Want to build your own teleprompter but don’t have much of a budget? With these simple plans, all you’ll need is a couple of cardboard boxes, a small sheet of glass or acrylic, some black fabric and a spare flat panel monitor.

Click the button to download instructions for
building your own simple teleprompter:

This has got to be the quickest, easiest DIY solution out there but if you’re looking for something a little more elaborate we have listed a bunch of other options over on our teleprompter hardware page.

The pick of them is probably the one shown in the video below . . .

Have fun!

This is part 3 in a series by guest author Gary Elley. Armed only with our teleprompter, Gary set out to produce his first video DVD without any outside assistance. This is the story behind the rest of the tech required to bring the project to fruition.

Aside from my trusty PromptDog teleprompter, software used on this project included:

1. DV Rack 2.0 HD
2. Cineform Neoscene
3. ULTRA 2
4. Sony Vegas Pro
5. Veggie Toolkit
6. MS Powerpoint
7. Ovation
8. Fraps
9. Camtasia
10. DVD Architect
11. Macromedia Flash

Here’s how each program fitted into the workflow:

• DV Rack 2.0 HD

  To my mind, DV Rack is one of those ‘must have’ programs if you want to undertake a project like the AdWords video. While it has many great video monitoring and recording features, three stand out as particularly useful in this context:

  • The waveform monitor is a tremendous help when lighting your green screen. What you’re looking for is a straight horizontal line. When you get that, or as close to it as you can, you know your screen is evenly lit. Easy.

    TIP: Turn your talent lighting off while setting up the lighting for your screen.

  • Likewise, the vectorscope will tell you the level of color saturation in the image being recorded by the camera. The idea is that the green screen should be highly saturated. The closer the signal gets to the outside edge of the vectorscope circle, the higher the saturation level.

    In my case, it only reached about two thirds the way to the circle, but that was enough to pull a good key.

  • The third must have feature is ‘direct-to-disk’ recording. By connecting the camera to my PC, I could capture video direct to the hard drive and then great playback controls allow instant shot review via the DV Rack monitor

    DV Rack has a ‘slave’ mode which allows you to control proceedings via the camera remote, but I found it easier to set up a keyspan remote to control DV Rack directly. Either way, remote control alows a one man operation to record multiple takes direct to disk without moving from the presenter’s mark.

    I guess the advent of cameras with built-in hard drives may change the landscape in this respect for shorter productions, but this setup worked well for me.

  I purchased DV Rack as a stand alone program from Serious Magic. However Serious Magic was bought out by Adobe and DV Rack is now marketed under the brand name OnLocation as a component of Adobe Creative Suite.

  The good news is that you may well be able to buy it as a stand alone item on eBay for some time to come.

• Cineform Neoscene

  Cineform Neoscene is an intermediate codec that is used to ease the load on the processor when editing HDV. Sony Vegas (my editing software) has improved handling of native format HDV significantly since version 7.0 release, but Cineform comes into it’s own once you load a Vegas project up with color correction filters, masks, transitions and the like.

• ULTRA 2

  ULTRA is where the chromakeying magic happens. Like DV Rack, this program is now only available new as part of the Adobe Creative Suite bundle, but I’ve also seen it for sale on eBay as a stand alone item.

  ULTRA is not hard to use (in fact it can be lightning fast once you set up a template project) . . . but like all software, you need to know how.

  I’d recommend you get yourself a copy of the training DVD produced by Karl Soule at Serious Magic on this program. Not only is it a great example of how to use Camtasia for software training purposes, it will definitely cut down the learning curve.

• Sony Vegas Pro

  I used Sony Vegas Pro to edit this project.

  If I had to pick one Vegas feature I liked the most, it would have to be project nesting. Nesting allows you to add an existing Vegas project (.veg) to the timeline and edit it in the same way you would any standard piece of media.

  That means you can edit your project in bite sized chunks . . . and then assemble those chunks in a master project before rendering. That’s exactly what I did with the AdWords project. In fact, I broke every chapter down into segments and then rendered each chapter from a master project compiled by nesting those sub segments.

  One tip to remember when nesting . . . keep the project properties of .veg files to be nested (in a master project) in their native media format.

  So if you are dealing with HDV media for example, the sub segment project files should remain as 1280×720 or 1440×1080, as the case may be. Only change the project properties and render format (to 720×480 for example) when you get to the master project level. If you don’t use this workflow, you’ll get horrible results and wonder why!

