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The studio lights are blinding. Your make-up begins to run as you heat up under the lights and the intensity of the interviewer glaring across the desk from you. Help! This interview, which you were so happy to give, is turning into a nightmare. Under the pressure, it's becoming too hard for you to concentrate and get your message across.

Fortunately, this is just a trial run. The reporter sitting opposite you is a media trainer. You're practicing for a television interview and are finding out just what it's like to be in the hot seat.

"We put people in front of a video camera, so that they can feel what it's like," says TJ Walker, a media trainer in New York. "It's a personal thing to get in front of a camera and hear how you sound and see how you look."

Practice helps people who must deal with the media see how their message is coming across to the viewer.

"People are sometimes surprised by what they see," says Frances Horner, a media trainer. By showing people how they look before they get on a real TV program, the media trainer can take steps to make them more at ease.

This training isn't just about how to appear your best. It's also about understanding the media itself. "We help our clients understand how to work with the media," says Horner. "They need to understand the different types of media. They need to know how deadlines work."

For example, a client who will be giving an important TV interview needs to learn different skills than someone sitting down for a relaxed and lengthy print interview.

"TV interviews are about visuals and they are much shorter. They may run only two minutes, and so someone has to really know how to get their message across," says Horner.

The training methods for clients vary. They can be put in private sessions or in group seminars where they do mock interviews and speeches. Answers are analyzed and clients are given an opportunity to rethink the most effective way to answer questions.

Some people may visit a media trainer one time to get tips on how to deal with media. Or they may receive continual grooming.

People like high-profile politicians preparing for a debate get extensive help on how to come across well on camera and how to avoid pitfalls.

Politicians and people in large companies generally make up a lot of the business for media trainers.

"Politicians and people in private industry -- in my case, people in the health-care industry are big clients," says Mark Bernheimer, a media trainer in Los Angeles. But he says people from all walks of life can benefit from learning about the media.

"I helped an 11-year-old boy who was a patient at a children's hospital," he says. "He was launching a toy drive, and needed help learning how to give an interview and deal with the media."

So how exactly does a media trainer know what works in the media and what doesn't? Bernheimer relies on his many years as a TV reporter. He covered big events such as the O.J. Simpson trial and interviewed high-profile subjects such as Henry Kissinger.

"The most important thing you can give someone is the perspective of what it's like on the other side," he says.

Walker agrees that in order to convince people, it's essential to have the expertise. But it's also important to be able to convince people that they can be successful.

"If I hear someone stand up and give a bad speech, it's not enough for me to tell them what was wrong," he says. He goes further and shows them how it could be better.

"As I'm listening, I evaluate what's garbage, what needs to be tweaked and what's interesting in the speech, and when they're done I stand up and give the speech again," he says.

Often clients wish that Walker would give the speech himself. But he gives them a model and shows them that the information they are imparting can be done in a much more effective way.

Being sensitive with clients in these situations can be one of the challenges of the job. Horner says that dealing with people's preconceived notions of the media can also be difficult.

"People are suspicious of the media and their motives," she says. "I try to explain that the media are just doing their job, and aren't out to get you all the time."

Because of this fear, people may often answer "No comment" when asked for an opinion by a reporter.

"It can be an immediate response. But there may be a better thing that can be said -- something that will impart beneficial information," says Horner.

She says it isn't her goal just to coach people on sound bites. "This training is an opportunity to encourage people to work more closely with the media. It's more than just working on appearances."

If media training was just about looking better on TV and sounding better on radio, it might be questionable as to whether the service is actually helping or hindering the viewers or listeners.

Bernheimer says that while working as a journalist, he never knew if an interviewee had been trained. "But it was easy to tell when someone was good at it," he says. "It was easy to know when someone could get their message across smoothly and be articulate."

Ultimately, he believes that interview subjects who are more at ease and who can get their message across make better subjects. It's easier for a reporter to engage them, and ultimately easier for the audience to understand them. "You want someone who understands the media and is articulate."

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