426. Podcasting With a Teleprompter—Even for Audio Podcasts ![rw-book-cover](https://wsrv.nl/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.podcastmirror.com%2F~images%2F2380011782120833.png&w=512&h=512) 🔗 **Source:** [426. Podcasting With a Teleprompter—Even for Audio Podcasts](https://share.snipd.com/episode/71ae6c0e-5806-4e21-8235-e3f213651761) ## Highlights - **Make Direct Eye Contact With Your Audience** - Teleprompters let you simulate direct eye contact on camera, making video feel as intimate as audio podcasting. - Daniel J. Lewis explains teleprompters enable looking at content while appearing to look straight into the camera, improving audience connection. Transcript: Daniel J. Lewis They can be great for podcasting, even if you podcast in only audio. So just to make sure we're all on the same page, what is a teleprompter? It is the thing that reflects a surface so that you can look. The idea is generally directly at a camera, or you can look through the teleprompter to something that's behind it, but you are seeing what's being shown on the teleprompter. This is also like a heads-up display, where you're able to then have your head up looking straight through, maybe even looking directly at a camera, and there can be things displayed In front of you on it. There is a specific teleprompter that I've used for now a couple of years that I do recommend. I do have some issues with it, but I'll talk more about the model specifically throughout this episode. But it's the Elgato prompter. They also have the Elgato prompter XL and Elgato is not paying me. I am currently not sponsored by anyone, so I don't get paid to simply talk about anything right now. There are affiliate links in this episode, so if you do decide to purchase one of these teleprompters or some others that I'll have links to in the notes for this episode, I will get a commission From that if you purchase through my links. But I recommend things I truly believe in regardless of earnings, and I'm not currently sponsored by anyone. So even though you're going to hear me talk about a specific teleprompter from a specific company throughout this episode, they are not paying me. So if you'd like to follow along in the notes for this episode and get the links to some of the teleprompters that I recommend, they are a simple tap or swipe away, look at the chapters, Or go to theaudacity2podcast.com/teleprompter. Number one benefit here, make eye contact with your audience. This is really what teleprompters are designed to do. There are lots of different styles of video that you'll see. We're typically used to seeing people talk from a third-person perspective, where it's like we're getting to sit in on someone else being interviewed by someone else. Or of course, movies and TV shows are recorded this, where you're not actually the person being spoken to, but you're getting to see the characters speak to other characters. So you have this third-person perspective. Yes, that is a technique, certainly, and it has its places, especially in interview-style podcasts that fits very well or any kind of interview-style video. Even if you don't get to hear the interviewer and you're seeing only the interviewee, still that sort of third-person perspective is totally okay in those cases. But podcasting tends to be a bit more intimate. And this is thanks to the audio method of podcasting primarily, I think, where audio podcasting allows people to take your episode with them theoretically anywhere, and they can listen To your voice directly in their ears through earbuds or headphones. Some people, yes, listen to podcasts through speakers, but I would suspect that most podcast consumption happens through some kind of headphone or earbud. And that provides a rather intimate experience, especially as people can take your voice with them to places where they wouldn't welcome other voices or wouldn't be able to have other Conversations like doing chores, mowing the yard, driving on an airplane, all of these different places. Then take that same intimate experience and that connection that you get with your audience through audio. And I think the best way to do that through video is making eye contact with your audience. This is something I learned very early on when I first started public speaking in my teenage years is make eye contact with your audience. That helps them feel seen, but also it helps you to see their reactions. I do this with kids. I do this with adults. When I tell a joke, I want to see, are people actually laughing? When I'm explaining a concept, I'm looking to see, do people look like they're understanding it or do they have a confused look on their faces? Now, you're not actually making eye contact with an audience when you're looking into a camera, but it will feel that way to your audience. And a teleprompter allows you to do that because this is the core design of a teleprompter is for newscasters and politicians and others to be able to see something while looking directly Into the camera. ([Time 0:00:22](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1057cdf6-efa3-47c1-a2f0-51a28c3aeeac)) - **Display