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You may recall that I made a series of videos
for the month of November which I erroneously called

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“No Effort November”.

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Now, in all seriousness those videos were
significantly easier to produce in some fashions,

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particularly the scripts, but indeed;

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I couldn’t help myself from going a little
overboard with certain aspects.

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Today, I will be trying my hardest to actually
bring a low-effort video to you.

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Let’s start with the thing that makes at
least one part of my video production task

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much more effortless;

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A teleprompter.

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Actually, let’s keep going with that thing
because that is in fact the topic of this video.

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Now look,

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we’re gonna get a little behind-the-scenes now.

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Some of the illusion is about to be broken.

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You might want to send the kids to bed.

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This could shock them.

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I am reading from a script.

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I am staring not at the camera, and thus you
the viewer,

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but am in fact

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reading

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words.

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And a teleprompter is absolutely instrumental to maintaining this illusion.

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For in fact, it is an instrument of illusionary
movie magic.

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Or I guess television magic.

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Teleprompters don’t get all that much use
in the movies, do they?

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Oh, and for the more British among you, I’m
sorry but as an American I simply can’t

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bring myself to call this a lift.

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My apologies.

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That was a joke.

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See, British people call teleprompters AutoCues,
and I was making a joke about how what would

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be called an elevator here in the States is called a “lift” over there.

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See it’s funny because misdirection.

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Or something.

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Humor good!

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So why does a teleprompter allow me to read
a script while appearing to be looking right

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into your eyeballs?

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Well, let’s reflect on those words.

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Or perhaps… reflect those words.

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You see, a teleprompter is nothing but a piece
of glass in front of the lens, placed at a

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45 degree angle.

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This glass then reflects an image from some
sort of display below it,

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allowing me, your host, to see it.

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Sometimes a teleprompter has its display above
the glass, but in the case it’s below.

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This display can be pretty much anything at
all.

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In my case, it’s just a cheap tablet.

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The only thing the display must be able to
do is reverse the image so that it appears

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normally in the reflection.

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You could simply practice reading backwards
text;

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I personally don’t find that to be all that difficult, but it is significantly easier

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to simply read normal words and not

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sdrawkcab era taht sdrow.

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Of course, the key here is that the camera
is looking through this piece of glass at

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me, your charming host.

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This means that when I’m looking at the
words,

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I’m pretty much looking right at the camera lens.

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Now, I’m not looking exactly at it, but
that’s hard to tell.

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Watch.

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I am now looking slightly above the camera.

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I am now looking slightly below.

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You might be able to see my eyes move a bit,
but there’s a surprisingly large margin

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for error when it comes to determining what
another person is looking at.

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And I’m helped even more by three additional
things.

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One is that my eyesight is quite good and
I can read rather small text.

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The second (related) part is that the camera,
and thus teleprompter,

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is actually pretty far away from me.

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Why does that matter?

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Well, because the words on the screen take
up a smaller portion of my field of view.

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That means my eyes barely move as they read
the text, which makes this even more convincing.

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If I switch lenses and get the camera a little
closer to me, it will be more obvious that

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I’m reading text.

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You see that weird thing eyes do where they
scan a line, then a little *ding* goes off

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in your brain, so you know you only have a
few characters left on the line, and you smack

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that carriage return so you can start the
next line.

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And that just repeats over and over again.

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Get the camera too close and this can be distractingly
bad.

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I mean, I hope this looks pretty bad.

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I won’t actually know until I can review
this footage later.

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Also, I’m sure the framing is quite odd.

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I may have even needed to step in front of
the table, or push it back against the set,

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or maybe get on the table. I don’t
know.

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These words are mainly here just to keep me reading a thing on the teleprompter.

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Look at my eyes, people, see them dance like
a dancer wearing dancing dancy pants.

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The dancing eyes dance dancily.

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DANCE!

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The third thing that helps

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(no, I didn’t forget about it)

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is that I don’t frame myself real tight.

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Even if the camera is far away, if my already
gigantic melon is an even greater part of

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your screen than it would be otherwise, subtle
movements of my eyes are more visible.

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So to maximize your teleprompter noticeability
reduction, you want the camera kinda far away,

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you want a fairly small screen to read, and
you don’t want to be all up in the viewer’s face.

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Like this.

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Now not all teleprompters are attached to
cameras, as I’m sure you’ll have seen before.

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Whenever big important people make speeches
to live audiences, you’ll probably have seen

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a pair of weird plexiglass looking things
in front of them.

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This allows them to look back and forth between
two copies of their scrolling script,

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giving the illusion that they’re addressing the
audience in a more personal fashion,

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which they absolutely are not.

