Build Your Own Teleprompter 218
bigt_littleodd writes "Ever been in the situation where a certain expensive piece of equipment would be ideal to do the job at hand, but you would probably never ever need it to use it again, thus making the purchase/rental of equipment prohibitive? Here's a guy that had such a need and built a teleprompter with easy-to-find materials, a camcorder and a laptop."
Re:Where do you get these stories anyway? (Score:5, Informative)
But even with sophisticated presentation software, there's still a basic problem: when you're reading a screen, you're not looking directly at the camera. And that's bad. Which is why this guy's teleprompter is directly in front of the camera, and he can maintain proper eye contact throughout.
Well, Spank my ass and call me a slashdot whore. (Score:4, Informative)
Creative problem solving is a trait many creative professionals share, but perhaps no one possesses that skill more than Brian P. Lawler. See how he made a teleprompter with a laptop, Adobe InDesign, and some scrap wood. Ingenious.
(creativepro.com)
By Brian P. Lawler, creativepro.com contributing editor
Thursday, December 16, 2004
It was Thursday evening and I needed a teleprompter.
I was making a video about panoramic photography, and for the scenes where I speak directly into the camera I looked like a cross-eyed newscaster. While trying to read cue cards on a stand in front of the camera, my eyes were cast downward, and that looked odd.
To overcome this problem, I decided to read from the screen of my PowerBook instead. I figured that I could put the PowerBook display closer to the lens, and thus not appear to be looking down when looking at the camera.
But even with the text on the PowerBook screen, I still looked slightly downward when I wanted to look directly into the lens of the camera. A teleprompter was the solution, but there are no teleprompters in our area, and renting one from Los Angeles or San Francisco - both hundreds of miles away - was impractical and beyond my budget. I decided to build one.
Discipline Makes Successful Video
I am careful when making video productions to enforce a moviemaker's discipline upon myself and my hired crew and helpers. This is a skill learned from experience. When one is making a video, attention to detail, continuity, and story are critical. I find that I can't go back -- ever -- to shoot a fill-in scene; something will have changed, someone won't be available, the light will be different -- something will prevent success. Instead, I work to get it right the first time!
In the back of my sketchbook I keep a cardboard template with four windows cut to the proportion of a television screen. I use this to draw frames for my storyboards, and then I sketch ideas and stories into the frames. My sketchbook thus becomes the foundation of many of my projects. I had been working on the storyboard for this video for several months, and the story and scene ideas covered many pages of the book (see Figure 1).
From Sketchbook to Database
After deciding to use a teleprompter, I wanted to convert the sketches in my book to visual elements of a script database. I scanned the pages of the sketchbook, and then cropped the individual frame drawings into small photos that I stored in a folder. I then built a FileMaker template, and imported all the images into that database. FileMaker is very accommodating in this respect -- it imported my entire folder of numbered images into the database automatically.
Once the sketches were imported, I added descriptions, scene and shot numbers (used to sort the story into chapters), and the narration text. This method allowed me to develop the text that I would read into the camera using the teleprompter. Using FileMaker's sorting functions, I then generated a story that was in logical order with a narration that flows smoothly and which I could read easily. After sorting the script, I exported the script records into text, and then placed the resulting file in Adobe InDesign for my teleprompter needs.
Construction of the teleprompter
Having seen a number of commercial teleprompters over the years in television studios and at trade shows, I understood the concept. A teleprompter is a made of a sheet of glass suspended in front of the camera lens at a 45-degree angle. The glass reflects the image of a TV screen without affecting the light entering the lens. In the most sophisticated units, there is a controller -- and an operator -- to set the pace of the text scrolling on the screen. Mine is more primitive.
My prompter is nothing more than a sheet of window glass supported in a plywood frame in front of the camera at the correct angle (see Figure 3). I probably spent three hours cutting and building. Once
Prompter People (Score:1, Informative)
Re:X + xrandr can mirror text (Score:3, Informative)
Dead simple, pixel for pixel quality and no hassle.
Looking shifty (Score:1, Informative)
When talking to an audience this is a good thing. Glancing to the side for one person is glancing directly at another, as you well know, since you teach the subject.
It doesn't work on camera, though. There everyone who looks at the tv has the feeling that straight at the camera is straight at them. If you're glancing about, you look shifty, either with dishonesty or discomfort.
The whole point of the teleprompter is to not memorize the information so that you can retain that all important eye contact. That's why news reporters use it. They could memorize the news and use cue card style brief notes, but they'd be less able to control their gaze.
Don't make light -- teleprompter control is hard (Score:4, Informative)
A friend of mine shot a documentary last December whose narrator was none other than Ben Jones, former US congressman and, more famously, Cooter, the mechanic from The Dukes of Hazzard. Mr. Jones had only had the script for a few days, and he wanted to make minor changes as he went along to facilitate his own personal style.
I was asked to be a production assistant. I ended up, for the most part, being responsible for a low-end teleprompter we were using for the documentary script. In order to keep up or slow down depending on Mr. Jones' reading speed, a thumbwheel type control was used off camera to move the script up and down at variable speeds. Mr. Jones finally asked me to do it since, after trying it once, he found that I kept up with his rate of speech much better than the other production assistant.
Sure enough, documentary narration that was requiring retakes and retakes suddenly wrapped up a helluva lot more quickly. We would end up taking so much time in earlier takes because the precision required for the thumbwheel control was just not there. And we couldn't give the control to Mr. Jones, since he had to walk in and out of shots for the various narration scenes. The cord to the teleprompter was NOT long enough for him to be on the other side of a room and walk in.
I think the worst part about the whole experience was trying to do takes in the middle of a small town courthouse square in the middle of 15F temperatures, freezing rain, and wind. The teleprompter was pretty damned useless then because the glass kept fogging up due to the temperature changes.
My 2 cents.
IronChefMorimoto
No Total Internal Reflection (Score:4, Informative)
put my thang down flip it and reverse it (Score:2, Informative)
This guy (and most teleprompter designs I've seen) both require that the image displayed on the screen is mirrored so that the reflected image is not mirrored.
Simple fix: have the point outward toward the subject and put a REAL mirror to reflect the image upwards in front of the display. Then put your beamsplitter glass in front of the lense. Think like it's a periscope.