SAVE | EMAIL | PRINT | MOST POPULAR |  RSS | | REPRINT
|
How to Deliver a Scripted Speech
April 30, 2009
By Jerry Weissman
Microsoft PowerPoint, the graphic medium of choice for today’s presentations and speeches, also has come to serve as a "script," or prompt, for the speaker’s narrative. This convention allows the speaker to depart from the slides by either going deep or skimming the main points as needed. However, there are several situations where the words must be more specific, where the "script" loses its quotation marks and becomes a prescribed text.
Legal. In a public statement about a legal matter, the words are crafted by attorneys.
Policy. In a public statement about a controversial or sensitive issue, the words are positioned by public relations or media counsel.
Lyrical. In an emotional situation, such as a eulogy, graduation, retirement, or award acceptance, the words often are created by a skilled prose writer.
Political. In a political campaign, positions and statements are written by a team of strategic consultants.
Production. In large venues or events, such as a convention or a trade show, the presenter often has to integrate video clips, demonstrations, or other technical elements and use precise words to cue the production team.
In each of these cases, the speaker must rely on a hard copy of the speech, which sets up three potential pitfalls during its delivery.
The speaker loses eye contact with the audience. When looking down at the text, the speaker’s voice becomes muffled. The speech appears and/or sounds "read" or "canned." There are two solutions available:
Teleprompter
This is the elaborate system conventionally used in presidential State of the Union Addresses, the highest profile policy situation imaginable. Television news anchors and commentators use teleprompters, too, but the system also is being deployed in many other situations, particularly in the business world.
In such settings, the speaker stands on the dais, facing the audience. Discreetly positioned at either side of the speaker’s rostrum are two inconspicuous thin black rods supporting clear Plexiglas panels. These panels reflect the image of a concealed computer screen where the text of the speech scrolls by at a controlled rate. The angle of the panels makes the text visible only to the speaker and transparent to the audience, so it appears the speaker is looking straight at the audience.
Thus, the teleprompter system solves the eye contact and muffled voice problems. The "canned" challenge takes more effort. The words you read most likely will have been written by another person whose cadence is different from yours. The solution is to preview the computer text and find your own cadence. Mark the ends of the phrases with backslashes. These marks will serve as your prompts to move to another Plexiglas panel. You also can use vocal inflection to mark your cadence. This technique, called "Complete the Arc," is covered in detail in Chapter Six of my book, "The Power Presenter."
As useful as a teleprompter is, there are two drawbacks:
Malfunction. Mechanical devices can fail, so always have a hard copy as back up.
The Ping-Pong Effect. As the speaker swings back and forth between the two panels, the repetitive pattern can appear deliberate and unnatural.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Senator John McCain notoriously struggled with his teleprompter speeches because he moved abruptly, sounded choppy, and darted his eyes. In contrast, whenever President Obama spoke from a teleprompter, he moved between the panels at logical points in the text, creating a fluid cadence.
For those of us who are not Barack Obama, another solution is to use four Plexiglas panels, and to move among them in random sequence.
Clearly, a teleprompter is a complex solution, and a costly one. For those on a tighter budget, there is another solution: good old reliable paper.
Vertical Text
When the text of a script is printed in conventional format, it causes readers to move their eyes in both the horizontal and vertical planes: across the line, down to the next line, and back across to start the next line. Please read the first paragraph of Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address below and feel your eye movements:
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."
These moves are of no effect when you are reading from the printed page for your own appreciation or enlightenment. But if you read this text to an audience, you would have to add two more vertical moves: up to look at the audience and back down at the page to go across the line. These additional movements make it difficult to keep track of your place on the page.
The solution is Vertical Text. Reset the tabs of your document to create a narrow column and reformat your script. Define each line as a piece of integral logic, mostly where the commas occur. Now read the reformatted Gettysburg Address below and note how your eye movements have diminished and made it easier for you to keep track of your place:
"Four score and seven years ago
our fathers brought forth on this continent,
a new nation, conceived in Liberty,
and dedicated to the proposition
that all men are created equal."
Once you have reformatted your text, practice delivering it several times. As you become familiar with the content, you will pick up more lines each time you look down, and you will develop a fluid, comfortable, and varied rhythm.
While Vertical Text helps you to maintain eye contact with the audience, and allows for a natural cadence, the downward movement of your head also tends to muffle your voice. A microphone will help, but a better, simpler remedy is to observe a simple rule of thumb: Speak only when you are looking out to your audience, and never down at your Vertical Text.
Jerry Weissman is author of "The Power Presenter: Technique, Style, and Strategy from America’s Top Speaking Coach" from John Wiley and Sons.
|
SAVE | EMAIL | PRINT | MOST POPULAR | RSS |
|
|
| Back to Training Index |
|
|
