How to Use a Script on Zoom

got a big virtual presentation or speech coming up but you haven't memorized your script well today i'm going to show you how you can harness the magic of a teleprompter and read right from your script without anyone being the wiser [Music] hey gang welcome to katy failure video if we are just meeting i'm katie failinger and i've got a 15-year background in professional tv and radio broadcasting in the top markets in the country and i also have expertise in do-it-yourself video creation so on this channel i share my advice and all my tips from my lived experience at both the pro and diy level of video production so if that's something that piques your interest consider subscribing for new content and you can also ring the bell to get notified when new videos post so i have been on a bunch of zoom calls lately where i have needed to give a speech or interview someone or act as a host but i am the biggest scatterbrain i know my short-term memory is seriously a total joke and i lose my train of thought really easily it's just how i am and it's made worse by the fact i'm a mom of two and five-year-olds so my mind's in a million places all the time so let me know down in the comments if you can relate please anyway going into these zoom meetings could have been really nerve-wracking and worrisome for someone as forgetful as me because i didn't want to keep looking off screen at my notes and i knew that i would space on some of what i wanted to say but i figured out a way to get around it and that was by putting everything i needed to say or ask in an interview into a script and having that as a cheat sheet right in front of me now make sure you stay tuned until the end because i'm going to share a really important body language tip to make sure you don't give yourself away through your body movements that you're reading from a script so stick around for that but let's say you have a speech that you're giving over zoom there are two main ways to display your info on your screen first you can use a teleprompter there's this great site called easyprompter.com they have a free plan with basic utilities that work really well for something like this now you need to sign up for an account but once you do you can copy and paste a script or type it right into the prompter just keep in mind you need a paid subscription to save your scripts in easyprompter and to unlock all of its features but the free version definitely provides what you need for something like this and once your script is all ready just click start proctor you can adjust the font size and the speed of the prompter with the controls at the bottom and then either click play here or you can just tap the space bar to start and stop cool right now i love using a teleprompter when i pre-record videos that will be edited later but what i've found with live zoom presentations that i've done is that using a word doc instead of the prompter is actually preferable and here's why with the prompter you have to keep up with the scrolling words or at least you often have to keep stopping and starting the prompter with an unmoving digital document like a google or word doc you don't have to keep up right you'll have to scroll as you go sure but you also have full control of the text so which method you use really boils down to preference now i want to demo for you how i implement this i'll launch zoom first and just for demonstration purposes i'll open a new meeting and i'll quickly take a second or two to double check that my shot looks good by the way i have a whole video of tips on how to look good on zoom if you want to check that out so i'll put that link here and down in the description now the key to engaging with your audience over zoom or any video call for that matter is to make sure you're looking at the camera lens or at least training your focus as close as you can to the camera lens because as i start to look toward the middle of the screen you see what happens you can tell that i'm looking at something else right i want my audience to feel a connection with me so it's important that i try to keep my eyes focused toward that lens that means no matter where you put your zoom window if you move it to a lower corner of your screen if you just keep it behind your script maybe you even move it over to a second monitor if you have one what shows up on everyone else's screen is coming through your camera lens okay it doesn't matter how your screen is laid out or set up unless you're sharing your screen what they see is strictly what that camera lens is picking up so you need to make sure that's where you put your focus when the spotlight's on you it'll probably feel awkward to talk to a little dot on your computer as you try to read a script so my advice is to practice ahead of time in fact let's try to work through some of that awkwardness right now for one thing how do you read from a script and look at the camera at the same time let me show you some tricks it's really just about how you position your script window so let's say i'm giving a virtual speech on zoom i have a speech saved in pages that i'm going to use for this example so i'll open that up and first i want to make sure my script is formatted the right way i'm going to make my text bigger so that i'm not squinting at the camera so i'll size that up to a readable size i'll also shrink my margins if necessary so that when i read the script back to an audience i won't be reading from one edge of my screen to the other that would be a dead giveaway to my audience that i'm reading off a document because they'd be able to see my eyes traveling from left to right right and then i will actually drag the entire window to the middle of my screen and position it so that all my text falls in a centered column that flows right underneath my camera lens so here's my lens and all my text neatly lines up directly below it makes sense now most importantly i'll make sure the top line of my script is as close to the lens as possible this placement will train your eye ever so slightly lower than the lens so the fact you're reading from a script will be really hard to detect for anyone watching from the other side of the screen so move that script window up as far as it will go and as you scroll make sure you're keeping each line as close to the top of the window as you can still with me okay you may be saying to yourself this is cool and all but once my speech gets underway how am i supposed to scroll the thing covertly uh here's where that bonus tip i promised you at the beginning comes in using the track pad on a laptop doesn't really work to scroll through your script when you're trying to be sly about it because people will often be able to see your hand or your arm move into the shot so my suggestion is to attach a traditional mouse to your computer place that below the frame and use that to scroll i like to use this bluetooth mouse with my macbook it's great because there's no clicking involved when you're scrolling and you use it essentially like a trackpad so i can be super covert using this and i actually gave a virtual keynote a few months back and just with covid and the day-to-day stressors of all things 2020 there was no way i was going to be able to memorize that speech so i used this method and i think it came off really naturally from time to time you can see my right hand dropped below the desk to scroll my lines but i delivered that entire 30-minute keynote reading from a script now it's important to make mention i practiced that speech a lot so i knew how i wanted certain words inflected i knew the general flow of the talk but i also wanted to deliver it exactly as i had written it and i knew i wouldn't be able to do that without a script in front of me so let's quickly recap shall we to effectively read off a teleprompter or a word document during a virtual presentation train your eye to the camera lens position your script as closely and as centrally to the lens as possible and place a mouse below the camera frame to scroll your lines undetected so now you have a pretty slight method to work from your notes without anyone being the wiser let me know in the comments what kind of presentation you think you might test this technique on now my next video is going to show you how you can make the most of your audio quality on zoom from your speakers to your microphone and i will show you a bunch of audio options and which ones may make the most sense depending on your use case guys i hope you found this video helpful and if you did do me a favor hit that like button share this video with your colleagues who might also find this helpful and subscribe so that you don't miss any new content you can also ring the bell to get notified any time a new video posts now as you know copin has forced so many of us onto virtual and video platforms and it's becoming even more business as usual to incorporate video into our daily work so if you're interested in taking your video creation game to the next level i'd like to invite you to check out my signature online course the video production project which will be launching very soon it is an all-inclusive master class that will take even the most novice video creator from point a to z and i have a link below if you're interested in seeing what that's all about all right my friends just one last thing i would love to stay in touch with you in between videos so reach out to me i'm on all the social platforms i'm at katie failinger official on facebook and at katy failinger everywhere else and i've got shortcuts to all my pages below i would love to hear from you you can also check out my website katiefailing.com to see everything else that i'm working on meantime my friends thank you so much for checking out this video good luck on your next virtual presentation and i will see you back here very soon god that's recording right okay [Music] i promised you from you so yeah be in the heart in your throat moment when you panic that you may not have been recording this whole time and place a mouse below the camera and place a mouse below that would have been terrible

Channel: Katie Fehlinger

Views: 441,419

Keywords: how to use a script while looking at the camera, how to use a script on video calls, how to use a teleprompter on zoom, how to read a script on virtual presentation, virtual presentation, virtual speech, zoom speech tips, zoom tips, how to give a speech, how to give a virtual presentation, zoom teleprompter techniques, zoom presentation, zoom camera tips, best zoom setup, katie fehlinger, katie fehlinger video, how to use a script on zoom

Id: pKOxkZ1AwlQ

Length: 10min 12sec (612 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 08 2020