You may recall that I made a series of videos for the month of November which I erroneously called
“No Effort November”.
Now, in all seriousness those videos were significantly easier to produce in some fashions,
particularly the scripts, but indeed;
I couldn’t help myself from going a little overboard with certain aspects.
Today, I will be trying my hardest to actually bring a low-effort video to you.
Let’s start with the thing that makes at least one part of my video production task
much more effortless;
A teleprompter.
Actually, let’s keep going with that thing because that is in fact the topic of this video.
Now look,
we’re gonna get a little behind-the-scenes now.
Some of the illusion is about to be broken.
You might want to send the kids to bed.
This could shock them.
I am reading from a script.
I am staring not at the camera, and thus you the viewer,
but am in fact
reading
words.
And a teleprompter is absolutely instrumental to maintaining this illusion.
For in fact, it is an instrument of illusionary movie magic.
Or I guess television magic.
Teleprompters don’t get all that much use in the movies, do they?
Oh, and for the more British among you, I’m sorry but as an American I simply can’t
bring myself to call this a lift.
My apologies.
That was a joke.
See, British people call teleprompters AutoCues, and I was making a joke about how what would
be called an elevator here in the States is called a “lift” over there.
See it’s funny because misdirection.
Or something.
Humor good!
So why does a teleprompter allow me to read a script while appearing to be looking right
into your eyeballs?
Well, let’s reflect on those words.
Or perhaps… reflect those words.
You see, a teleprompter is nothing but a piece of glass in front of the lens, placed at a
45 degree angle.
This glass then reflects an image from some sort of display below it,
allowing me, your host, to see it.
Sometimes a teleprompter has its display above the glass, but in the case it’s below.
This display can be pretty much anything at all.
In my case, it’s just a cheap tablet.
The only thing the display must be able to do is reverse the image so that it appears
normally in the reflection.
You could simply practice reading backwards text;
I personally don’t find that to be all that difficult, but it is significantly easier
to simply read normal words and not
sdrawkcab era taht sdrow.
Of course, the key here is that the camera is looking through this piece of glass at
me, your charming host.
This means that when I’m looking at the words,
I’m pretty much looking right at the camera lens.
Now, I’m not looking exactly at it, but that’s hard to tell.
Watch.
I am now looking slightly above the camera.
I am now looking slightly below.
You might be able to see my eyes move a bit, but there’s a surprisingly large margin
for error when it comes to determining what another person is looking at.
And I’m helped even more by three additional things.
One is that my eyesight is quite good and I can read rather small text.
The second (related) part is that the camera, and thus teleprompter,
is actually pretty far away from me.
Why does that matter?
Well, because the words on the screen take up a smaller portion of my field of view.
That means my eyes barely move as they read the text, which makes this even more convincing.
If I switch lenses and get the camera a little closer to me, it will be more obvious that
I’m reading text.
You see that weird thing eyes do where they scan a line, then a little *ding* goes off
in your brain, so you know you only have a few characters left on the line, and you smack
that carriage return so you can start the next line.
And that just repeats over and over again.
Get the camera too close and this can be distractingly bad.
I mean, I hope this looks pretty bad.
I won’t actually know until I can review this footage later.
Also, I’m sure the framing is quite odd.
I may have even needed to step in front of the table, or push it back against the set,
or maybe get on the table. I don’t know.
These words are mainly here just to keep me reading a thing on the teleprompter.
Look at my eyes, people, see them dance like a dancer wearing dancing dancy pants.
The dancing eyes dance dancily.
DANCE!
The third thing that helps
(no, I didn’t forget about it)
is that I don’t frame myself real tight.
Even if the camera is far away, if my already gigantic melon is an even greater part of
your screen than it would be otherwise, subtle movements of my eyes are more visible.
So to maximize your teleprompter noticeability reduction, you want the camera kinda far away,
you want a fairly small screen to read, and you don’t want to be all up in the viewer’s face.
Like this.
Now not all teleprompters are attached to cameras, as I’m sure you’ll have seen before.
Whenever big important people make speeches to live audiences, you’ll probably have seen
a pair of weird plexiglass looking things in front of them.
This allows them to look back and forth between two copies of their scrolling script,
giving the illusion that they’re addressing the audience in a more personal fashion,
which they absolutely are not.
