- In this video we're talking about teleprompters
and why teleprompters are a key part of my kit
and have saved my life, many times.
Also shout out for this week's video,
my beer unpaying sponsor,
just 'cause I love beer and I like supporting local beer,
this is from a local brewery called Black Bellows.
This is their All Together beer and the really cool thing
with this is it's a IPA and a recipe that was shared out
of a brewery in New York City for them to be shared
at breweries around the world to start brewing this
as a collective thing and to use revenue from this
to help restaurant-related individuals,
people in the service industry with restaurants
and breweries, to help bring them some cash flow
because that is a sector that has been very hard hit
with the COVID-19, so Black Bellows.
Thank you guys for the beers,
I was over there a week ago doing some video shooting.
That is a delicious beer.
Mmm.
So first off, what the heck is a teleprompter?
If you don't know what a teleprompter is, really briefly,
what a teleprompter is, is a mirrored piece of glass
in here that is reflecting whatever is in the bottom,
up onto the glass.
And then on the other side of the glass,
you can see right through it.
So you could have a lens shooting through it.
It does not see what's reflecting on it.
So you could have text scrolling over your lens,
over right where somebody would be looking
and people could read off of this glass here
and look like they're looking straight into the camera,
but reading a script.
So teleprompters are used a ton in the broadcast world,
in the news world, in the sports world.
Anytime you really see a host delivering to camera,
a lot of that times, they are reading off a teleprompter.
And you might not be working in news and broadcast that way
and be thinking, "How can a teleprompter work for me?
"Why would I need a teleprompter
"and how could a teleprompter save my life?"
So a lot of work I do besides some
of the documentary work I do and branded content work I do,
I do a lot of corporate videos
and I do a lot of things of training videos.
A lot of different content that way
and when you have a subject reading to camera,
looking straight in the camera like I am now,
but they wanna read something
or say something very specific,
this is where a teleprompter becomes
in very handy and has saved my life.
So a scenario would be, I talked to a client.
They want their CEO to deliver a message at the beginning
of a video and they wanna deliver a perfect message
and they wanna do that straight to camera,
looking right into the lens of the camera and they say,
"We think our CEO is great speaking on camera.
"He'll have no problem with this."
And I get to the location to do the shoot.
The CEO has written out a couple pages of what he wants
to say and then you guys have probably been in this scenario
before where you're shooting some videos,
where people are trying to get somebody
to stick the script beside the camera,
so they can see it to the side there and maybe like,
"They won't notice my eyes looking into the side."
Or below the camera or they post it, made big,
kind of (chuckles) sign saying the script on it
or saying keywords on it from the scene
and somebody's holding that below the camera.
These scenarios typically in my experience, never work well.
You usually can always tell
that somebody is reading something off the side
of the camera or they keep looking over to read something
or they keep looking down to see their notes
and it's not that great.
It doesn't come across as professional,
as somebody who is delivering straight into the lens.
So in a scenario like
that where the teleprompter has saved my life,
I keep this simple iPad teleprompter in my truck,
in my production truck, all the time.
Whenever I go to any jobs, I have this with me.
So when they say, "We have no problem.
"The person is gonna be able to read this
"or memorize their script
"or gonna say what they wanted to say."
And you get in there and they start recording
and you realize they can't. (chuckles)
They can't do it at all. They're blowing it.
They're completely, it's not gonna happen.
They're getting frustrated.
I've been lucky enough a bunch of times having this with me
and saying, "Listen, I got a teleprompter in my vehicle.
"I'm gonna bring it up here. We're gonna set it up.
"Let's load your script into it
"and you can read off the front of the lens of the camera."
And it is gotten so important for me
and helped so much with doing jobs like that.
I just bring it up right
in the beginning when I'm having a conversation
with a client and saying, "Hey,
"if you wanna do something like this,
"we can bring out the teleprompter.
"Just think about that. You can write a script.
"Send me the script beforehand and I will load that
"to the teleprompter and they can read that that way."
And really, most of the times when clients do this as well,
they're like so thankful that you brought this
and you had this tool with you.
On a lot of jobs I've done before,
we have hired out a person that just runs teleprompter
for you and typically they come out
with their own teleprompters
and they come out with a big teleprompter
and they can run it off a computer and that is great
for a lot of corporate jobs, a lot of in-studio jobs.
They can be easily editing stuff as they're going
on the script or adding stuff to it
and they can also change the scroll speed
of how fast the content is scrolling on the teleprompter.
The simple thing that I'm using here and I will make a link
to the app that I'm using for the teleprompter here,
so I can do a lot of really cool stuff with this.
So this is just a very simple set-up.
I mean, I can play with the speeds here a little bit
to get the speeds up to what people will like.
I can change the background color. You can change the fonts.
You can edit this kinda on the fly
and if someone stumbles a little bit, I can easily stop it,
bring it back a little bit, start it again.
I can do this on a tripod, right beside it recording,
monitoring, looking at the image,
making sure everything's okay
and it's amazing tool that helps you out.
So I really recommend,
if you're going out doing corporate work that way,
if you're doing training videos.
This is a great investment
and a great thing to have with you.
Also, as I said, there is guys that just do teleprompters
or women that just do running teleprompters as their job.
They are awesome,
but sometimes we're
in different situations where maybe we didn't know we need
that person, so that's why having this
with me all the time works
or I'm on different jobs where I don't have the luxury
of having a full crew.
Definitely, right now, the time of life we're in May as
of 2020 with COVID going on,
there isn't a lot of big crews going out
and it's been very tricky as crews going out.
So I've been doing work a little bit during this time
and I am going out as myself, owner-operator,
one-man crew because
that's the only way we can really do some jobs right now
and a couple little tricks
and tips when you're using a teleprompter, okay?
So one of the tricks for someone to,
for you not to tell that they're reading a script,
that their eyes are going up and down,
it's gonna be the distance they are from the camera.
So the subject is from the camera itself.
The closer the subject is to the camera,
the easier it will be
to tell that their eyes are reading something.
So if you're in with say three or four feet to the camera,
you're probably be gonna able
to tell that your subjects is reading a script,
but if they're back say six, eight feet, 10 feet,
you're likely not gonna be able to tell
and a lot of times,
in some scenarios we need to be back even farther
if we're doing a shot where we're seeing a person
from their feet all the way up,
in a studio and we don't wanna be in a super wide lens.
Then we need to go even farther back.
Then, that's the situations
where I would be hiring somebody else out
to run a teleprompter,
which would be on a much bigger computer screen
and then they have a bigger space to actually read off of.
So they can easily see it from farther away.
What I like about having an iPad teleprompter myself is
that it kinda hits,
it's kind of in a sweet spot here, I found.
With the size of it,
I can still get far enough back that people can read
and see what's on the screen, okay,
and they're not too close to it.
So you don't see their eyes moving.
There is companies that are making a little iPhone one
that I've seen people have,
I've seen people recommend before too.
It's a little iPhone one
and it has a little reflective box that you put
on the front of your lens.
The problem I would find with that is
that you're probably not gonna be far enough away
to see it well enough to read the teleprompter
without people noticing that you're reading a teleprompter.
If that makes sense,
so because the screen on the iPhone is
so much smaller than an iPad.
Now, with that said,
maybe somebody can see it from farther away,
but maybe I'm getting old.
So let me know in the comments guys.
Do you have a teleprompter? Are you using a teleprompter?
Is there something that you would recommend,
if you're using something different than me?
What are you using for an app for your teleprompting?
On your iPad or on your laptop? Thanks so much guys.
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