How to use a teleprompter, from the glass to the first take

A teleprompter puts your script where the camera is looking, so reading it and looking at the viewer become the same act. That only works if the set-up is right, and most of the set-up comes down to two numbers: how far away you are, and how fast the words move. The sections below give the order to do it in, with a source wherever there is a number.

What the glass does

A studio prompter is a monitor lying face up under the lens with a sheet of glass above it at about 45 degrees. The glass is a beam splitter. It reflects the monitor towards you and lets most of the light through to the camera, which looks straight through it and never sees the words. Prompter People lists the usual glass as 65/35, 70/30 or 50/50: the first number is the light that reaches the camera, the second is what reflects towards the reader.

The reflection reverses the text left to right, so the monitor has to show it mirrored, and every prompter app has a switch for that. The camera also loses some light through the glass. DC Prompters puts it at about half a stop, so open the aperture or add light before you blame the camera. The glass reflects on its camera side as well, which is what the cloth hood between it and the lens is for. Keep the hood closed.

Stand a foot back for every inch of screen

Autocue’s rule is one foot of distance for every inch of screen: ten feet from a 10-inch prompter, or about 30 cm per inch. Datavideo gives the same rule and the reason for it. Close to a large screen, your eyes or your head follow each line from left to right, and that sweep is what tells the audience you are reading.

The rule is about angles, so it holds at any size. From further away, the same line of text takes a smaller turn of the eye. A narrower column does the same job: with wider side margins, each line is short enough to take in at a glance. Then make the letters as small as you can read without effort from where you will stand, and one step bigger, because nerves and studio light both make reading harder than it is at a desk. No standard font size is worth copying, because the right one depends on the screen and the distance.

Read the line in front of the lens

With scrolling text, Prompter People’s advice is to read only the line across the middle of the screen, because that is the line in front of the lens. Let your eyes rest there and let the text come to them. Reading ahead near the top of the glass, or chasing a line to the bottom, moves your gaze off the camera for nothing. If your prompter lets you set the reading line, put it level with the lens.

No glass: put the words under the lens, not beside it

A phone or a laptop cannot put the words over the lens, so the choice is where to put them instead. The best evidence we found is a 2002 Stanford study of video calls by Milton Chen. Viewers stopped feeling looked at once the other person’s gaze moved about one degree up, left or right of the camera, and they were about ten times less sensitive to a gaze below it. The study was about video calls rather than prompters, but the geometry is the same, and it points one way. Put the text directly under the lens, never beside it or above it.

One degree is about 7 mm at 40 cm from your eyes. So the first line of text should sit as close under the camera as it will go, and you should sit as far back as you can still read. On a phone, that means a narrow band of text right under the front camera. The DIY guide covers the rigs that put glass in front of a phone instead.

Decide who controls the speed

There are four ways to move the text.

• An operator watches you and scrolls. It follows you well, and it costs a second person.
• You can run it yourself with a pedal or a hand controller. When US stations moved anchors onto running their own prompters to save money, TVWeek described the usual control as a foot pedal out of shot that works like an accelerator: the further you push, the faster the text goes. Reading and driving at once takes practice.
• A fixed speed is a pace you set before the take, and the text keeps it. It is predictable, and it cannot wait. Take a breath and the text is ahead of you. The speed guide shows how to find your number.
• Your voice can move the text. The software listens and moves the script to the words you have said, so it waits when you pause and keeps up when you speed up. It depends on speech recognition, so a noisy room or an unusual name can trip it.

Rehearse on the prompter

NBCU Academy, NBC News’s training site, tells anchors to look at the script before they have to read it, and to edit anything that is not in their own voice. It also tells them to slow down, which leaves time to put expression into the words.

Do the read-through aloud, on the prompter, at the speed you plan to use. The first pass finds the sentences your mouth will not say. Rewrite those instead of practising them; that is what the script guide is about. The second pass is for pace. A read-through on paper tells you neither.

When you lose your place

Keep talking. A stumble you carry on through barely shows on camera, and a silence while you hunt for the line always does. Finish the sentence you are in from memory, find the middle line again and join at the next full stop. If the text has run ahead, an operator or a pedal can bring it back and a fixed speed cannot, which is the case for a prompter that follows you.

For anything live, NBCU Academy’s anchors keep a paper copy of the script in front of them in case the prompter fails. Knowing the first and last sentences by heart, as the eye-contact guide suggests, covers the two moments where losing your place costs the most.

A first-take checklist

• Mirroring on for glass, off for a screen you read directly.
• About a foot of distance per inch of screen, or a phone as far back as you can read it.
• Text as small as you can read without effort from there, then one size up, in a narrow column.
• The reading line level with the lens, or the text right under it.
• A speed you have measured, or a mode that follows your voice.
• A start delay long enough to get from the record button to your mark.
• One read-through aloud, on the prompter, at speed.

Where Wispim fits

Wispim is an iPhone teleprompter with three ways of moving the text: Voice follows the words you say, Sound scrolls at the speed you set while it hears your voice, in any language, and Constant keeps a fixed speed. Recognition for Voice runs on your iPhone where your language supports it; where it does not, iOS sends the audio to Apple to convert it to text. The language picker marks those languages before the take; a full-screen notice can appear if on-device recognition repeatedly fails and the app falls back to Apple. The floating window shows no notice. There is no 3-2-1 countdown. Each script has a start delay of 0, 5, 10 or 20 seconds, in any mode, that holds the text still while you get from the phone to your mark.

On a phone with no glass, the script can move into a floating window that stays on top of Camera, Instagram or TikTok while you record. Its Strip shape is a thin band sized for two lines, meant to sit just under the front camera. On a rig, “Mirror text” flips the script for the beam splitter, in the floating window too. Wispim runs on an iPhone with iOS 16 or later, on an iPad with iPadOS 16 or later and on a Mac with macOS 13 or later, and is free for six prompter takes. Wispim for Windows runs on a 64-bit PC with Windows 10 version 2004 or later. On a Mac, its floating panel keeps the script above your other windows, and on a Windows PC its panel does the same. At any other computer, the online teleprompter on this site runs in the browser with the same three modes.

Questions

How far should I stand from a teleprompter?

About a foot for every inch of screen, so ten feet from a 10-inch prompter. With a phone, as far back as you can still read comfortably: the further away you are, the smaller the movement of your eyes that the camera can see.

What font size should I use on a teleprompter?

The smallest you can read without effort from where you will stand, plus one step. A size quoted as a standard ignores the two things that decide it, the screen and the distance. Test it from your mark, under the light you will record in.

Can I use a teleprompter without the glass?

Yes. Put the text as close under the lens as you can, keep the column narrow and sit further back. Eye contact survives a small look downward much better than a look to the side.

How do I stop sounding like I’m reading?

Rewrite the sentences you trip over, slow down, and use a speed you have measured or a prompter that waits for you. The eye-contact guide covers the rest.

Do news anchors run their own teleprompter?

Some do. In 2009 TVWeek reported US stations moving anchors onto running their own prompters with a foot pedal or a hand controller, to save the cost of an operator.