I’ve mentioned this numerous times. There are teleprompter people and non-teleprompter people.
(I love them both, by the way).
But I’ve never talked about what makes them different. And it’s important.
So here’s a way for you to decide for yourself if you could benefit from the technology or if it will just drive you crazy.
Here’s a link to the free teleprompter training mentioned in the video.
10 replies to "How to Decide if You Should Use a Teleprompter"
Steve, I have been using Smartprompt Pro for my prompter software and it works flawlessly. The best part of it is that it’s voice activated. It will only scroll when it hears the words in your script.
That means you can go off script if you want or need to, and then will continue scrolling when you get back to the script.
Sounds great, James! I tried to give those guys credit in the video. 🙂
Steven, I posted this on YouTube, but thought I would post it here also:
PromptSmart Studio Edition works better than the tablet edition for voice recognition, but you can mirror the words onto a tablet, so you get the best of both worlds. They have a lifetime deal that ends in about 2 days (September 30th). It’s on AppSumo: https://appsumo.com/products/promptsmart/
Beauteeful, Fred. Thanks for posting it here!
Hi Steve as a long time producer and director I appreciate you addressing the prompter issue. If you use one or not the key is working with a great director and being prepared before the day of the shoot. This is very similar to the people that give a great prevention without reading there power point slides “death by power point”. Recently I have been using the training wheels approach with the prompter to rehears and then without for takes. In fact our client spent $20K on focus groups and hands down no promoter was the way to go
The main point of my video is that there is no “one size fits all” approach to the teleprompter. If you’re a prompter-adept person and if you practice in a certain way, you should be able to do this quite well, focus groups notwithstanding. Good luck on your own prompter journey!
Steve,
Love your content and it was you who first got me to try a teleprompter. I used PromptSmart Pro and it worked pretty well. But I never could get it to look like I was speaking to the audience. I have an eye problem where my eyes work independently. I’ve since gone to a system where my camera is next to a monitor where I display both my script and my image as I record. I have to put this image left and slightly below the lens to wind up looking like I am talking to the audience. I need to record some lengthily course lessons so I may dig out the caddy buddy and try again. Just thought you might be interested in yet another reason a teleprompter might not work.
Interesting dilemma, Russell. I believe there is a kind of teleprompter, also through-the-lens, that projects your own image onscreen. That might help if you need to see yourself for whatever reason. Because you have to look at the camera when you’re on camera. That’s the only part of this that’s not optional.
One other thing that may be happening is that you aren’t actually looking at the lens with either eye. This is true of way more people than you would expect; almost all of them shooting with an iPhone using the selfie side of the camera. Shoot some brief tests to see if you are actually looking at the lens, with whatever eye you may have available. You might be surprised.
You mentioned the oft need for JUMPCUTS but you didn’t indicate how intrusive or acceptable they are. Whadayathink?
Cutting to a close-up is not exactly a jump cut. Well, technically it is because it’s not being accompanied by a camera angle change, but it only becomes obtrusive if it doesn’t add anything to the story. Mostly these are used to emphasize a point. If you make too many points, is it the fault of the cut or are you making too many points too close together? 🙂