Teleprompting

[prog]

Anyone have any insight on low-budget teleprompter solutions? Assume presence of laptops and general technical know-how.

This is an agenda item for tomorrow's Gameshelf meeting. I'm confident that the crew can bang some ideas out together, and I plan on putting some research time in later this evening, but I'd be curious to know if any of y'all happen to know anything already.

The goal is simply improving the show's host segments. In the past I've just scribbled key phrases on a large easel-mounted newsprint pad and had the stage manager flip through it while the host attempts to construct a monologue on the spot. This has not worked well.

I think about plugging a lappy running Powerpoint (or its moral equivalent) into a monitor positioned behind the camera, and having the stage dood page that forward as necessary. Ideally the speakers themselves could control the page flippiness, freeing the manager from worrying about it, but it's not immediately obvious to me how to do that. One imagines pedal controls, but, um.

Comments

[treacle-well.livejournal.com]

There are devices that can be used to page through Powerpoint slides remotely. I saw them in action at the event I was at recently so that speakers could control the paging through the slides being projected while wandering around the room. Unfortunately (as far as being useful to you now; fortunately for me at the time) I had little to do with the AV stuff so I don't know exactly what this was--probably some version of a wireless mouse, but it was very svelt and easy to hold in one's hand and punch buttons on with one's thumb(it was very simple--only a few actual things to "punch" as far as I could tell).