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Eyes Up: How Teleprompters Change the Remote Game

• Sam Lewandowski

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Ever struggled with looking directly at your camera while trying to see your remote podcast guest? You're not alone. In this equipment spotlight, Brooke and Dan dive into our latest studio upgrade – a teleprompter that's revolutionizing how our podcasters connect with remote guests.

The problem was simple but frustrating: hosts looking down at their screens to see guests while cameras captured unflattering angles from above. The result? Too many forehead shots and disconnected eye contact that undermined otherwise great conversations. 

Our teleprompter solution elegantly mirrors video conferencing platforms directly in front of the camera, allowing hosts to maintain perfect eye contact with both guests and audience simultaneously.

What makes this setup particularly versatile is how it extends beyond its traditional use. Beyond solving the eye contact dilemma, we've discovered it improves lighting conditions (especially for those with cowboy hats or shiny heads!), can display scrolling text for scripted content like audiobooks, and even shows livestream comments in real-time. 

At around $300 for the Elgato teleprompter unit, it's a reasonable investment for significantly elevated production quality.

The implementation couldn't be simpler – extend your display rather than mirroring it, position your preferred camera (from basic webcams to professional DSLRs), and start recording with confidence. 

Our clients immediately noticed the difference, even if they couldn't quite identify why they suddenly appeared more professional and engaged on camera.

Ready to solve your own "forehead problem" and transform how you connect with your audience? This might be the straightforward solution you've been searching for. 

Let us know if you've tried similar setups or have questions about integrating this technology into your own podcast workflow!

Speaker 2:

welcome back everybody to autofocus one more time yeah I'm dan craft. I'm brooke galligan yes, she is, and although it's all very dark in here because we love black, apparently, and black there is a teleprompter here and it's a fairly new pickup for us. Several of the clients have used it already and I believe even Bob, our presidente, has filmed some stuff using it, but we're just basically going to walk through the idea of the teleprompter, what this one is and sort of what it can do for you as a podcast.

Speaker 1:

Yeah Well, the idea of a teleprompter is like you know, it's not that.

Speaker 1:

It's really not that, but the issue that we were facing. So, and when we have, we have a studio and it's a solo studio, so that means that somebody can basically they come in, they get a remote guest, so they they use kind of like a webinar platform like Riverside, zoom, google, whatever you're using Um. And so what happens is is we wanted to use a better camera than just what's on your um, what's on the on, like a macbook or something, and so we got a nice webcam. And then what what we realized is the webcam is actually up a little bit above where the people are looking, and so what happens is people were looking down and talking to the person, but the camera's up here. So we had um, we have very nice views of all of our clients foreheads, um, so well, I like where the camera was for a framed angle when they're looking at it.

Speaker 1:

But to read, they were looking well, not even to read, just to talk. So like, the reason why we got this is mainly to help bring everybody's eyes up so they can see their guests and look directly into the camera. Um, and so that's why we got it. We didn't really get it as to use it as a traditional teleprompter, because most of our clients they're not. It's not scripted, they don't need to, you know, be reading as like a speech scrolls or something. So what we use it for is to, basically, they have a it's, there's a, there's a display here and it mirrors your computer monitor. So it mirrors the Google Meet or whatever you're using. It mirrors it into the teleprompter and then the camera.

Speaker 2:

So all of a sudden, the guest that's in the box down here is now in a box right here.

Speaker 1:

And so here's the camera and and then they're looking, and the clients are looking directly into the camera as they talk, into the, into the mirror thing. So it's basically just a reflection. So it literally just reflects the computer screen up here and now they're having a conversation with the person and they're looking at them and then, but they're also looking into the camera. So it also helped with lighting, because when they look down a lot of our clients have hats, you know, cowboy hats.

Speaker 2:

Or a few of them, are not so follicly. Yes, shiny.

Speaker 1:

A little bit of shiny heads. We don't, we should, we should, we should provide powder. Sometimes you know some hair and makeup before we get going. But yeah, so it and so it, it. It allows them to look directly into the camera, which helps with lighting, because now the lighting is more. They're looking up so we can get more lighting on their face. Also, it's not so much of your forehead, so you get to see everything.

