Every time I watch/hear myself on a recording, I want to slowly crawl into a tiny hole and die. Thankfully I've gotten better at being used to watching and listening to myself on recording. Even though I'm slightly more comfortable with this, I sometimes watch myself and go "Ick...". For the Time Traveler's presentation, I also watched the video of myself and thought "Ick..." but it wasn't as icky as it could have been.
Preparedness
I thought I was adequately prepared. I knew what I wanted to speak about and how to explain it properly to a group of people from 300 years ago. I think I did a pretty good job of explaining the basic concept of sunscreen and WHY people use sunscreen. If I could go back though, I think I would have tried to prepare my timing a bit better. When I practiced, my explanation fit the time requirement of 2 minutes perfectly, but I forgot to factor in nerves, so I think the explanation may have seemed a tiny bit rushed near the end.
Body Language
Okay, for body language, I don't think I was necessarily awful, but I don't think my body language was warm and inviting either. I pretty much stood like a high school student being made to go up and talk in front of her peers about a mundane object. My posture was bad, and I sometimes looked at the ground, but other than that I don't think my body language made people feel uncomfortable or weird when they watched me. My body language was pretty average, in a good way, I think.
Voice and Diction
Thanks to theater, I've learned how to effectively project and speak clearly over the past few years. I do believe that my diction and inflection were appropriate for the presentation. I could understand everything I said, and I spoke in a casual, but informative tone: appropriate for this presentation. When I watched the video though, in some places my voice sounded like I was about to cry. I wasn't actually going to cry, but I was definitely nervous to speak in front of everybody which made my voice sound throaty and on the verge of tears at times.
Content
I did well when it came to content. My product I was explaining was sunscreen, which is pretty simple to explain, but if you lived a hundred years ago, you would probably be wondering why people rubbed this coconut-infused white cream on their skin. So in order to make sense, I had to explain what sunscreen was for; to prevent your cells from being damaged from UV rays. My explanation of this made sense and it was easy for an outsider to understand. I think content was probably the area I did best in; either content or voice/diction.
Ability to Generate Interest and Overall Effectiveness
To be honest, I feel like the ability to generate interest is kind of hard to judge, because let's face it: I'm talking about sunscreen. Sunscreen. It's not the most interesting thing in the world. However, I think that talking about cells and DNA is what made the presentation interesting. If you lived in America three hundred years ago, you would have no clue that your body was made up of cells and DNA was responsible for how you looked. If I had lived 300 years ago and somebody came up to me and told me about DNA, I'd be fascinated. When you look at it that way, what starts off as a presentation about a bottle of white cream suddenly turns into a presentation about a super-shield that can protect you from harmful rays in the sun. I think that since we live in the 21st century, talking about sunscreen and why people need it may be boring, but when you look at it from the perspective of somebody who has no clue what "DNA" is, it becomes interesting. Overall, I think I effectively explained the concept and needs behind sunscreen, but I didn't portray that I was confident in myself, which may have taken away from the effectiveness of the presentation. I conveyed my content in a clear, articulate voice, but I think the presentation could have been slightly confusing (even though I tried to explain DNA as basic as possible) for somebody who lived 300 years ago.
