How to Keep Eye Contact With the Camera While Reading a Script

Viewers decide in a second whether you are talking to them or reading at them. The difference is almost always eye contact, and on camera, eye contact means looking at a tiny glass lens instead of the face on your screen.

Why your eyes drift

Three habits pull your eyes away from the lens:

• Watching yourself. The preview of your own face is the most interesting thing on the screen. Your eyes go there.
• Reading long lines. Your eyes track along the words, left to right, and the camera sees it.
• Searching for the next sentence. Mid-thought, you glance down to find your place.

Each one is fixable.

Fixes for a phone setup

1. Use the front camera, but stop looking at yourself. Cover the preview area with your script, or use a prompter that puts text over the top of the preview, close to the lens.
2. Keep lines short. If a line has more than about 12 to 15 words, split it. Short lines can be read in one glance.
3. Glance, then speak. Read the line silently, lift your eyes to the lens, then say it. The glance happens before the take really starts.
4. Put a dot next to the lens. A small sticker beside the camera gives your eyes a target.

Fixes for a laptop setup

• Move the script window to the top of the screen, directly under the webcam.
• Shrink the window so the text column is narrow. Narrow text means less eye movement.
• Raise the laptop so the webcam is at eye level. Looking down at a camera also reads as looking away.

Practise the lens habit

Eye contact with a lens feels strange because there is nobody there. Two tricks help:

• Imagine one person. Picture a friend just behind the lens and explain the idea to them, not to "everyone watching".
• Record a 30-second test and watch it on mute. Without sound, every drift jumps out. Note which lines caused it and shorten them.

Do not overcorrect

Staring at the lens without blinking looks just as odd as looking away. Natural speakers glance away briefly when they think, then come back. Aim for your eyes on the lens for most of each line, especially at the start and the end.

Getting feedback while you film

The hardest part is noticing drift in the moment. You usually only see it in the edit. SayAction checks frames from each take and tells you right away if your eyes went to the screen, so you can redo that one line before moving on, instead of discovering it an hour later.

The short version

Put the words near the lens, keep each line short, glance before you speak, and check your takes on mute. Do that for a week and looking at the lens stops feeling strange.