Does anyone know why Jason is always looking to his right ? And why he keeps making that face at end of of sentence he makes ?? Just wondering thanks
I think people don’t like staring into the camera constantly. I usually just listen to twit shows so it doesn’t bother me, but Steve Gibson also does something similar glancing up to the side which I found quite off putting.
Would be interesting if there was an explanation for people doing it.
They could just be looking at a secondary monitor. I would think the main monitor they’re looking at will have the stream, and Jason would most likely be looking at chat when he’s looking right, or maybe some notes. I’m not sure what Steve would be looking at. He could be looking at network stats, as I think the main monitor has both the stream and his notes. He might be looking at a (private) chat window to see if the off-camera crew at TWIT are trying to tell him something during the show.
Another possibility for Jason is if he has a control panel to control cameras and what we see on the stream, he might be looking at the sources and just might be getting ready to switch the active camera on the stream. Leo normally does this during Security Now, but the camera is rarely on him.
1 Like
Got to remember a podcast is not a TV show, even when there’s a video feed. The show is primarily delivered to audio and the video is a bonus to see it being made.
A lot of podcast hosts script their shows at least to some degree, to avoid the need for editing out that moment when your brain goes blank or sticks the wrong word in the sentence you were queueing up in your mind. Even Leo, who is a genius at improv, isn’t totally immune to that problem - sometimes the promos or teases that he records after a show, being improvised, will occasionally need two or even three takes because of a fluff.
Steve’s shows are pretty tightly scripted from what I remember - I’m sure that when I’ve checked, the show notes are almost word-for-word what he says, and they come out just before the show. So my guess is that Steve is glancing at a monitor beside the camera to read what he’s scripted, to make sure you get a clean recording without fluffs. It’s part of a presenter’s skill to be able to stitch together scripted content and improv chat without the joins being visible.
If the primary focus of the show was visual, it would be a TV show, and the presenters would be using teleprompters - probably the type which allows the camera to look through the surface on which the script is projected. But my guess is that because the main audience is audio, it’s not worth asking remote presenters to introduce that complexity, and they’re using monitors beside the cameras for scripted stuff, or for reminders of what’s scheduled for the content, hence the sideways glances.