Evan Carmichael explains why he doesn't use an iPad teleprompter for Q&A videos. For short answers, he reads the question from paper and speaks naturally from point-form notes. For longer story videos, he records a scripted voiceover while his editor adds images and on-camera moments to break up the narration.
Questions this video answers
I don't use an iPad as a teleprompter. I've heard of people doing it but haven't tried it myself. For my videos I rely on paper notes and point‑form outlines for short Q&A clips, and a fully scripted voice‑over with editor‑added images for longer, story‑driven videos. I encourage anyone who does use an iPad as a teleprompter to share their experiences.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. In today's video, I'm going to answer a question from one of my readers, Diane, who's asking about if I use the iPad as a teleprompter for making these videos or not, because I recently posted about my iPad. Her question is, Evan, I purchased my iPad to use as a teleprompter for video that we're creating. Have you ever used your iPad this way, and what do you recommend to make this use very successful? So Dan, I don't use an iPad as a teleprompter. I've heard of people doing it, but I haven't tried it myself. For the videos that I create here, I do a couple things. When I'm talking to the camera, it's always usually off the cuff. So if I'm reading a question like I just read yours, I have pieces of paper and you'll see me look down because I'm reading the question. I try not to do that for too long, but you'll see I have pages of notes here. These are 3 pages of questions that I'm answering questions for my readers. What I'll usually do when I have a question is I'll write down a couple point form notes of things that I want to talk about, and then when I get in front of the camera, I'll just talk and hopefully I remember those points. It's never exactly what I wrote down, but I'm just answering the question as best as I can, more off the cuff and more having a conversation than trying to remember a strict script. In the past, I did try to remember a script, and I found that it wasn't natural, and I'm kind of thinking of what I was supposed to say, and it didn't go well in my opinion, so I found that these videos were a lot better. I also I'll only try to answer questions that I think I can actually answer and have some knowledge on. Obviously, I don't know everything about everything, so just try to answer the questions that I can speak comfortably about. The other types of video I'll do is the Modeling the Masters video or special videos that are longer and where I have to stay on message and I want to tell a story a certain way. And for those videos, what I'll do is I'll always open up with a video of me, so it'll be me welcoming the reader, the viewer. I'll also close the video saying, you know, thank you for joining me for this new video and encourage people to leave feedback. Feedback, and usually throughout the video I might make another appearance to highlight some key points again on video, and it'll just be me, you know, remembering key points that I want to talk about. But most of the video will be me reading something, and the video itself will have pictures that correlate to what I'm talking about. So in that situation I'll just, you know, have a mic, I'll read a script that I want to make sure that that message is conveyed, and my video editor will throw in pictures that relate to what I'm talking about. So those are for some of my longer videos, when I'm not just kind of talking up the tough in answering questions. So I hope that helps. I haven't used the iPad yet as, you know, that teleprompter. If you do, I'd love to hear your experiences. If you guys like this video too, I'd love to hear your feedback. If you want to leave a comment below this video, and I also always appreciate thumbs up if you want to give that on the video. And stay tuned for the next episode.
