Watch your background on Zoom! Unintentional Humour. Intentional Humor.

On Zoom you can create virtual backgrounds showing yourself in front of famous landmarks, or on the beach with the waves rolling in behind you. A moving background can be distracting.

Even worse is a real life moving background. It is not new for passers-by to accidentally walking across behind a live reporter, or to stand behind making silly faces. The technical term is photobombing. Wikipedia found me these.

 Many people turn off their cameras at home for good reason. They are eating. They are half naked.

Others do not check their backgrounds. You can see all sort of personal stuff. 

 What is on the wall behind, you, on the desk, or cabinet. An interview candidate for a job had to quickly remove empty bottles of alcohol, kept as souvenirs and decoration. He was applying for a job in Pakistan.

Children and Pets

Hilarious moments from the early days of working from home and meetings on zoom included backgrounds of dogs or cats which wanted to read the news or express their reaction. Others included children bursting into the room, dragged out by a crawling mother.

Bedrooms

At my Toastmasters meetings, I was once mesmerized by the speaker's girlfriend, lying in the bed behind him, every now and then turning over. My mind was inventing what she could do, alone, or if he would later join her, unaware that the back of the room was on camera.

Toilet, Bathroom and Shower

One Toastmasters International member frequently tells the story of how she went to the toilet wearing a pin-on microphone.

Recently I watched a visitor yawn, move the camera, get up and disappear into the shower at the back of the bedroom. The shower water started to run down the glass.

I was waiting to see a silhouette. It reminded me of Psycho. Would an evil stranger creep in? If so, we could not contact him.

I was unable to concentrate on my speeches and roles. Why? Because I was watching to see whether he would emerge wearing pyjama bottoms, a towel, or neither.

Some of the professional Zoom applications allow you to set up your group shots of audience faces in settings such as a classroom of tiered seating, or even mirror photos with frames. For single individuals, yourself, add humorous hats, moustaches and glasses. Key words to search for are: facial effects, studio effects, and make up filters.

Useful Websites

Zoom on facial effects to enhance

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115002595343-Enhancing-your-video-in-Zoom

https://shotkit.com/funny-zoom-backgrounds/

https://www.ricotta.team/blog/zoom-memes

Humorous zoom effect tutorial

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v0Y9b--zBM

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