Two setups that work, one that gets recommended constantly and should not be, and how to write a script that survives a question.
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The two working methods for a teleprompter on a video call are a second device propped directly below your webcam, which is free, or running the script over a screen share of your own slides inside ScrollCue Pro. ScrollCue is not a virtual camera and does not alter what participants see.
You will find advice telling you to use a teleprompter that renders your script as an invisible transparent layer inside your Zoom feed, so participants see your background and you see your script. Be careful with this. Anything actually doing that has to install a system-level virtual camera driver on your machine, which is a real piece of software with real permissions, and is a very different thing from opening a web page.
ScrollCue does not do this. It is a web app and it does not touch your camera feed. What it does instead is put the script where your eyes can go without anyone being able to tell, which turns out to be enough.
Open ScrollCue on a phone or a tablet, and prop it directly below your laptop's webcam. A phone stand, a clamp, a mug, a stack of books. The eye line drops by a couple of degrees, which is genuinely invisible on a video call because everyone is looking at a small window on a screen and nobody is doing forensic gaze analysis.
Nothing about your call software changes. It works with Zoom, Meet, Teams, Webex, and whatever your client insists on using. It costs nothing.
The one thing that matters: get it as close to the lens as you physically can. Every extra inch is a bit more visible. People put the phone on the desk in front of the laptop, which is far too low, and then wonder why they look like they are reading. Get it up next to the camera.
If you are presenting a deck while reading a script, this is much better than a second device. Put a screen share of your slides behind the script inside ScrollCue, with the dim turned up enough that the text stays readable. You are now looking at the script and at exactly what the audience is seeing, on one screen, with no second monitor and no glancing away to check where you have got to.
Anyone who has presented a scripted deck knows the specific stress of not being certain which slide is up. This removes it.
Do not script the whole thing. A word-for-word forty-five minute script sounds like a recording and collapses the instant someone interrupts, because you have nowhere to come back to and you are visibly scrolling around looking for it.
The first minute, because it sets everything. The close and the ask. Every transition between sections. Anything containing a figure, a legal phrase, or a number you would be embarrassed to get wrong.
The body of each part. Three or four bullets you expand from. This is the bit that should sound like you thinking, because on a call it needs to.
Questions, tangents, small talk, and anything reactive. Obviously.
Sections are what makes this workable. When a question drags you sideways for four minutes, you answer it properly, then tap back to where you were and carry on as if nothing happened.
The single most common mistake, and the easiest to fix. Move it up.
The reach is visible even if the script is not. Voice Follow removes it entirely, or set a speed you are comfortable with and leave it alone.
A call is a two-way thing. If your answers to questions sound as polished as your opening, everyone knows something is going on.
No, with either method. The second-device method puts the script on a separate physical device. The screen-background method renders it inside ScrollCue on your own screen and it is not part of what you are sharing.
No. It does not modify your camera feed and it does not install a virtual camera driver. Anything that genuinely overlays your Zoom feed has to install one, which is worth knowing before you agree to it.
Open ScrollCue on a phone or tablet and prop it directly below your webcam, as close to the lens as you can get it. That is the whole method and it works on every platform.
No. Script the opening, the close, the transitions, and anything with a figure or a legal phrase. Deliver the rest from headings, and leave questions completely unscripted.
Putting the script too far from the lens. People rest the phone on the desk in front of the laptop, which is far too low. Get it up beside the camera.