CD Case Teleprompter

Do you make youtube videos? How about informative videos that have facts that need to be written down for you to remember. Before this, I had my laptop underneath the camera and a wireless mouse by my side to scroll through my bullet points in Microsoft Word. When the video was filmed, you could see me glance down at my laptop for 1-2 seconds. I knew about teleprompters so I went shopping for one. Bad idea. The prices of professional ones are in the upper $100 to $1500!

I decided to make my own. I looked online and found a 3d Printed Mount for a piece of glass and a phone. Turns out, it would take around 8 hrs to print on my 3D printer. I had built a smartphone hologram viewer from Make: magazine, out of a CD case. I figured I could use the same concept. And that is how the CD Case Teleprompter was born.

Materials:

- CD Case (With See-through cover)

- Small piece of cardboard or other light material that blocks light (for darkening above the camera)

- Phone with Internet Connection (WiFi or Cellular)

- Masking Tape

- Books to raise the teleprompter up to the camera lens height

- Table with removable tiles (optional but helpful)

First, open your CD case and remove any cover art if you have not already done so. Make sure there are no noticeable gashes that can be seen from a distance. Then cut a very small piece of card board out of your bigger sheet. This will be used to keep the see through cover on an angle and not fall over while filming. You can also use a thin piece of plastic as I did on the picture above.

Next, tear or cut a piece of tape to attach the larger piece of cardboard to the to top the case. You want just enough tape to keep the cardborad attached but not too much that you can see the tape on the camera's screen/viewfinder.

You will now want to setup your camera for filming. I had a deck table with tiles that you can remove. I took one of the tiles out so I could put the camera through the hole and set the teleprompter on the table. I raised the camera up and place books under the prompter. Then, set the cardboard ontop of the camera as shown above. Be careful, the flash on top of the camera may pop up and hit the cardboard. If possible, turn off the flash for the times when you are using the teleprompter.

The see through case should be at around a 45-degree angle to the table. The actual teleprompter, when setup, will look like the letter "Z".

OPTION 1 (Recommended for iOS):

Take your phone and go here (goo.gl/BwC5GF). Copy and paste your script from some source (Google Doc, Email, etc.) into the text box and make sure you check "Mirror".

Then, click or tap "Teleprompter Mode". To have the prompter scroll, you will have to connect a keyboard in some way to your phone. If you have a Mac desktop, you may be able to use the keyboard on it to pair with your phone through Bluetooth. Then:

• Use "P" to start scrolling
• Use "S" to slow down the scrolling
• Use "F" to speed up the scrolling
• Use "X" to reset the

OPTION 2 (Recommended for Android):

Download an app from the App Store or Play Store for teleprompting.

iOS

Before you download an app, try Option 1 then, you can either pay for an app such as Teleprompter Premium or, you can go to another website such as freeteleprompter.org. I had some troubles with getting it to scroll the text, but if you get it to work, comment bellow and I will try it. If it works, I will change the instructions and give credit. Some other websites include:

• www.easyprompter.com
• www.cueprompter.com

The reason I don't recommend these is because the require you to have a special font for the letters to look right. If you are not bothered by this, use it. If you are, try this tutorial. I have not tried it so if it works, tell me and I will change the instructions to recommend it and give credit to you.

ANDROID

An awesome free app for android is Simple Teleprompter