Building a teleprompter/autocue on the cheap
If you’ve ever had to work with on-screen talent too busy to learn their lines, but haven’t had the budget for a teleprompter (or autocue), then why not build your own? And I don’t just mean having the laptop propped up near the lens displaying the words in sequence. While you can do this (and indeed there is browser-based app at CuePrompter which achieves this on Mac and PC), it’s much better to reflect the words the presenter needs directly in front of the lens using glass, just as a studio prompter does.
Teleprompter cutout
All that is required to pull this off is a sheet of glass, which you can swipe from a spare clip frame, and a sheet of thick cardboard to cut and fold to form the box. The card should be black on the inside to ensure no light is reflected onto the lens-side of the glass. Score the card along the fold lines (the outside), then put gaffer tape over them so they don’t tear when you fold them.
Note that the diagonal, the point at which the piece of glass will be attached (again, gaffer tape should do the trick), must be as tall as your screen, and wide enough to accommodate its reflection at 45 degrees. You can measure it, or do the maths yourself (this site is helpful) if you know your screen’s aspect ratio (most TVs are 16:9, most computer monitors 16:10, most old TV’s and monitors, 4:3). It flows like this:
1) Take diagonal measurement (this has always been the manufacturers’ favourite as it sounds bigger).
2) Find out the width and height using trig. To help, the angles for a 16:10 screen are 32 and 58 (and 90, obviously). For a 15inch screen, the base measurement is 12.72 inches.
3) With the base measurement as one of the shorter sides of a 90:45:45-degree triangle, you’ll need to work out the long one. This is the square root of 2(base*base) , or in the case of the 15-inch screen as close to 17 inches as makes no difference.
Now you’ve got your measurements, you can draw out the net onto a piece of card, cut it on the edges and score it on the fold lines.
Once constructed, it can be placed atop a laptop and keyboard (some Blue Tac to keep it above the keys is a good idea). The laptop, running your choice of prompter program that can do horizontal mirroring (Presentation Prompter is free for use up to 3 minutes, so a good choice if you’re getting started). You can copy-paste text straight from a script, edit it in normal view, then switch to mirrored playback. You can use the keyboard or a mouse to alter the speed, so it’s a good idea to have a quiet external keyboard to hand.
I’ll publish a photo soon, but I’ve got to admit that my first version, though it did the trick, was less than attractive to look at.