Your Public Best - Lillian Brown [110]
If the earpiece does not work temporarily, simply say that you cannot hear what is being said. Someone will come to the rescue and tell you what to do. They may repeat the information you could not hear and tell you to keep talking.
Your interviewer is accustomed to wearing the earpiece device. She or he has probably learned to read the prompter, take cues, listen to the control room chatter, and carry on a conversation—almost all at the same time.
The Prompter
A prompter is a device that through reflection and magnification of a typed script enables you to read it while looking directly at the lens of the TV camera. Your script, which has been specially typed for the prompter, appears on the prompter’s face no matter which camera you look at. The prompter copy is reflected upward onto a glass surface mounted at an angle in front of the lens. The viewer sees your eyes as if you were looking into the lens, when in reality you are reading the script. Your eye contact with the camera will automatically be correct.
The prompter operator will advance the copy as you speak, keeping the line you are speaking above the middle of the screen. The words will scroll upward at the pace you are speaking, as the prompter operator matches your speed.
Double prompters are sometimes used for news conference statements and long addresses. The copy is projected onto right and left glass stands, which resemble music racks. These are invisible to the cameras and to the audience unless one knows how to detect them in the long camera shots. Double prompters enable the speaker to establish natural eye contact with the audience, making it possible to look from side to side, with the copy always directly over the camera lens.
Preparing Prompter Copy. Prompter copy has to be prepared in advance on a special typewriter using large type and wide margins. Only a few words will fit on each line. The script that is to go on a prompter should be submitted well in advance to allow time for the material to be retyped properly to fit the particular prompter machine being used.
Prompter copy paper has vertical lines which indicate the margins. All of the copy is typed between these narrow lines, to fit the prompter limitations. The pages are numbered, and the prompter copies are joined together with tape to form a continuous strip. The paper is then rolled up and run through the machine in one seamless piece. Copy for a three-minute broadcast might be six or eight feet long before it is rolled up.
When no prompter is available, “idiot sheets” or “cue cards” may be used. These are huge cards—nearly poster sized—with handwritten copy. They are held as close to the lens as possible, but it is difficult to read them without shifting the eyes.
Every seasoned newscaster uses copy that has been painstakingly written and timed to the second. The viewer often has the illusion that the broadcaster is speaking spontaneously, when, in fact, he or she is reading from the prompter words he may have spent hours writing. The viewer also has the illusion that the broadcaster is talking only to one person. The prompter has thus eliminated the need to look down at the copy and then look up into the camera lens.
Marking Up Prompter Copy. You will probably find it helpful to mark up the prompter copy before you read it on camera. There are so few words on a line, within the narrow margins, that it is hard to see to the end of a sentence and to know when you will be able to take a breath.
I remember once when the late Hubert Humphrey was a senator, he was asked to tape a response representing the Democratic Party’s point of view concerning an important political issue. When he got to the studio, he was handed a script he had never seen before. I, along with the rest of the crew, ended up having to wait while he spent about thirty minutes marking up the prompter copy to fit his famous personal speaking style. But once on tape, the script sounded like it was his own spontaneous words.
To mark up your