Notes Or Script On The Prompter** - Use a teleprompter to show outlines or scripts so you can maintain eye contact while following your points. - Daniel J. Lewis says even short bullet outlines on the prompter reduce edits and make you appear knowledgeable during recordings or live streams. Transcript: Daniel J. Lewis That goes on to number two, you can use a teleprompter to display your notes or script. Typically, you see people read a whole script from a teleprompter. That's what the newscasters are doing and politicians are reading from the teleprompter. And it does take some skill to get good at that. The best thing to do is get really good at writing and get really good at speaking. Get to the point where you can write like you speak and speak like you write. And they are both good communication. And I've worked on that for many years. And I think I've gotten mostly to that point where I generally speak like I write and I generally write like I speak so that if I write my own script, it's very easy for me to read it and sound Natural. I see other people who need some more practice with that. And that might be where you are, that you just need some more practice. But you don't have to use a teleprompter for a whole script. You could use a teleprompter for just your notes. In fact, that's what I'm doing right now. I'm not reading from a script. I do have my notes in front of me, a multiple point outline in front of me, so I see those points and I can read those to know where I am, to know what's coming, and to read those points exactly As I want them, but they're on the teleprompter screen so I can still look directly into the camera as I'm looking at my outline. This can make you look really knowledgeable and experienced with what you're talking about. I remember back many years ago when I recorded the SEO for Podcasters course, which was the first training of its kind, by the way, and I think it was in maybe 2011 or 2012. I had an iPad. I had a DSLR camera. I did not have a teleprompter. So my notes for that session and teaching that I was sitting down at my desk with my computer and workstation behind me and I would look at the camera and I wanted to make eye contact with My audience and I had my notes on my iPad. So if I wanted to remember what my next point was, because I didn't have the whole thing memorized, I would have to look down at my notes and then look back up at the camera. And I didn't like that. And it might even look kind of weird. And you can display your notes in different places, it might be okay. Even if you do something like you have your laptop in front of you, especially if you're sitting at a table or a desk where there's a surface and you can have your laptop in front of you or Slightly off to the side, I think that's more okay and doesn't look so weird if you glance at that for your notes. But in my case, my notes were in my lap. I had no table in front of me or desk or anything like that. So I had to look completely all the way down at my lap to see the notes because I wasn't going to hold the iPad in front of me the whole time. I just didn't like the way that looked. So it made for a lot of edit points because all I needed was just to remind myself what the next point was. I wasn't reading a script. I just needed to follow my outline. And having a teleprompter would have made that a whole lot easier because I could put the notes on the teleprompter, have them directly in front of me and advance them as I needed to. One, advancing it in a moment. ([Time 0:07:07](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bfbcf5c9-ff88-402b-ade8-d3862999967c)) - **Recording A Course Without A Prompter Caused Extra Edits** - Daniel J. Lewis recalls recording an early course without a teleprompter and having notes in his lap, which caused awkward glances and extra edits. - He says a teleprompter would have kept his outline at eye level and reduced edit points substantially. Transcript: Daniel J. Lewis I had an iPad. I had a DSLR camera. I did not have a teleprompter. So my notes for that session and teaching that I was sitting down at my desk with my computer and workstation behind me and I would look at the camera and I wanted to make eye contact with My audience and I had my notes on my iPad. So if I wanted to remember what my next point was, because I didn't have the whole thing memorized, I would have to look down at my notes and then look back up at the camera. And I didn't like that. And it might even look kind of weird. And you can display your notes in different places, it might be okay. Even if you do something like you have your laptop in front of you, especially if you're sitting at a table or a desk where there's a surface and you can have your laptop in front of you or Slightly off to the side, I think that's more okay and doesn't look so weird if you glance at that for your notes. But in my case, my notes were in my lap. I had no table in front of me or desk or anything like that. So I had to look completely all the way down at my lap to see the notes because I wasn't going to hold the iPad in front of me