contest a year ago and when the winners were announced and I heard my name and I came up and accepted my award and the judge asked for my speech and there I was standing there with my saxophone and a trophy behind a stand in front of 3,000 6th graders waiting in an awkward silence and I made up something for at least 4 minutes and sat back down in total embarrassment! and blushed as the darkest shade of red you can think of! and now that it's over with I'm so glad I can improvise!

[mandi]

This happened just the other day..I work at the waffle house as a waitress. We are assigned sections of the restaraunt to work in, and im pretty new at my job. Well ALL of the head hancho guys from all over decided to have a meeting at de waffle house I work at...bad enough? Nope..it got worse.... they sat in MY section. So I had to wait on them. Talk about scared... well the district manager asks for a orange juice so I put it in a togo cup and to him dat was a big deal. He asked why I did that and I was scared out my mind dat I was gonna get fired I sed its what I was told to do, and he sed who told u to do that.....now no1 told me 2 but I was soooo freaked out..I blurted out "my manager" and later my manager asked me about it and I simply replied "I was scared shittless, and he put me in the spotlight" we both laughed and went about our day

[Johnrichard1991]

There aren't too many situations in my life where I was forced to create something.
I try to make video's, but I lack a camera. Thus, my attempt at those videos never get recorded... XD

This only happened last month (november 2008).

At high school, the teacher said that we all had to make a video for an assignment in Multimedia 40S.
Since I'm a camera shy person, I decided to volunteer to film the Drama Classes play instead.
I got a $10 gift card to Wal-Mart a month later from the Drama Class teacher (December 18th 2008) after I finished a case cover, and a CD cover I made in Photoshop CS3 for that play I filmed.

Personally, I would rather be behind the camera instead of in front of it. It's a lot more fun.
If I ever had to actually create something, it would be in the form of a drawing, something I wrote, or a "youtube poop".
That's just personal preference.

[Daniel Sarhan]

I'm not a very good comedian, but i try. I am funny when i have a set up, like someone being stupid or saying something stupid TN. Friday and Saturday I did Interviews, on the spot, with some really popular people in the community of Magic, and they turned out to be alright. But here's what I had to go through to do the interview....But then I just remembered stuff that I seen on the web and the T.V. about the moon landing hoax, after that it just went like a breeze and I got like a mark in the high 70's...on the spot" I have no script for my videos, I just fly. My whole life is "on the spot" The only thing that isn't "on the spot" is if I study for tests.So I'm sitting in science class and suddenly realized that I was going to have to write an adventure for my players. Uh-oh. I only had about 5 minutes so I drew up a quick evil temple place and ended up coming to the club barely prepared. I sat down with my players and there was a nervous silence. I brought out some paper, my rough map, and my rulebooks, and flicked through the pages of monsters. After about a minute, I started the adventure.Well this was 3 hour gig of me, not only playing a genre I was unfamiliar with, but also playing songs that I had never heard of, and time signatures that I hadn't seen before such as 7/8 and all that kind of weird funk-a-dunk. Well anyway after all of this I managed to pull through the gig, with complements from the audience on my improve drum solo for one of the songs, and my improvised performance for the rest of the songs.but everyday I just thought about it, and i finally got the guts to apologize. Once i did I felt great! Overall, the situation that had come over the team was somewhat tragic in a way, but I was able to work it out. Being put on the spot like that wasn't what I wanted, but it's what happened, it worked out in the end. Now we are back to full working order and may even be getting another member on the team sometime soon. My film crew really works hard with what we do now and we all enjoy it a lot. Even with the difficulties we've had in the past, the whole thing worked out great. Then almost instantly, the questions started coming out of them like none other. So many people were talking at once, and me being the leader of the crew, I felt that I had to answer all of them. At this point I became panicked and confused, not knowing what to do. I had just made a decision that disappointed the entire crew. Questions like "Why not just get new people?", "What's going to happen now?", "We can't stop filming, it's what we enjoy doing (i know that's not a question, but it was said)!", "What's going to happen to our youtube stuff?" They had traveled through 4 levels of a tower, fought mummies, cultists, and a few cult leaders, and began an epic war against a long-dead evil. And somehow I managed to guide them through it all with half a sandwich up my ass.

Anyway, so that's my story.

Peace.