• Veggie Toolkit

  I only need 2 words to tell you why you need to own this fantastic tool if you edit with Vegas . . . batch rendering.

• Powerpoint and Ovation

  Aside from screen captures made with camtasia (see below) the graphics used in the AdWords project were mostly made with Microsoft Powerpoint treated with a secret sauce . . . Ovation (by Serious Magic yet again).

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  For example, image 19 above is a regular Powerpoint slide imported to Ovation where it was treated with a motion background, high-resolution text, and TV-style transitions.

  Unfortunately, Ovation is still very much a work in progress and development under new owner Adobe has apparently been put on the back burner. It doesn’t do a very good job importing graphics for example, so to get the result in image 20 above I used the basic Ovation background and overlaid the funnel graphic in Vegas as a transparent .png

  Despite good intentions, the developers at Serious Magic also never got around to offering .avi as an output format before the Adobe purchase, so myself and others used Fraps ($37 from http://www.fraps.com) to record out of Ovation for input to ULTRA and Vegas. (We tried using Camtasia but nobody could get it to work for some reason).

  For slides with transitions, I found that I could slash the file size by transcoding the Fraps .avi to Huffyuv format (using Veggie Toolkit) in a lossless conversion.

  Once recorded out of Ovation, graphics that were once simple Powerpoint slides could then be used as ‘B Source’ input (as either stills or video) to ULTRA during the keying process. The result can be seen as image 21 above.

  The graphics turned out well, but it’s not a workflow I’d use again for such a large project. Much too laborious. Next time I’ll either use the upgraded titling feature in Vegas 8 or look at using a Windows Vista generation presentation product like Standout and shoot live transitions in a real OTS (over the shoulder) monitor.

• Camtasia

Find out everything you need to know about getting software screen capture videos onto TV and DVD with Camtasia by purchasing a copy of Bill Myers’ great DVD guide on the subject.

• Macromedia Flash 8

  Sample clips of the AdWords video posted on my site were encoded with Macromedia Flash 8, but you could get the same result using Flix Pro.

  The media player is FLV Player by Proxus, the video is hosted by Amazon’s S3 service, and the feed was encrypted with Bill Myer’s free video code protector (although that probably wasn’t necessary).

Final Thoughts

Anyway, there you have it. If all this sounds too hard, then it probably is. But if you’re intent on creating some King Kong sized chromakey magic of your own, I hope you find these tips of some use.

Just try to remember one thing . . . your most valuable commodity is time.

Gary Elley

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You can read part 1 of this series here and part 2 here.

This is part 2 in a series by guest author Gary Elley. Armed only with our teleprompter, Gary set out to produce his first video DVD without any outside assistance. This is the story behind the rest of the tech required to bring the project to fruition.

It may sound self evident, but if you want to ‘sell the shot’ when chromakeying, it pays to spend a little time improving the match between the finished look of the talent and the background that will be keyed.

This is especially true with virtual backgrounds like the one I wanted to use. (As an aside, I’d say it’s probably easier to work with a high resolution photo of a real scene as your background).

In my case, there were three things I did that helped in this respect . . .

First, I color corrected the virtual set. The set I used was the ‘Late Night’ set from the Serious Magic MSL 1 collection.

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The original .png supplied for this set (image 9 above) was over saturated for my purposes, so I reduced the saturation in Paint Shop Pro (image 10) before keying in ULTRA. I also tweaked the saturation during editing, but getting it close beforehand made things a lot easier.

The next item I looked at was my presentation stance.

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Note how I’m standing in the two images above. I’m not standing square on to the camera. Instead, I’m right shoulder slightly forward in the first image, while in the second it’s the opposite. Doing that matched the perspective of the scene behind.

Finally, I reinforced that perspective with key and fill lighting. For scenes where the monitor was over my left shoulder, I had the stronger ‘key’ lights (not to be confused with the act of ‘keying’) set up to my left and the weaker ‘fill’ light coming in from my right (filling the shadow created).

For ‘monitor right’ scenes, I swapped the key and fill lights from left to right (the individually switched bulbs on the Alzo lights made this job much faster).

Camera

The reality is that if you want to produce higher quality chromakey work, you need to think beyond a regular DV camera. I shot the AdWords video with a Sony HVR-Z1U.

