Show dictionary · Video & LED
Teleprompter
Also: prompter · autocue (UK)
A teleprompter displays a scrolling script for a presenter to read while appearing to look at the audience or camera. Camera prompters use mirror glass over the lens; stage speeches use downstage monitors or the paired glass panels flanking a podium. An operator paces the scroll to the speaker, not the other way around.
In practice
The craft is in the operating: a good prompter operator follows the human, breathing with their pauses, jumping cleanly when they improvise, holding when they leave the script. Scripts load with formatting conventions (large type, marked emphasis, phonetic spellings for names) that exist because reading at distance while performing is hard.
The podium-flanking glass panels (the "presidential" configuration) reflect the script toward the speaker while reading as clear glass to the room. Confidence monitors are the prompter’s simpler cousin, showing notes rather than a paced verbatim script; the showtools platform on eventools.io includes a teleprompter with remote operation and voice-follow scrolling.
How you’ll hear it
"CEO wants verbatim prompter for the opening, then bullets on confidence monitors for the Q&A."
Related resources
Part of the eventools.io Show Dictionary, a free glossary of live event production terminology.