[SKYFOX]

My father's funeral. They asked if anyonewould like to say a few words and I felt I needed to stand up. I was up in front of all my relatives, and I wanted to say something. At the time I couldn't find the words and ended up saying "I'm gonna really really miss him.". I was really young at the time, I think I was in kindergarden or first grade, but my memory has never been that great. I always wonder if given a chance to again, how would I respond? What could I say about my father other than that?

[Casey Brandenburg]

i'm not sure how to do this, so i hope it works

[Alex]

I had to make a presentation on stage, about some project we did in school. basically it was about young ladys and gents creating their own small companys (age 15-19) (they actually make quite some profit. we made like, 1250 $, which is quite a lot of money if yer 15 years old). So there I was, 5 minutes before my speech I realized that I hadn't prepared a thing. So I went up, waited for my partner to finish and just stood there at the lectern . 8 seconds of silence passed. There is this awkward moment, when you expect someone to cough like in so many movies. And then something in my head just turned itself on. I turned to the presenter and said: Hey, could you just give me that mic, cause I hate to keep standing in one place. I joked, I entertained, I gave some info on the project. In total I only spoke for about 7 minutes. Everyone was laughing, someone shook my hand when I went off stage. I got out of the room, on the balcony and took a deep breath. I couldn't remember a thing. my brain was wiped. seriously. I have no idea what I said that day, but it must've been pretty good.

When I went back, the headmistress was just telling my partner something like: You did some great informative stuff Thomas.

She turned to me and said: Thanks for the entertainment

I guess everyone has a different experience, a different way. Some like to prepare for ages, then doing a great job while saying every sentence they prepared. Some just improvise.
Find out what type you are. It makes presenting a lot easier

Yes this is a simple story of some 16 year old boy but hey, its the only one that came to my mind

PS: excuse my poor english, I'm an austrian guy (do not mix up with Australia, I'll come to your house and burn it down).

[dustjam]

I was supposed to make a video in my college speech a couple of years ago for my group. I was assigned to a group with only women and I was the only guy. We were doing our final presentation on the dangers of a particular highway in California. I told them I would take care of the video, what they didn't is that it would be very humorous.

I was the kind of guy who was very humorous, so I made the video a funny commentary on the dangers of highway. The group was disappointed to say least. One girl still has hated me to this day because I didn't make the video more serious enough. Everybody in the class thought it was funny and me and my group ended up getting a C grade in the class.

I wasn't trying to make everybody upset with this video, I was trying to convey creativity and humor so people could learn, but be entertained as well. I would never sacrifice my creativity in multimedia or any other type of medium for anything else.

[Terrance]

The most memorable time I was put on the spot have to be when I was in high school. I had entered a poem for a contest that the art department was holding. So I entered it and won first place prize for my "original poem" which was 50 bucks... well not that original, in fact I had copied that exact poem from the internet word for word. Apparently nobody noticed, I was in the clear OR so I thought I was...well as it turned out karma came back to me bite square in the buttocks....that following day the school had an assembly were every student, parents, staff, and representatives from the school board were in attendance.... unbeknownst to me...they were there to hear me and the other runner ups read our poems in front of the auditorium. So as i'm sitting there litterally about to soil my pants....they call my name and at the moment my heart sank into my belly, my face got warm, blood rushed to my head, and they room began to close in on me.... the room was silent, motionless, it seemed as if time stood still.....Yikes the whole room was turned and looking directly at me...there I sat slouched down in the movie theater styled seats terrified. I finally stood up and walked towards the stage... that was the longest walk iv'e ever took....when I reached the podium I looked out into the audience and I NERVOUS. I opened my mouth but NO words came out... took a deep breath and blumbed through it....Then thats when a student yelled out "that wasn't an original poem thats A Dream Within A Dream by Edgar Allan Poe"......the crowd gasped the room silent ..and there I stood like an idiot speechless. Geez did I catch hell from it ...the school took my prize money back, I had to write an apology to the art department and from that day on I was pretty much blacklisted throughout my high school career. So as I assess it I hate that I plagiarized (such a famous poet lol j/k) With that said i'm glad that it happened because it not only taught me a lesson but someone else that was sitting in those seats that day walked away with a lesson learned too i'm sure. So that my story hope you've enjoyed it and took something from it. Peace.

Signing Out,
Terrance