The Z1 was one of the first HDV cameras to come onto the market and although I came up with a good result, it could have been even better. The reason is because the Z1 shoots interlaced footage. Interlacing produces the so-called ‘jaggies’ at the edge of the subject being keyed which were such a problem with DV cameras.

Cameras which shoot native ‘progressive’ format video produce definitively superior results when keying because they smooth the edge of the key. To see what I mean, take the time to watch this video at cruisercast.com. That clip was shot by Paolo Ciccone (the presenter) with a JVC GY-HD100.

You might also want to take a look this great resource which logs the author’s experience keying with a Panasonic HVX200

All these HDV cameras have been superceded by newer, cheaper models, but I’m not up to speed with those yet (too busy with other imperatives . . . like marketing!).

Audio

The mic I used was a Rode NT1-A connected direct to the camera via XLR cable. As with the Alzo lights, I hung the mic from the roof, but an extended boom on a mic stand would work just as well.

If your camera doesn’t have an XLR connection, think seriously about a Beachtek XLR adaptor. XLR cables are designed to carry a balanced signal. Balanced signals reject interference better than unbalanced signals.

As one old hand that I read put it . . . “with balanced audio, you just connect everything together and get to work. With unbalanced systems, you play hunt the buzz, where’s the crackle, oh dear we’ll just have to put up with it”.

Been there, done that. Not fun.

I also used auralex acoustic tiles on a false ceiling immediately above the mic. Although this certainly had a beneficial damping effect on the recorded audio, it was probably overkill.

Computer Hardware

The hardware I used to capture and edit with was not even close to cutting edge at the time of purchase, let alone now. But if you plan on dealing with HDV, you’ll need more horsepower than what you might have got by with for DV in the past. Here’s the essential specs for the gear I used:

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You can read part 1 of this series here and part 3 here.

This is part 1 in a series by guest author Gary Elley. Armed only with our teleprompter, Gary set out to produce his first video DVD without any outside assistance. This is the story behind the rest of the tech required to bring the project to fruition.

Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson has a lot to answer for. Not only has he taken Hollywood by storm, but the proximity of his studios to my house (about 1 km as the crow flies) was partially responsible for the decision to create my first video DVD using the same technology Jackson used to create some of the most spectacular scenes in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and his remake of King Kong.

On many nights during filming of those blockbusters, a giant outdoor chromakey screen constructed from shipping containers was lit up by massive flood lights that could clearly by seen by anyone living in the vicinity.

Mixed together in a coctail of encouragement and mentoring from veteran ‘how-to’ genre video producer Bill Myers, it was all too much . . . I just had to produce my own video using the same techniques.

The result was The Keyword Marketer’s Google AdWords Training Workshop.

Since launching that site, I’ve received many compliments about the quality of the finished product and requests to share details of the equipment I used to produce the video.

What follows is a description of the tools and workflow I employed. Click on any of the images to open a larger view in a new window.

Locale

The video was shot in the double garage at left in image 1 below. That garage belongs my Dad (Ted) who lives on the slopes overlooking Evans Bay in Wellington, New Zealand.

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His house faces east toward Miramar peninsular (image 2), an island that I share with Peter Jackson, his staff . . . and a few thousand other residents.

Of course, Peter’s facilities are a little more substantial than mine (his $40 million post production center ‘Park Road Post’ is pictured in image 3), and he can afford to park old props like the boat Venture (from King Kong) at the wharf opposite Ted’s place for as long as he wants.

The entire AdWords video was shot in front of a green screen and then keyed over a virtual background using ULTRA 2 from Serious Magic.

The usable area inside Ted’s garage measured 5m wide x 6m deep. Width wise, that was fine. The depth, however, was only just enough (I could have done with at least 2m more).

Lighting

All lighting (except as noted below) was fluroescent daylight temperature in the range 5500-6500k.

The setup used to light the talent was a simple key and fill arrangement, with a hair light mounted above and behind the talent. The green screen was lit with fluro tubes mounted vertically on either side of the screen.

• Both the key and fill lights were approx 1.5m from the talent at 45 deg
• The talent mark was 2.5m from the camera
• The green screen was 3m behind the talent

The distance I was able to put between the talent and the screen was of course constrained by the depth of the garage. Based on what I’ve read from others ‘at home’ producers, 3m seperation seems to be the minimum required to avoid spill (green light reflected off the screen back onto the talent). But even at 3m, I did get some spill, so I suspect it really needs about 5 metres.