the whole time. I just didn't like the way that looked. So it made for a lot of edit points because all I needed was just to remind myself what the next point was. I wasn't reading a script. I just needed to follow my outline. And having a teleprompter would have made that a whole lot easier because I could put the notes on the teleprompter, have them directly in front of me and advance them as I needed to. ([Time 0:08:43](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1da8898a-cc62-435b-9888-2fba5d05f9c9)) - **Use Auto Scroll And Voice Following** - Use teleprompter software features like auto-scroll and voice-follow to keep place without manual control. - Lewis recommends apps (e.g., PromptSmart Pro) that pause or advance the script by listening to your speech so outlines move only when needed. Transcript: Daniel J. Lewis Speed. And you can use different devices or tools or keyboard shortcuts to speed up or slow down that pace. But I also love that some of these tools, and way back when I first started using a teleprompter on my iPad, I used the app PromptSmart Pro that had this feature and it's a paid feature for It. So it's one of the reasons why I bought the app back then. And I love this feature is that some of these teleprompter tools can listen to you and move your scripts. We can put that in quotation marks because it might simply be an outline, but it can move your script along as it hears you reading those things. So consider this, maybe you do have a complete script and you are reading your script verbatim, but at one point you decide you want to go off script and you want to share some extra anecdote Or you want to say something a little bit differently. When you do that and when the script software is listening to you, it will pause scrolling until it hears you reading the script again, and then it continues scrolling. Apply that same thing to your outline too. Even if you simply have your bullet points in front of you, like I'm doing right now, as I'm looking directly into a camera, and my notes, simple bullet point list of my notes, not an entire Script, just my bullet points are in front of me. I'm able to read them very easily and I can advance them a point at a time. Or if I was using the speech recognition software, then it would advance for me. So it wouldn't bump down to number three until I said number three, and then it would move down there. ([Time 0:13:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/de976608-de50-46f9-b29b-a3811ae52a4d)) - **Minimize Eye Movement When Reading** - Keep the prompter text visually compact and the camera farther away to minimize obvious eye movement. - Lewis suggests using crosshair targets and glancing whole lines, not word-by-word, to avoid robotic eyes scanning across the screen. Transcript: Daniel J. Lewis And if you're going to read something from a teleprompter, I highly recommend that you make sure it is not too visually large to you. The larger it is visually to you, then the more that your eye movement will be visible to the camera. In general, the best way to reduce eye movement is have the camera farther away, and thus the teleprompter farther away as well, so then your eyes don't have to move very much. And the reason why I emphasize the visual size of it is because it's not necessarily the physical size. Like the teleprompter from El Gato is a nine-inch display, and it's great for having the teleprompter about an arm's length away from you. They also make a 15-inch display. I think if you were to use that an arm's length away from you, that might be a little bit too big because if you were reading from it, then your eye movement would be a lot more obvious. But you could also change the margins on it so that your eyes don't have to move very far across the screen. So keep that in mind if you do decide to use a teleprompter and read from that teleprompter, even if it's simply your outline. But if you're recording that video, then try to keep your eye movement as small as possible. And one of the ways that you could do this is many of these teleprompter tools allow you to place some kind of target, a crosshair, a bullseye or something like that. So you can know exactly where the camera lens is. And you look at that point and try not to read word by word by word by word across the screen. If you can, glance at the entire line instead of one word at a time where your eye is definitely scanning back and forth like the old typewriters used to be. But if you can grasp an entire line in just a glance, then you don't have to have your eyes moving back and forth so much. You'll see this sometimes where people will have their teleprompter much too big, or they are obviously reading from a script and they're looking away from the camera, but you see their Eyes moving back and forth as they're reading from the script. ([Time 0:15:31](https://share.snipd.com/snip/97a8836b-6058-494b-b259-88e4b17a57c9)) - **See Yourself As The Camera Sees You** - Placing a monitor inside the prompter lets you see yourself exactly as recorded, simplifying lighting and framing adjustments. - Lewis notes you can