The better your shot looks, the harder your script is to read

Set your phone up for a piece to camera. Close enough to read the script and the shot is all nostril. Back at arm’s length, where the framing finally looks right, the text is too small. Turn the size up and you get four words to a line, so the script scrolls constantly and your eyes track back and forth like you are watching tennis.

This is not a settings problem. Readable text needs a certain size in your field of view; a flattering frame needs distance. On one screen those two pull against each other, and one of them has to lose.

Studios solved this by not using one screen

A studio prompter is a sheet of glass in front of the lens with a monitor underneath it. The camera sits wherever the shot needs it, because the text is not on the camera. That is the whole trick, and it has nothing to do with what the rig cost.

You can do the same with something you already own. Put the script on a tablet or an old phone, stand it beside the camera, and move the camera back to where the shot looks right. The script is close to your eyes. The camera is not.

The part that usually goes wrong

Two screens have to agree with each other. Scroll them on separate clocks and they drift — unnoticeable for ten seconds, a line and a half apart by the end of a long take. Worse, most designs stop the script dead the moment the link between the devices stutters, which is far more disruptive than the drift ever was.

Talk2Camera works the other way round. Both devices are told where the script starts and how fast it moves, then each works out the position itself. Nothing is sent per frame, so there is nothing to arrive late. If the link drops, the second screen keeps scrolling and your recording never knows.

No router, no account, nothing to sign up to

The two devices connect directly to each other. You point one at the other’s screen, it reads a pairing code, and that is the setup. There is no network in the middle, so a car park or a field with no signal works as well as an office — and nothing about your script leaves the two devices in your hands.

One thing to know before you plan a shoot around it: an iPhone can join a network another device makes, but it cannot make one, because Apple provides no way to. Two Apple devices link with no network at all, and an Android phone can make one for an iPad. But pairing an iPhone camera with an Android tablet away from Wi-Fi, the tablet has to be the device showing the code.

Try it on your next take

Put the phone where the shot looks right, not where you can read. Then stand something with a screen next to it. See what the teleprompter does.