Not very often... unless you're a comedian.
And then, bullet points cue you to the order of your JOKES, which you've memorized.
- SLEEPING FIREMAN
- PEEING 3-LEGGED DOG
- CHIPPER RAPES LAWNMOWER
But BPs rarely work for speakers reading prompter, OTHER than if the speaker talks on this topic all the time. And I do mean all the time. So giving the corporate executive a fresh list of bullets to hit in the hopes that he or she will appear more "natural" does not usually work. Really.
Recent case in point-- I worked with a guy who claims to be the Greatest Salesman in the World. This was a training video product, not cheap, on salesmanship. When I got the script I KNEW we were in trouble. Someone had bulletized his live-audience presentation and called it a script.
Our difficult super-salesman had not read his script out loud beforehand, and so did not realize that while he was very familiar with the bulletized concepts, he could not say what he wanted in coherent sentences in front of a camera!
It was a train wreck.
The shoot was called off on the second day: scrapped until there is a script composed of actual sentences. It was an expensive, frustrating, and avoidable mistake!
Normally I would have seen this as an opportunity to mention my script writing services. Clients sometimes hire me to write a new script. But for this guy, I would have to be paid in multiples of Ferarris.
If and when this project comes around again, I'm going to:
- raise my rate by a factor of ten
- put another operator on it
- go to the beach
- take in a movie
- visit a whiskey bar
- ALL OF THE ABOVE
/ / / / / / / / /




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