mirror the feed so motions look natural while you adjust exposure, hair, and backdrop. Transcript: Daniel J. Lewis If you've ever gotten into trying to adjust camera settings, you probably know this frustration, where you want to make sure the lighting is correct, especially like the lighting And shadows on your nose or your glasses. You have to look at the camera, but you also have to look at your screen. So you do this weird thing where your nose is pointed at the camera, but you're looking out of the corner of your eye at the screen as you're trying to adjust the settings and trying to make Sure that you look right because your screen where you can see what the camera sees is off to the side. Well, that's a lot easier to do if you just position your video right there on the teleprompter. And you can do that where it's mirrored so that when you raise your left hand, you see it oriented correctly in the video that you're looking at, just as if you're looking at a mirror. It's not actually recording that way. I hope it's not, but it looks that way to you. So then you can adjust your lighting, your exposure, your clothing, your hair, your backdrop, all of that stuff looking directly into the camera just like you will be doing when you're Recording, but you can also be doing that while you're adjusting any of those settings. ([Time 0:19:06](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6e48409c-c812-4821-9de3-51c43cf961a4)) - **Put Remote Guests On The Prompter** - Put remote guests or interview windows on the prompter so you can look directly at them during conversations. - Lewis argues this improves nonverbal cues, reduces interruptions, and makes remote interviews feel more natural even for audio-focused shows. Transcript: Daniel J. Lewis Even if you don't publish your own video, like you're not doing a video podcast, you're not doing anything on YouTube, you're not live streaming, I think as podcasters, we still need To be ready to be on video. Because even if we don't do video ourselves, a lot of other people do. And those other people might want to interview us. So that's a good reason to make sure that you can be camera ready to some degree. And having a teleprompter really enhances that experience. Because even if the person interviewing you is not on camera, or maybe you are interviewing them, and even if you're not going to publish the video, the conversation feels so much different If you can look at the person you're talking to. And a teleprompter enables you to do that, where you can put your Zoom, your Descript, your Riverside, whatever tool you're using, you can put that on the teleprompter screen so you Are seeing the person you're talking to and you are looking directly at them while you're talking. They see you looking directly at them. So it feels more intimate in that conversation. It feels more natural to them instead of they're seeing you looking off to the side and they're looking at you from the side. And if they have a teleprompter too, then you're not looking at them from the side either. But you can be sort of looking directly at each other, making eye contact with each other. And that helps so much in the conversation because a lot of our communication is nonverbal. It's the slight cues, the even just active listening, like the nodding of the head, the weird expressions, or the certain things where you can tell someone wants to say something because You see their mouth opening up, or they're raising their hand or they're holding up a finger saying, hold on, I want to make a point or hold on, wait, I've got something. You can see that if you're making eye contact with them, even if you're not actually publishing the video, being able to see the person you're talking to can help that conversation flow A whole lot better. Whether that's a co-host, a guest, or you're the guest and you're being interviewed, you can then look at the person you're talking to and it makes it flow so much better, I think. Fewer interruptions, better communication even, because you can start to pick up on those things by seeing if they're maybe confused, or if they have a question, or maybe if they're Starting to disagree with something and you can anticipate some of those things and guide what you say or what you ask based on some of that non-verbal communication. ([Time 0:20:18](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f33ce435-1254-41ea-a499-112965e3417e)) - **Use The Prompter As An External Display** - A teleprompter can double as a small external display to offload low-priority windows like chats or picture-in-picture. - Lewis uses the Elgato prompter as an extra monitor for terminals, browsers, or social feeds to reduce desktop clutter. Transcript: Daniel J. Lewis There are many times when an external display can be really helpful. I remember my first job. I was a presentation designer working at an organization, and I had three monitors at one point, and I used all three of them. And I felt really cool like I was at some command station. I would have something in one monitor, an old version of something that I was redesigning and all my