Having said that, I’m of the opinion that using a quality screen helped in this respect. I used the foam backed variety from eefx.com

Used in combination with ULTRA, the eefx screen requires very little light to pull a good key, and therefore throws minimal reflection.

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Image 6 above shows fluro tubes (2 off) mounted vertically on DJ speaker stands either side of the green screen. Tubes were Osram L58w daylight temperature.

The screen must be evenly lit over the entire surface, with no shadows. DV Rack software is a tremendous help in this respect as I’ll explain later.

Image 7 shows the key light setup. The principal lights were Alzo 600 watt fluro hardboxes from alzovideo.com. However, I wasn’t satisfied with the result when using just that light for the key, so I added the small Lowel Pro-Light you can see on a stand in image 4.

The Pro-Light throws a beautiful light and really made a difference.

One trick (among many) that I learnt from Dennis Sladek over on the Serious Magic forum was to drape baker’s paper over the front of the Alzo hardbox. The light from these fluros tends to have a blueish hue when lighting skin tones, but baking paper seems to make those tones more acceptable.

Although each Alzo fitting has 4 individually switched 150 watt fluro bulbs, in the end I found the best combination for my set up was 3 bulbs on for the key light (plus Pro-light as previously mentioned), and 2 bulbs on for the fill light on the other side.

Image 8 above shows a second Pro-Light fitted to a roof truss above and slightly behind the talent. This so-called ‘hair light’ is crucial for creating separation between the talent and the green screen.

I bought the Pro-Lights from B & H Photo along with dichroic filters to convert the lamp’s native tungsten output to daylight temperature.

Finally . . . you’ll note that we went to considerable trouble to hang black linen drops around the entire studio to neutralize any potential problem with reflected light. This worked great in all respects except one. The extreme constrast between the black back drop and the key/fill lights made it tough on the eyes after more than an hour or two. Next time, I plan to use material closer to grey than black.

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You can read part 2 of this series here.

Here’s the answers to customer queries about PromptDog that seem quite prevalent recently:

Q: Can I purchase my PromptDog license without a credit card?

A: Yes, you can use a PayPal account to generate a one-time use credit card number that can be used to make the purchase.

Q: Is there a way to run the 2nd (talent) monitor fullscreen?

A: Yes . . . the talent window resizes automatically as you resize the operator window.

Q: I can’t use 2nd (talent) monitor because I’m getting a Windows error message that says the mirrorfont has not been installed. How do I fix this?

A: When PromptDog opens, it tries to install the special mirror font on your computer by saving it in a file in your Program Files. It’s like that your system is blocking the program from doing so because your user account does not have permission to write to that folder.

Restart your computer and logon as the Administrator. Right click your “Program Files” folder (usually in C: drive) and un-check the ‘read-only’ attribute.

Note: Permissions can cause the same problem on Mac OS X.

Q: In the system requirements, it says you need a reliable internet connection. Do I need to be connected to the net to run the program after purchasing a license?

A: No, you do not need to be connected to the internet to run PromptDog. Only when registering or purchasing the product.

Hope this helps. If you have questions of your own, please let us know via our contact form.

Depending on your outlook, you may welcome or resist the notion that your teleprompter script may need a little . . . ahem . . . help. However the fact is, there’s very few DIYers who couldn’t use some oversight from a professional script coach. Some could do with a lot!

At first blush, writing a script for your teleprompter presentation might sound easy. I mean, really . . . how hard can it be? Just write what needs to be said and get it done.

But all too often, the reality is somewhat different. You struggle past the writers block that sets in immediately after you get the first sentence down and finish the first draft, only to find that what looked fine on paper sounds awful when you it read out loud in presentation mode.

Whether it’s the language you are using, the tone or the length of your message, a script coach can often turn what can only be described as a pig’s ear into a silk purse (as my grand-daddy used to say).

The good news is that professional script coaches are readily available. Here’s three reputable consultants who will be happy to help you out for a fee:

Alan Brash
http://shootfirst-productions.com

Linda Seger
http://www.lindaseger.com

David Zuckerman
http://www.scriptcoach.com

Note that while many script coaches (including the three above) focus primarily on editing long form movie screenplays and theatre play scripts, most offer corporate communication script consulting as well.

It’s so much easier to get a good result when you use the right tools. Here’s three pieces of equipment that will help any studio teleprompter shoot:

1. Light It Right

The biggest secret to producing a professional looking video is using a professional lighting system. Using proper lighting elevates the perceived quality of any video – it removes the ‘amateur’ label almost instantly.

