Confidence monitor

A confidence monitor — often a downstage monitor, sitting on the floor at the front edge of the stage — shows the speaker what the audience is currently seeing. Sometimes it also carries notes, a timer, or the next slide.

Its value is entirely in what it prevents. Without one, a presenter turns their back on the room to check the screen behind them, loses the audience and the microphone at the same time, and does it again at every slide. With one, they face forward for the whole session and appear to know the deck by heart.

It is among the cheapest items on a production quote and among the first cut by someone reading a list of screens and seeing what looks like a duplicate. It is not a duplicate; it faces the other way and nobody in the audience ever sees it.

For a panel, one monitor per two or three seats is the usual arrangement so nobody is reading at an angle. For a single keynote, one centre monitor is enough — and if there is a timer on it, agree before the show who is allowed to change it.

Corporate event production — owned inventory, our own crew, and a site survey before anything is specified.

• IMAG (image magnification) Live camera feed of whoever is on stage, put up on the screens so the back of the room can see a face instead of a distant figure.
• Teleprompter Scrolling script reflected onto angled glass so a speaker reads while looking straight ahead — at the audience, or down the barrel of a camera.