toolbars were in another monitor so that way I could focus on what I was doing on the One center screen and my other stuff was off to the side. Well, a teleprompter, especially something like the Elgato prompter, can function as an external display. Even simply an iPad can function as an external display. And doing so allows you to put that low priority information off to that external monitor. Even if it's a small one, it doesn't have to be another 27-inch monitor, another 30-inch monitor, whatever size screen that you normally look at. It could be a smaller one, and there's a good place for that. Like for example, I use the Arc browser. And like several other browsers, it has a picture in picture option, where when you're playing a video in one tab, and then you switch tabs, it will move that video into a picture in picture Sort of thing. So it moves then to one of the corners of your overall display, so that you can still see the video while you're doing something else. And I don't know about you, but it seems like it's Murphy's Law. But when I am watching slash listening to a video while I'm doing some kind of work, it seems like that picture-in display is always in the way. So I sometimes have to fight with it, move it around, and then that starts distracting me and makes me get frustrated. And so I decide I'm just going to pause this because I want to be able to listen. But this thing is in the way and I don't want to fiddle with this too much. Well, if you have an external display, even a small one, you could move that video to that external display or you could move notes there or that chat room or your social feed or your stock Or crypto portfolio or anything like that to that external display, really enhancing your workflow. Not necessarily making it a primary spot that you do work in, but just that extra stuff that you want to be able to have on the screen while you're working, but it's not taking up space on Your normal screen, distracting you or getting in the way of things. And that can be a huge workflow booster. That's something I really like about the Elgato prompter is that it functions as an external display. So anything you can do with an external display, you can do with it. Even when the camera's not on, you can still look at the teleprompter to see the stuff that is on that external monitor. And the Elgato prompter comes in two sizes, the 9-inch, and these are diagonal sizes, 9-inch and about 15.5 inches. So you can pick one that works best for your space and your needs. I use the 9-inch. I think it's just the perfect size for me. And I can use that sometimes as an external display. Like if I'm doing some programming, maybe I move my terminal, my command line over into that window while I'm doing my main work in a window. ([Time 0:23:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/95fabfe5-f7c6-4c7a-b230-89a28a829972)) - **Choose Hardware Over Flawed Software** - Favor hardware like the Elgato Prompter for robust physical design, but be ready for imperfect software. - Lewis recommends the 9-inch or 15.5-inch Elgato models and notes occasional software frustrations but praises the external-display functionality. Transcript: Daniel J. Lewis This episode is not sponsored by Elgato. I have some issues with them sometimes. I'm not currently sponsored by anybody to simply talk about something. I do have affiliate links in the notes for this episode. So if you purchase through my affiliate links, I do get a commission from that. But I recommend things I truly believe in. And I'll be honest with you. I've had some frustrations with the Elgato Prompter before. And you can see every now and then on social that I might voice some of those frustrations to Elgato. Their software isn't always that great, but their hardware, I think, is great and really useful. And I love that the way that they've designed this is that it functions as an external display. So as opposed to in the past where I've had a teleprompter where I would put my iPad in it and I'd have to get the iPad ready and all of that stuff. And if I wanted to do something on the iPad, I would have to actually reach up in front of the camera to be able to touch the iPad and try and work it in different ways and trying to work it through A mirror too. And that mess could get frustrating a lot of times. But when you're using something like the Elgato prompter, then you're controlling it from your computer. It is just an external display from your computer and you have the software that can control that too. And then you add that with other accessories, keyboard shortcuts and stuff to be able to control the teleprompter in different ways. So that could be helping your scrolling speed or moving through points or switching windows or anything like that, allowing you to use that as really a productivity tool, not just a Video tool. So I really like the Elgato prompter. It goes on sale sometimes for as low as in the $100 to $200, depending on current inflation and certain things like that. ([Time 0:26:56](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1353a305-04a9-4ec2-a11e-0a8a9475a63f))