Just came off of a job recently where the producers - at the last minute - decided that they needed to put a teleprompter on a 30' jib for their opening shot. For those of you familiar with both the operation of a teleprompter and a jib crane I do not have to tell you all the potential problems that are inherent in that particular configuration, yet seasoned network professionals seem oblivious to them. One requests a 30' jib arm because one wants a giant, majestic, sweeping master shot - a scene setter - that brings the viewer from outside the experience and then right down into its midst. Of course, this requires the jib to be about 24' or more in the air and probably even further than that from the talent - who, ostensibly needs to be able to not only see the prompter, but read from it as well. Are you starting to see a potential problem? Also - one would like to use the phrase "needless to say" here, but apparently it needed to be said - the pitch angle of the prompter is not oriented to even make it possible for the talent to read until the move has brought the camera and prompter down to Earth and to the talent's eye level - unless, of course, your opening shot is looking straight down on the set and the talent's head. Not often the case.
Now imagine trying to do this outdoors in the sunshine. Fortunately - or not - we were doing this inside an arena with stadium lighting, and as any DP knows, when you have light shining directly into your lens then you had better hope that glass is flawless or every imperfection will show up as a less than flattering aberration, not a beautiful lens flare or star effect. Prompter glass is prompter glass, and it is rarely as well cared for as a lens, and typically prompters are shielded from light sources and situated just a few feet from their subjects for easy reading - for a reason! In this case, the prompter glass had a slight scratch in it - naturally, right in the middle of the field of view - and this scratch magnified the light shining onto it so that it appeared that there was a great blond hair hanging down in front of the lens. Argh!
It is at this point that the talent saves the day. He is a well known network industry pro who speaks lines for a very good living. He pointed out that the read was maybe ten or fifteen seconds and that he basically had it memorized already, before he would have to make his head turn to a second camera and finish the read. Argh!
We were now an hour behind schedule trying to make this prompter mess work on a 30' arm with uncontrolled light sources when sanity finally prevailed. Had anybody bothered to forward a copy of the script to the talent? Did anyone ask the talent if he actually needed or wanted a prompter for this particular read? People (especially highly paid executives) are loathe to ask such questions in our industry, because of the fear that it may make them look incompetent, so they over think it and pull out all the bells and whistles as a way of making sure that they are insulated from potential criticism in case something goes wrong. And so when something does go wrong they can point to the unnecessary accessories that they ordered as proof that they did everything that they were supposed to do and that the failure is the responsibility of someone else. The delays on the set, the prompter's ultimate failure to do what was hoped for - all this conveniently shifts blame down the food chain onto the hapless prompter operator! But the reality is that the prompter should have never been ordered for the jib in the first place. It made sense to put one on a second camera at a ground position close to the talent for his head turn and closing read, but in the sky more than 30' away - well, it wasn't worth the trouble in the end. The prompter was removed and the shot was completed in just a few minutes. Argh!
But you can't tell them that. Now, I am not saying that there is never a place for a prompter on a jib. I have had them on my jib a number of times, but the longer the arm, the more likely that there are going to be issues that will not be quickly resolved on the set, and most of those issues do not become acutely apparent until the talent is in place and everybody is waiting and when delays are most unwanted.
And a second point I wish to make - as a former actor - anyone calling themselves "Talent" in this business that cannot quickly master a thirty second read in just a few minutes has no business going on camera in my opinion. And I run into these "Professionals" more often than I care to recount. The sort of folks who actually have to look at their driver's license to know the number when filling out a form. Argh!
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