While it is possible to get professional results using cheap flood lights from Home Depot, it is a lot easier if you use a system specifically designed for video production.

The kit of choice would be one using Lowell Lights. But for video producers on a budget, this light kit from Skaser.com, is a good substitute (and much less expensive).

These cool lights can give you Hollywood quality lighting, but without the heat problems quartz and incandescent lights create.

You can run these cool lights for hours, and your studio won’t heat up, your talent and crew remain cool, and there is no risk of fires or burns.

2. Look Mum . . . No Wires!

The quickest way to lose your audience is with poor audio. In the past, the only way to get good audio was using wired XLR systems, but thankfully times have changed and now you can produce great results with wireless equipment at an affordable cost. Here’s the system I use:

It’s the Sennheiser Evolution G3 100 Series. This package includes a camera mounted receiver, body-pack transmitter with lavaliere mic and a standard microphone transmitter (allows any handheld mic with a 3-pin XLR connection to be used wirelessly).

Note: If you intend using this system outside the US, be sure to check that the model you order operates on a frequency compatible with your country.

3. Purpose Built Hardware

You already know what using a teleprompter can do for your performance, or you wouldn’t be reading our blog. And since this post is about making sure you have the right tools for the job, it will be no surprise that I include a link to what we think is one of the better hardware offerings on the market.

PrompterPeople have been in the business for many years and produce quality hardware designs which just keep getting better.

 Professional teleprompter hardware is not cheap, but for those with the budget it’s like the difference between flying long haul business class and economy versus DIY solutions.

I’ve owned the model pictured above and can personally recommend it.

Shameless plug: virtually all the teleprompter hardware companies produce their own software. They figure they have to. But the reality is that they all . . . well, suck. That’s why PromptDog and PromptPuppy were created as stand-alone solutions.

So don’t be fooled by these ‘bundled’ offerings . . . several of the hardware options are top class, but unfortunately the same cannot be said of the software sold with them!

Many US based readers will be well aware of the ribbing President Obama has received in recent times about what some see as his over-reliance on teleprompters, and what transpires when his equipment occasionally fails.

Satirical news site TheOnion.com decided this was a perfect fit for their (cough) editorial standards . . . and we’re not above joining the fun when we think you might get a giggle out of it too. Take a look:

In a previous post we told you about several video based training resources and DVDs available to help kick start your teleprompter presentation skills.

One of those resources was the training DVD by Patricia Stark  at www.promptertraining.com.

Patricia is well known in the media world having worked as a television host, actor and media trainer. She has hosted for a variety of channels such as The Learning Channel, WB Network, CNBC, Discovery Networks and Food Network.

Aside from the DVD home study course, Patricia also offers live teleprompter training in New York City. According to the sales page blurb for this group based course:

“You’ll train with professional TelePrompTer equipment along with a highly experience prompter operator who has prompted for Katie Couric, Matt Lauer, and James Earl Jones to mention just a few”.

You can read more about this live training at www.mediaimagecoach.com.

Note: They also offer 1-on1 private training.

So you’re sold on the idea of using PromptDog teleprompter software, but there’s just one problem . . . you don’t have anyone available to help with the shoot and you need to fly solo.

In a professional studio setup, there’s normally 5 people employed on a shoot that involves a teleprompter . . . the camera operator, an audio technician, the presenter, the director and the teleprompter operator. But for many of our clients, that’s not the case. They need to perform all those tasks simultaneously on their own.

So how does one person achieve what normally takes five?

The short answer is that it requires more than just mental dexterity, it requires some special equipment as well.

The first item is something that will be supplied with any modern camcorder by default . . . a remote control. With your remote in hand (or at least handy to your position as presenter in front of the camera), you have start/stop control at the push of a button.

Controlling PromptDog is a little more challenging, since you will often be in a standing position, some distance from the computer running the software. But by the miracle of modern technology, it is possible with the Gyration Air Mouse Elite:

The Gyration Air Mouse lets you control software on your computer (PC/Mac) even when the mouse is not grounded on a flat surface. That means you can use it when standing!

You can have fantastic cursor control even in mid air thanks to a special jitter control built to smooth out tracking across the screen. It also has three programmable buttons AND you can program hand gestures using the bundled Motion Tools software.

Check it out. Highly recommended.