When I was a wee lad, I thought these teleprompters were filled with some crazy laser technology that
made some sort of image that could only be seen from one side.
I am sad to have to tell past me, and you, that no.
Those are just pieces of glass.
See, there’s a TV on the floor and those glass panes are just reflecting that image
towards the speaker's eyes.
It’s way less cool than you think it is.
But for a piece-to-camera, this is the sort of teleprompter you’ll see.
Now, mine’s just a pro-sumer thing from Amazon.
One of the most awesome things YouTube has made happen is that cheap versions of professional
gear have become available now that it’s no longer so specialist.
But you could, if you want to, just build your own teleprompter.
In fact, for a long time, I used a home-made one!
I just 3D-printed this contraption to hold a piece of picture frame glass,
mounted a shelf-thing to my tripod,
and carefully set it all up while hopefully not dropping the
not-at-all-fastened-to-the-very-slippery-shelf
flimsy thing with glass in it.
I managed to only break two sheets of glass!
But there’s a big downside to this.
Ordinary glass doesn’t block the second reflection that occurs on the back, inside
surface of the glass.
This means that the words are a tad fuzzy since you see a double reflection.
That’s not the end of the world, but a real teleprompter like this one will use fancy beam-splitting
glass that prevents this from happening, so the text is sharper.
It’s probably the case that those presidential-class glass thingies are also made from beam-splitting glass.
Now for some final thoughts about teleprompters.
First, you gotta admit this is quite clever.
I’m not sure who first thought of putting the camera behind glass like… well, wait
Let's google that.
OK, it appears to have been conceived by Fred Barton, Jr. and first built by Hubert Schlafly.
Fun fact, those two (along with Irving B. Kahn) founded the TelePrompTer Corporation.
Which is stylized like this.
That is horrendous.
Why.
Why?
Anyway, fun fact; the sequel.
The TelePrompTer Corporation would go on to become the country’s largest cable television
provider in the early seventies.
So that’s weird.
In case you hadn’t made this connection yet, this is kind of an implementation of the famous
Pepper’s Ghost illusion, pioneered by English scientist John Henry Pepper.
Fun fact!
John Henry Pepper was not a sergeant and did not have a band of any sort.
As far as I can tell, anyway.
Pepper’s Ghost may have brought us the ballroom scene in the Haunted Mansion, but its use
in teleprompters is certainly the most practical effect.
Finally, if you’re getting into this whole YouTube thing and you make videos like I do,
I can highly recommend buying a teleprompter yesterday.
Or making your own, should you go that route.
My earliest videos took absolutely forever to shoot because I had to memorize what I wrote.
Yeah.
That sucks.
A lot.
Having one of these at your disposal is excellent.
On a related note, you may ask me what software I use to make this a functioning teleprompter.
Don’t ask me that.
I use garbage software that nobody should be using.
I only put up with it because I know how to use it, and the tablet still works somehow.
Once it dies I will surely be getting something that doesn’t suck.
Or, once I finally get tired of the nonsense I’ve been putting up with.
Should you decide to invest in a teleprompter,
which, again, if you read scripted content
on camera;
DO IT
I would suggest researching what other options for
tablets (or screen hardware) and software are out there.
Well, thanks for watching!
This is it!
Thanks to all these cool people on Patreon!
And I’ll be back before too long with what I think will be a very interesting video.
At least I hope so.
Did somebody say cut to black?
♫ reflexively smooth jazz ♫
For in fact, it is an instrument of illusionary movie magict.
Magict?
Nope.
Oh, and for the more…
[a lot of gross belching and mouth noises]
Ugh, those are gross noises.
Is called..
No, you can’t say that.
[clears throat]
That.. em bleu…
that was a joke!
...and I was making a joke abou how wha… abou?
A jokabo?
My goodness!
My words.
Allowing me, your host, to see it.
Ahh!
I shoulda moved my hand a wina (?)
[clears throat]
This was supposed to go quickly.
It’s not!
Backwards.
Sdrawkcab.
Backwards.
Sdrawkcab
Subtle movements of my
eeeeeeyyyyyess…
[laughter]
Oops.
Did you catch all those times I read something just a tad differently from how I wrote it?
That sure makes doing the captions a BREEZE.
Yet, I still do it, because duh!
Accessibility is important!
Remember that.