How to read a script while looking at the camera

Put the text directly under the lens, keep the column narrow, and look at the lens when each sentence ends. Do those three things and your eyes move so little that the viewer reads it as you looking at them. The rest is distance, size and a little rehearsal.

The camera sees angles, so keep the words near the lens

Your eyes show up in the video as a direction. Look straight at the lens and the viewer feels looked at. Look 10 degrees below it and the viewer sees you looking at something below.

The size of that angle depends on two things: how far the words are from the lens, and how far your face is from the screen. Here is the arithmetic with example numbers. Your face is 24 inches from the phone:

Words sit this far below the lens	Angle your eyes are off the lens
1 inch	about 2 degrees
2 inches	about 5 degrees
4 inches	about 9 degrees

These come from simple geometry (the angle is the arctangent of the gap divided by your distance), so treat them as an illustration of the trend. Small angles pass as eye contact. Large ones read as looking away. Professional teleprompters exist for this reason: they put the script in front of the lens through angled glass, so the gap is close to zero (Adorama).

On a phone you cannot reach zero, but you can stay within an inch or two. Put the first lines of the script at the very top of the screen, next to the camera.

Keep the column narrow so your eyes barely sweep

Reading moves your eyes left to right on every line, then back. Over a wide line, that sweep is easy to spot. Over a narrow line it is a flicker.

Set the text to a narrow column of about 4 to 6 words per line. Break lines at natural pauses, so each line is a phrase:

Last week I changed my mind.
I used to send one update a month.
Now I send one a week.

(Example script, written for this guide.)

Short lines also help your memory. You take in a phrase at a glance, look up, and say it.

Make the type big enough that you do not lean in

Leaning toward the screen is the second giveaway after the eye sweep. It changes your head angle and your distance from the lens in the middle of a sentence.

Raise the text size until you can read it comfortably from where you sit. Then step the phone back a little and check again. If you have to squint, the size is too small. If the column now holds only 2 or 3 words per line, shrink it slightly and allow 4. Find the balance by testing, not guessing.

Set the phone at eye height and arm’s length or more

Prop the phone so the lens is at eye height. A phone held below your chin makes you look down at it, which adds an angle on top of the text gap.

Arm’s length or a bit more works for most people. Farther away shrinks the same on-screen gap into a smaller angle, as the table shows, but only if you can still read the text. Move back until the text is just comfortable, and stop.

Look at the lens when a sentence ends

You do not have to keep your eyes on the lens the whole time. You only have to arrive at the lens at the right moments.

Try this pattern: read the first half of a sentence, look at the lens for the second half, and hold your gaze there through the pause before the next sentence. The pause at the end of a sentence is where the viewer most wants to feel looked at. Your eyes finish the thought on the lens, and then go back for the next line.

Mark the pauses on the script if you like. A slash / at the end of each sentence is a reminder to look up. In the example above, the full stops are where the look-ups go.

What the camera sees

Picture the shot from the viewer’s side. The lens is a small dot at the top of the phone, and you are looking at a point on the screen. When the words sit right under the lens, that point and the lens are almost the same spot, so your gaze lands on the viewer. When the words sit lower, the two spots pull apart, and the viewer sees your eyes tilted down. A wide line adds a sideways slide on top of that. A narrow column turns the slide into a small shift.

Fix one thing at a time when it still shows

If a test take still looks like reading, change one setting and film again. Start with the text position, since distance has the biggest effect in the table above. Next, narrow the column. Last, adjust size and phone distance. Changing everything at once hides which change helped.

A few quick checks help here. Does your head stay level from the first line to the last? Does your gaze return to the same point on the lens each time? A steady head and a steady return point make the whole take look calmer.

Rehearse so your eyes only confirm

Read the script aloud twice before you record. The first read finds the lines where you trip; fix those in the script. The second read lets you hear the whole thing. By the second pass you know where the sentences go, and your eyes only check the words rather than hunt for them.

Then do one test take of ten seconds and watch it with the sound off. If you can see your eyes move, shorten the lines or move the text closer to the lens.

In Rolling, an iPhone teleprompter app, you read your script on the recording screen while you record, so the lens and the text share one screen. If you would rather learn the words, see how to memorize a script. To set up the prompter and choose a pace, see how to use a teleprompter. The overview of all options is in how to read a script on camera.