A Report on Emceeing Techniques  

GKC held its eleventh development program talk on Saturday, 2 February 2002 and this time it was an interesting one indeed. Many of the YA' s were present along with their parents. Encik Chuari Selamat, a very well known persoanlity in his field was there to give the two-hour talk. 

     The talk started with the GKCs introducing ourselves to him and from there we learnt about the different voices to use during an emcee ceromony and what voices not to use. There were five kinds of voices all together, but the best one to use is your natural voice.  Other than emceeing skills we were also taught about the proper way of presenting. It is important to remember that in presenting,  we make things clear, our intonation, our speed, our pronunciation and our style, all these affect the way we present. These pointers are very important to us as TV hosts and presenters. 

     A good presentation  always comes from good breathing skills and we were also told that during a presentation we should not wear tight fitting clothes as this will inhibit our breathing as well as give us great discomfort. He pointed out that before every speech or presentation we should always train our voice and go through the script for the last time. Exercising our voice is very simple really as we can do it just by talking and singing. Practising in front of the mirror can also help us see how we look during the presentation. 

     SMILE- during a presentation this is the most important thing in happy functions to ease the crowd we are talking to. Our facial expressions are also very important.  We also talked about body movements, and learned that we couldn' t stand too still and to make sure our movements are not too over expressive. When we are talking, people' s minds tend to wander off for a while and to gain back their attention as En.Chuari suggests we have to get the crowd involved.

      We should also know what kind of functions we are attending, what we should wear and what the correct  expressions and presentation styles are. Before any event we should always talk with the organizers about the event. We should also remind the organizers to give us a back-up mike and a replacement emcee incase of any mishaps during the show. En. Chuari also reminded us that if  we have to sneeze, we must try to do it backstage and away from the mike, but never with our backs to the audience.

          If there are technical problems during our presentation we were advised not to go on  but stop and apologize to the crowd and wait till the problem was rectified and then continue. We should also make sure that the organizers give us enough time to do our presentation. Another important point given by En. Chuari  was that we have to read through our scripts given to us and to understand them fully so that we could make other people understand it.   

      During the talk, we had our laughs when En. Chuari shared with us all the bloopers he experienced during his experience and shared with us jokes. This was definitely a fun talk and would certainly help us when we have functions with GKC.   The notes will definitely come in handy too. I certainly got plenty of tips from the speaker and hope to use them in my future presentations and hosting jobs.