Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Geordi's VISOR
9. How It Affected Levar Burton's Acting
In an interview with The Television Academy Foundation, LeVar Burton discussed the difficulty of playing a character who was supposed to have such enhanced vision, while in reality he had 'about 85%' of his view completely blocked off by the VISOR.
Apparently, at the beginning of The Next Generation, Burton was constantly knocking into stuff, able only to see what was directly in front of him. Over time he got better by learning new ways to navigate the sets with the VISOR on, like using light stands and other points of reference that stood out.
Burton was nearly completely blinded during filming, which made his job a lot harder. Beyond that, with a large part of his face covered, Burton also had to try way harder to convey emotion with just his mouth and body language. Despite all of these limitations though, Burton was able to pull the whole thing off brilliantly for seven whole seasons before Geordi finally got his upgrade after Star Trek: Generations.