On-Camera Coach

CHAPTER 11 Tackling the Teleprompter

Woe to the person who underestimates the challenges of reading off a teleprompter. After all, how hard can it be? It's just reading.

Teleprompters can give a false sense of security. The words are all there, so the assumption is that you don't have to think. Just ask Michael Bay.

CASE STUDY

BLOCKBUSTER DIRECTOR BOMBS ON STAGE

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is one of the biggest conventions held annually in Las Vegas. The event in 2014 was no different. Companies pull out all the stops and bring in major star power to attract attention to their latest offerings.

Samsung was introducing its curved television that year and thought “who better than Michael Bay, director of blockbusters like the Transformers movies, to enthusiastically endorse the ‘revolutionary technology'?” He was booked to appear on the CES stage as a celebrity spokesperson of a sort.

Joe Stinziano, Samsung's executive vice president, served as emcee and invited Bay to join him in front of the audience of hundreds of journalists and industry insiders. Bay began his performance just fine. He asked how everyone was doing and then said, “My job as a director is I get to dream for a living.”

Stinziano then asked him how he comes up with the larger-than-life ideas in his movies. At this point, Bay starts answering the question while looking at the teleprompter. He then looks ...