How do you look at the camera while reading a script?
Short answer: move the words to the lens. Reading is not the problem: where you read from is. If the text sits in the middle of the screen, your eyes sit below the lens, and to whoever is watching that looks like you are avoiding them.
Why practice does not fix it
The gap between the lens and mid-screen text is a few centimetres at arm's length, which is enough for a viewer to read as broken eye contact. It is geometry, not skill. Presenters who "just memorise it" are solving the same problem by removing the text entirely, at the cost of sounding recited.
The three ways people solve it
- Hardware teleprompter. A beam-splitter puts the text optically on the lens axis. It works perfectly and costs money, setup and desk space.
- Memorise and improvise. Free, and it is why so much on-camera speech sounds either recited or lost.
- Put the script at the lens in software. A reading band anchored under the front camera instead of mid-screen. Your eyes stay within the few degrees that read as eye contact.
What else matters once the text is in the right place
- The scroll has to wait for you. A fixed-speed scroll makes you chase it, which produces its own tell: a presenter reading slightly too fast. A scroll that follows your voice keeps the line you are on under your eyes when you slow down or pause.
- Short lines. Long lines make your eyes travel sideways, which is as visible as looking down.
- Talk, do not read. Write the script the way you speak, then let the prompter keep your place instead of feeding you a performance.
How EyePrompt does it
EyePrompt anchors the reading band directly under the front camera and scrolls it with Smart Follow, which uses on-device speech recognition to follow your voice and hold when you stop. It runs on iPhone and Mac from one purchase, works entirely offline, and uploads nothing. Prompting is free and unlimited.
EyePrompt on the App Store · What to look for in a teleprompter app