Ep 26 The TelePrompTer Episode

How do you use a teleprompter effectively so the audience feels you're speaking directly to them?

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

This is the teleprompter episode. The question comes from one of my online students at the Unity platform, Joe Amecado writes TJ, you talk about iPad and iPhone teleprompters. Where and how do you place them regarding the relationship to the camera and how do you do that in order to be able to look at at the camera and have eye contact with the viewer listener? Well, we're going to hop into the ins and outs of teleprompters in detail on this program. But before we do that, I want to just take a step back for a moment and do as I often do and take a contrarian position.

Bad Advice.

I do think a lot of speakers out there are getting bad advice on whether to even use a teleprompter. Too often at major conventions, conferences, corporate videos, people tell themselves where our goal is to get the words just right because it's been approved by legal. We want everything to be smooth and professional. So let's get the wording right, load it up to the teleprompter, have the executive, the speaker go through it, and that way we've checked off all our boxes and nobody gets into trouble. It'll be easy. That's the mindset, especially these days where teleprompters are so inexpensive you can use free software on your iPads, your iPhones to use it. So technically, it's never been easier to use a teleprompter. But as a practical matter, it doesn't mean you should if you're going to make a movie that you hope to launch and get in every movie theater in America. In theory, you could use your iPhone to do it. As a practical matter, it's really not a good idea to make a feature full length movie, pay Leonardo DiCaprio $30 million and then shoot the whole thing on your cell phone just because you could. It's not a good idea. It's exactly the same thing with the teleprompter people. Under the mistaken notion that somehow it's easier to use a teleprompter because you won't have to remember what to say. The problem is, for most speakers, most of the time, it actually takes a lot more time to use a teleprompter effectively if you don't want to come across as a complete stiff. The problem most Non professional news anchors have. And folks, as much time as I spend in front of a camera, which is hours and hours every single week, I'm not reading a teleprompter all day long. So I'm not going to be nearly as good as your average local news anchor because they do it every single day. So the problem for most people is they are going to sound phony, fake because their speed is the same, the volume is the same, the pausing is the same, and they freeze their head, they freeze their face, they freeze their body, and all of a sudden they start to sound and look like robots because you've seen this at national political conventions and it looks fake and sounds phony. That's the problem with teleprompters for most people. So I'm going to give you tips that you need if you're going to use it. But my biggest tip of all is really ask yourself the right questions on whether or not you should use it. If someone has hired you as an actor and you have to get every single word right and you're not good at memorizing, okay, fine. If you're the President of the United States or of another major country, if you are the head of the Federal Reserve, if you are a Secretary of State giving a speech at the United nations, for those three categories of people, every single word is scrutinized, translated into different languages, analyzed. Any one wrong word and you could cause chaos, wars, economic destruction. So for people like that, it absolutely makes sense to use a teleprompter, have every word vetted. For most people, though, our biggest problem in life is not that someone is reading and rereading everything we say, holding up to the light, studying and analyzing it. Even if you're a CEO of a pretty big company, that doesn't happen most of the time. The biggest problem for most speakers most of the time is nobody remembers anything we said five minutes after the speech because we said either boring stuff or we said it in a boring way. So that's really the big problem Many, many people have. And that's why I want to caution you not to really go too quickly into the whole PowerPoint route. Now, I'm going to mention, I know it seems like I've been avoiding it. I'm going to address Jo's specific question in just a moment.

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So to the specific question from the top of the program, how do you position the iPad the iPhone teleprompter. So it appears as though the speaker is looking right at the audience, as I'm doing with you now. The reason I appear to be looking at you is I'm looking right into the camera. The problem is if you have a teleprompter off to the side, then it looks like someone is staring off to the side of the teleprompter. For those of you listening on the itunes edition, I'm now pointing my head to the side of the camera. It doesn't look as good. So the rule of thumb is you really need to have the iPhone or the iPad or whatever teleprompter you're using as close to the camera as possible. The best of all possible worlds is what's called a through the lens teleprompter. I used to have them, I've sold them because I just wasn't using them very often. In that case, it's a clear piece of glass so that you're looking right through the camera and you're seeing the text above it. And these days you can make. It's not that expensive to make. You get. There are homemade versions. I'm not going to go into all the details here. Just go to YouTube and search for homemade teleprompter. You'll find that you can also buy pretty good professional quality through the lens teleprompters these days for less than $1,000. So let's talk about the particular types of teleprompters. There's two main types of teleprompters. There's the newscaster teleprompter, which is also applicable to video bloggers and corporate videos where the teleprompter is typically in front of the camera. There's just one. And you're creating the illusion that you're talking off the top of your head in an extemporaneous way and not reading a script on paper. And you're looking right at the camera. So that's the so called newscaster teleprompter. There's another type that is for speakers, the executive speaker teleprompter. That's what the President of the United States or the President of any major country might use. You've seen it at conferences, conventions, and in those situations it's two separate pieces of glass and the speech is identical on both ones. And it's scrolling down and that way the speaker can look to his or her left and use that teleprompter for a while and then go to the right and look at that teleprompter for a while. So this way, it allows the speaker to go back and forth, creates some variety, and the speaker doesn't have to have his or her head buried and down the whole time. They can be up. And if you're on the other side of the speaker and the glass, you don't see anything. You don't see the words, you just see a piece of glass. In fact, in my experience, most people either don't notice the teleprompter when a president or someone is using it, or they think that it is something to do with security, a bulletproof shield or something, which it isn't. Now, I've used those teleprompters many times myself. I used to own one and have given people training lessons on how to use that. In a moment, I'm going to tell you everything you really, really need to know in order to be great at using a teleprompter.