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When I was a wee lad, I thought these teleprompters
were filled with some crazy laser technology that

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made some sort of image that could only be
seen from one side.

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I am sad to have to tell past me, and you,
that no.

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Those are just pieces of glass.

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See, there’s a TV on the floor and those
glass panes are just reflecting that image

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towards the speaker's eyes.

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It’s way less cool than you think it is.

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But for a piece-to-camera, this is the sort
of teleprompter you’ll see.

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Now, mine’s just a pro-sumer thing from
Amazon.

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One of the most awesome things YouTube has
made happen is that cheap versions of professional

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gear have become available now that it’s
no longer so specialist.

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But you could, if you want to, just build
your own teleprompter.

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In fact, for a long time, I used a home-made
one!

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I just 3D-printed this contraption to hold
a piece of picture frame glass,

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mounted a shelf-thing to my tripod,

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and carefully set it all up while
hopefully not dropping the

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not-at-all-fastened-to-the-very-slippery-shelf

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flimsy thing with glass in it.

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I managed to only break two sheets of glass!

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But there’s a big downside to this.

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Ordinary glass doesn’t block the second
reflection that occurs on the back, inside

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surface of the glass.

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This means that the words are a tad fuzzy
since you see a double reflection.

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That’s not the end of the world, but a real
teleprompter like this one will use fancy beam-splitting

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glass that prevents this from happening, so
the text is sharper.

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It’s probably the case that those presidential-class
glass thingies are also made from beam-splitting glass.

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Now for some final thoughts about teleprompters.

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First, you gotta admit this is quite clever.

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I’m not sure who first thought of putting
the camera behind glass like… well, wait

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Let's google that.

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OK, it appears to have been conceived by Fred
Barton, Jr. and first built by Hubert Schlafly.

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Fun fact, those two (along with Irving B.
Kahn) founded the TelePrompTer Corporation.

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Which is stylized like this.

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That is horrendous.

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Why.

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Why?

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Anyway, fun fact; the sequel.

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The TelePrompTer Corporation would go on to
become the country’s largest cable television

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provider in the early seventies.

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So that’s weird.

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In case you hadn’t made this connection yet, this is kind of an implementation of the famous

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Pepper’s Ghost illusion, pioneered by English scientist
John Henry Pepper.

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Fun fact!

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John Henry Pepper was not a sergeant and did
not have a band of any sort.

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As far as I can tell, anyway.

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Pepper’s Ghost may have brought us the ballroom
scene in the Haunted Mansion, but its use

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in teleprompters is certainly the most practical
effect.

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Finally, if you’re getting into this whole
YouTube thing and you make videos like I do,

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I can highly recommend buying a teleprompter
yesterday.

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Or making your own, should you go that route.

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My earliest videos took absolutely forever
to shoot because I had to memorize what I wrote.

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Yeah.

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That sucks.

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A lot.

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Having one of these at your disposal is excellent.

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On a related note, you may ask me what software
I use to make this a functioning teleprompter.

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Don’t ask me that.

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I use garbage software that nobody should
be using.

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I only put up with it because I know how to use
it, and the tablet still works somehow.

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Once it dies I will surely be getting something
that doesn’t suck.

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Or, once I finally get tired of the nonsense
I’ve been putting up with.

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Should you decide to invest in a teleprompter,

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which, again, if you read scripted content

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on camera;

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DO IT

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I would suggest researching what other options for

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tablets (or screen hardware) and software
are out there.

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Well, thanks for watching!

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This is it!

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Thanks to all these cool people on Patreon!

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And I’ll be back before too long with what
I think will be a very interesting video.

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At least I hope so.

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Did somebody say cut to black?

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♫ reflexively smooth jazz ♫

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For in fact, it is an instrument of illusionary
movie magict.

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Magict?

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Nope.

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Oh, and for the more…

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[a lot of gross belching and mouth noises]

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Ugh, those are gross noises.

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Is called..

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No, you can’t say that.

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[clears throat]

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That.. em bleu…

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that was a
joke!

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...and I was making a joke abou how wha…
abou?

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A jokabo?

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My goodness!

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My words.

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Allowing me, your host, to see it.

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Ahh!

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I shoulda moved my hand a wina (?)

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[clears throat]

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This was supposed to go quickly.

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It’s not!

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Backwards.

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Sdrawkcab.

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Sdrawkcab.

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Backwards.

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Sdrawkcab

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Subtle movements of my

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eeeeeeyyyyyess…

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[laughter]

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Oops.

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Did you catch all those times I read something just a tad differently from how I wrote it?

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That sure makes doing the captions a BREEZE.

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Yet, I still do it, because duh!

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Accessibility is important!

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Remember that.