TJ Walker explains how to use a teleprompter without sounding robotic. He demonstrates the problem (uniform speed/volume/pausing), then gives practical advice: vary speed, vary volume, pause naturally, move your body, and rehearse on video while marking up your script to indicate pauses and emphasis.
Chapters
What's the best way to use a teleprompter? If you're at a major convention, a political convention perhaps, and you have the opportunity to use a teleprompter. Too often when novices use teleprompters, they all of a sudden sound like this. They are following the script and reading it. They might not be making any mistakes. But do you hear how I sound like a robot? How do you avoid that? Because left to your own devices, if you want to be natural, that's how you would sound. That is the natural way to sound when you're reading a teleprompter. So I want to give you just a handful of the most important tips you need to know if you want to be effective at reading a teleprompter. For starters, sometimes you have to go a little faster. That's right, you have to rush, because that's what we do in real conversation. Sometimes we speak a little faster, and then sometimes you have to slow it down. You need variety in your speed. The way I read a moment ago, and actually, I wasn't reading, I was just acting it out. I said everything at exactly the same speed, the same volume, the same tone, the same pausing. That's what made me sound like a robot. So if you're going to use a teleprompter, the key is you have to sometimes speak a little bit faster, sometimes, sometimes a little bit slower, sometimes a little bit louder, sometimes a little bit softer. You need that variation in volume. And sometimes you have to pause. All of us pause in real conversations. And when you stop pausing because you're worried about the text on the teleprompter disappearing, that's when you sound like a robot. The final tip is you have to move. You still have to move your head, your hands, your body. If you do that, you'll come across like a pro. Now, having me just say this and you hear it once isn't going to make you great. The other thing that people don't realize about a teleprompter, if you want to do it effectively, it takes more preparation, not less. Sometimes people are lured into using a teleprompter because they think, oh, this will take less time to prepare now. No, it actually takes you more time to prepare if you're using a teleprompter because you need to practice on video, look at it, figure out, are you sounding natural? Do you need to pause longer? Do you need to speak louder here, softer here? And you need to mark up your script so that you know what you need to do, where you need to pause, more commas, more dot, dot, dots, places for you to pause. So these are some tips to help you use a teleprompter if the need ever arises.