Speaker 2:

Okay, Now this drape is just so you can access the camera, but then you're not catching any light from behind in situations into an offsite mobile situation. You would really like to have that Right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it just helps. It just helps, you know, and it also makes it less distracting for people because, like um, you, you don't want to be able to see through the. Uh, let's see if we can make it do it. So when you're talking to somebody, you want it to be the reflection, not like the, to see through. Here you probably can't see anything because everything is black. So, um, if we had different color studios.

Speaker 2:

But basically he's like you don't want to see any distractions, um, in the reflection, because this is just a mirror, like that's a mirror, so you can see my hand but you're looking to the camera, not through the camera and beyond yeah, yeah and if, because if you, if you have too much light coming in from the back, you won't be able to see the reflection now there's also a use case to be made that in something like our solo studio, if you were using it not necessarily to report a podcast, but to come in and record and say an audio book, uh, you could, could use this in a very teleprompter, traditional way. Uh, uh, just to keep you from being hunched over from you know, you, from. You can do the scroll, you can, you can have it, you could be in the right frame to to record something like that yeah, basically.

Speaker 1:

So it's like yeah, you, um, it has a lot of modes. There's teleprompter mode, um, or what we use. We use riverside, and riverside even has like a teleprompter mode so you can use. So there's, there's, there's a lot of ways to use it, uh, but yeah, but this thing has a teleprompter mode where it turns everything. It basically turns this screen into the teleprompter and there's a program and you tell it what text to put in and you can control the speed of which it scrolls and you can basically record yourself reading something, and you can also. What's cool is that we're playing with right now is there's a streaming mode and so you can actually have it where it's set to like. It's set up to stream and it will plug into your like YouTube or whatever, and it brings up the comments and so you can have, you can see the comments in real time, yeah, and you can see them in real time.

Speaker 1:

So there's a mode on that for this too, and so we are going to, we are playing with that, and so we are going to, we are playing with that, and so we are working on a live stream right now, which will be June 25th. Um, so, uh, we are working on, uh, a kind of a way to help them use this to uh make our live streams better.

Speaker 2:

Cool. Um, now, this is completely a plug and play unit. It's single piece. All that at once no, the camera's separate.

Speaker 1:

So elgato, uh, makes the tele teleprompter and it comes with the, with the top, with the mirror, um, all the attachments to do different types of cameras. It doesn't have to be like a web, a web camera. We use a web camera just because it's easy, um, and and we like the way it looks. It's for it's 4k, it's uh, you know it has a lot of difference of it it does a lot of automatic to alsr back here you can put a dslr back there.

Speaker 1:

You can put whatever kind of camera you want, um, but it comes with the mirror, all the mounts and then the monitor comes with a stand too. Nope, you got to get the stand. Yep, so you have to get your own stand. You have to get your own camera, but you have the, the setup that allows you to do it, with the mirror and the uh dis and the display, and it is really plug and play, like you plug it in, um, you get the software down there's a software download, uh, but it's super easy and you basically just kind of mirror the uh screen over there.

Speaker 1:

It's. It works better if you do an extended um screen. So instead of uh, instead of mirror this, mirror what's on my screen over over here to the um, to this, to over here to this screen. It does better as an extended screen. So you basically just move things over. Yeah, that's what we found when we were playing with it.

Speaker 2:

Where did this run Ballpark? Do you remember?

Speaker 1:

I do not remember Okay. It was like 300 bucks. It wasn't much.

Speaker 2:

Okay. So if you've got a use for teleprompters, you've ever thought about it before, or you just simply have an issue of framing, where you want to be right onto your camera, this could be a solution for you.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, for sure. It's super easy to use and there's so many other teleprompter programs out there too, so you don't need to use a teleprompter program of it. You can just plug it into your favorite. I mean, because you is just, you basically just extend your screen and you can put whatever you want in there.

Speaker 2:

Good deal? Yeah, okay. So all the teleprompter questions you ever had, and then probably a few you didn't yeah, answered by Brooke. We've had several clients use it already and they've they've liked it. Yeah, they do, yep it.