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So here is what I teach people when they come to me for personal, private teleprompter training. The first is you got to get over the notion that the teleprompter is going to save you time. If you're going to use a teleprompter to give a speech effectively, you actually have to spend more time. One of the great masters of teleprompter reading was Ronald Reagan, when he had a former president, when he had a major speech like the State of the Union address. First of all, he would work with the writers for months, coming up with ideas, looking at edits, drafts. He wanted to really get inside this speech. Then he would read the speech out loud every night for a week in the residency above the Oval Office. Then he still wasn't ready. He would spend a full day doing videotaped rehearsal using the teleprompter, doing it on camera, so that when he was reading the speech to the American people and the world, it didn't look like he was reading the speech. By getting so comfortable with the substance and the words, he could focus on mechanics and the style. Here's what you need to know in order to sound like a real person, to sound believable, sound convincing. They're really just a handful of things you need to do effectively. For starters, you need to move your head. Most people, when they read, their head becomes rigid. You've got to move your head, You've got to move your face. Most people, if they're reading, especially if they're reading for the first time, their face goes blank and nothing moves but their lips. You've got to move your body a little again. The problem most people have is their body freezes. So you need to move your body. Your hands need to move a little. You don't have to move your hands. But all things being equal, it will be better. So that's the first big clump of things you need to do. You need movement in your body. That's one category. The next big category is sometimes you have to speak a little faster. The problem most people have when they're reading a script is all of a sudden they are speaking at the same speed. Because when we read, we tend to read at the same speed. That's not how people talk. So sometimes you have to speak a little faster and then sometimes a little bit slower. That's what people do when they're giving a speech and they're just talking to someone or they're telling a story. So you have to change the speed, sometimes faster, sometimes slower. The next big category is volume. Sometimes you have to speak a little louder, but then whisper or contrast. You need contrast with your volume, because that's what people do when they're just talking with friends or about something they're passionate about. You have to change the volume. Sometimes a little louder, sometimes a little softer. Constant variation. And the final really big category of things you have to do to master this is occasionally you have to stop. Occasionally, when you're using a teleprompter, you have to pause, because that's what people do in real life when they're having a conversation with someone. You pause to let something sink in. You pause to let people know, I finished a thought, and you better reflect upon it for a moment. Pausing is extraordinarily effective. All great communicators do it. All professional speakers do it. But amateurs, when they are reading a teleprompter, do not pause because they are nervous and afraid that if they stop, the words will keep going and they will not know what is next. Hear how awful that sounds? Unfortunately, that's how you or your CEO or someone in your organization will sound if they just get up and read a teleprompter. Because that's what the convention coordinator said. So please keep in mind that those buckets of skills I mentioned, you got to move, got to change the speed, you got to change the volume, and you got to pause. There's really just four things you have to know in order to come across really well. Now, that's the beauty of this, is it's not that hard, but it's not natural. Some people read teleprompters and they're horrible at it. They're their whole lives. George W. Bush never really got very good at it. Not a client of mine, but my understanding is he just didn't put a lot of emphasis and priority on his speaking skills, didn't spend a lot of time rehearsing. John McCain never really got good at it. Now, folks, I'm not being partisan here. Ronald Reagan was a master at reading the teleprompter and sounding as though he had not been reading. But it's not hard if you practice on video. And I know some of you are saying, well, tj, you're being repetitive because we've heard you say practice on video before. I know, but it's really the only way to do a good job with a teleprompter speech too, is you have to practice reading the teleprompter. And then you've got to watch the video, make sure you like how it comes across. Does this sound like a real person talking to me when you're watching that video of yourself? Or does this sound like someone being canned and phony and going through the motions reading? If that's the case, you're really going to lose the impact on the audience. So I hope those tips have been helpful to you. By the way, if you have any other questions about how to use a teleprompter, please send them to me. This whole show is about answering your questions on anything to do with public speaking, speaking to the media, speaking to live audiences. So you can send me an email infoediatrainingworldwide.com you can send me a message on Twitter. J. Walker, thanks again for joining us. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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