Eye contact
How to maintain eye contact with a teleprompter
Good teleprompter eye contact is mostly geometry. Put the words close to the lens, reduce the distance your eyes travel, and stop treating every line as something you must stare at.
Updated August 23, 2026
01
Move the text toward the lens
For a webcam, use a narrow window directly below or beside the camera. For a physical prompter, center the lens behind the glass and keep the script column aligned with it. The farther your eyes move from the lens, the more obvious the read becomes.
02
Narrow the line length
A wide paragraph forces horizontal eye movement. Reduce the text width until a line can be scanned without moving your gaze across the whole display. Increase font size to match the real reading distance rather than the size that looks tidy on a desk.
03
Keep a stable focus region
A focus guide helps the active sentence stay near the same height. Place it close to the lens and let incoming text remain visible below it. Avoid reading at the very top or bottom of the screen, where your eyelids and head position change.
04
Break eye contact like a speaker
Real conversation includes small shifts. Look away after a complete sentence, when pointing to a visual, or while taking a breath. Return before the next thought begins. The goal is convincing attention, not an unbroken stare.
05
Check a recording from the audience view
Record thirty seconds with your final camera distance. Watch once with sound off. Eye movement, head tilt, glare, and poor lens alignment become much easier to see. Fix the physical position before rewriting a good script.