Deliver polished guest intros with the teleprompter

00:00 Hi, I'm Jamie Brooke. I'm a podcast producer and I help health, fitness, and wellness professionals launch and produce their podcasts. Today, I'm gonna show you one of my favorite simple riverside tools, the teleprompter. I use the teleprompter primarily for guest introductions. It gives the host everything they need right on screen so they can deliver a polished introduction while still looking directly toward the camera.

00:23 And in fact, in post-production, you can use something like eye contact to make sure that the eyes are still tracking directly to the camera. This is also important because if you've ever seen a host glance at a sheet of paper or hold up a sheet of paper, this can be very distracting and create unnecessary noise that may not be able to be removed in post-production.

00:45 Another thing I've seen hosts do is that they open up a second tab on their computer, which is a white Word document. This actually reflects back on the skin of the host and makes you look washed out when you have this beautiful lighting already ready to go. So we don't want to be opening up a white word document just so that we can read the guest introduction on a different screen.

01:09 So instead, I like to copy paste that introduction and put it right into Riverside as a teleprompter. So let me show you my workflow. Before the interview, I'll prepare a short introduction for the guest. Rather than simply copying and pasting their entire professional bio, I recommend writing this specifically to be spoken aloud. Keep it concise, conversational, and focused on the credentials or experience that actually matter to the conversation you're about to have.

01:34 The goal isn't to tell the audience everything about your guest before they've said a word. It's to give listeners enough context to understand who they are and why they should care about this conversation. I will then copy and paste the part of the conversation that the host is going to start with. Copy paste. Now here we are inside of the studio. You're going to click on script, this little arrow next to the script, and you're gonna go to open teleprompter.

01:59 All you're going to do is copy paste. And here you can see you can make it smaller, bigger, you can make it bold, unbold, italicized, underlined, anything that you would like if there's emphasis or anything you'd like to do. Then I'm gonna press play and I'm gonna see how fast it goes. Personally, I like it to be about at a nine or 10, just to see how fast that usually is about right.

02:21 If you want it to be a little bit faster, you can go as fast as you like as well. Once we've selected that time that works for us, we're gonna go back to the top and we're gonna hit play. Dr. Maya Bennett is a neuroscientist and biomedical engineer whose research explores how attention, memory, and our environments influence the way the brain processes information. Her work focuses on translating neuroscience into practical tools that can improve learning, focus, and everyday cognitive performance.

02:48 Dr. Maya Bennett, welcome to the podcast. From here, once you're done reading that, if you wanna be able to focus on the conversation, not have you guys be blurred out, all you have to do is go and click script and it will disappear. Now keep in mind there's a couple ways that you can record this. One, you can record it before the guest even joins. This allows you to do it without an audience. It might make you feel more comfortable.

03:09 Personally, I actually really like to have the guest present when I give this bio. The reason why is one, if I made any mistakes, we can go back and we can correct it. But second of all, I think the bigger thing is that it allows you to see the guest's reaction as you speak about them. And I think that really creates that more personal, relatable feeling as they're smiling at their own introduction.

03:32 One big thing, if you make a mistake and you happen to stumble over your words, I highly recommend that you start over at the beginning of that particular sentence. You don't have to start all over again. All you need to do is just go back to the sentence that you stumbled on and just make sure that that sounds clear all the way through. So I'll pause for a few seconds, go back to the beginning of the sentence and start again.

03:55 Don't worry about getting everything perfect on the first attempt. That's one of the advantages of recording an introduction separately. So then in post-production, that clean introduction can be placed directly into the interview, perhaps with the guest, without the guest, and ultimately we can create that eye contact through Riverside editing. It's a very simple tool, but it keeps the host focused on the camera, keeps the introduction polished, and eliminates the need to have notes or another document open while you're recording.

04:21 And that's how I use Riverside's teleprompter for podcast guest introductions. Prepare your introduction ahead of time. Write it to be spoken rather than read. Adjust the teleprompter to your natural pace and don't be afraid to record a second take. I'm Jamie Brook and I hope this helps make your next guest introduction a little easier.