Training for the Masses: Teleprompting?
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In the grand old days of opera, in the middle of the stage, there used to be a hole in the floor, covered by a curved vent. The vent's open side faced the stage. And it was in that hole that the prompter stood — or sat — with just his head showing, looking out at the stage.
Anybody who forgot a word or a line, the prompter was there to rescue him. And that is how we derive the name of a certain piece of television equipment that we in the biz call the teleprompter.
Teleprompters have been used for decades in professional studios, especially on news and magazine programs. It enables the host or anchor to follow a script without actually holding one in his hands. In the old days, the words were printed up on a long roll of paper, something like a piano roll, which was then rolled from spool to spool next to the camera, allowing the host to read it, look into the camera, and appear vastly intelligent all at the same time.
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Modern teleprompters, like ours, are fully electronic; the script is loaded into a computer, transferred into a teleprompting program, and put up on a special monitor. Our teleprompters are mounted on two of our studio cameras. Each one faces up at a sheet of glass set at a 45-degree angle, in front of the lens. The words appear upside-down and backwards on the monitor, but they're reflected on the sheet of glass; so when the host looks at the camera, there's the script — right side up and readable.The drawbacks to using the teleprompter are two in number. First, you still need someone to operate the thing, who has to be able to work with the person reading it, making sure it doesn't go too fast or too slow. Worse still, most people think that if they have a teleprompter, they don't need to memorize their script. Wrong. You still need to know your script as thoroughly as you can. Like the fellow sitting in the hole in the stage of an opera house, the teleprompter is there to augment — rather than replace — your preparedness.
If you think you're up to facing a TV camera, with or without a teleprompter, would like to learn how to use a teleprompter, or would simply like to laugh your guts out watching someone else struggle with one, come on down and see us in Building Six in Western Gateway Heritage State Park.
Or give us a call at 413-663-9006. We'll show you what you can do to get started producing TV shows that will amuse and amaze people all over Northern Berkshire!
Paul W. Marino is the production director at NBCTC, the Northern Berkshires public access television station. His column runs once a month.
