Hi, I've got an upcoming project for which the Movi sounds really ideal in all ways except for one: the project includes a lot of walk and talk and the on-camera talent isn't likely to be able to memorize all of the necessary dialog. We're considering an earprompter as one option, but I thought I'd check and see whether anyone had come up with a creative solution for how a teleprompter type setup might be achieved with a Movi. I know that weight and balance issues are the obvious concern, and maybe there's just no good way to do it, but if anyone's tried anything and had any success, I'd love to hear what you did to make it work.
50 views and no replies, so maybe no one else has ever tried this? Well, now they have! We've only tried it around the office with a Blackmagic 4k so far, but so far it's working great. We'll have a chance to rig it up to the Epic Dragon this weekend and see how that goes, but the length and balance was our biggest concern and this setup balanced great. Could be a nice steadicam replacement for standard walk-n-talk stuff that requires a prompter.
I'll pipe in with another pic or two - (Matt and I work together - so we've been building this setup for an upcoming walk and talk series) - Some details - We're using an iPad mini based prompter, which mounts in the "lid" of the prompter box. That's mounted to a carbon rods setup with the camera. Total weight of prompter box with iPad in it is about 2.2 lbs. That plus BM4K and lens is well within load limits... our biggest concern was length - this thing is too long to truly spin past the handles or go vertical, so balancing it was a bit of a pain. Once balanced though, it worked like a champ. iPad is controlled via bluetooth (either a keyboard or an iPhone nearby), and we've found the battery on it lasts a full day running prompter app. The good news is the iPad is locked in there with some set screws, so we can open it up, change settings, and put it back without affecting balance. All in all a pretty neat setup when necessary.
We're using the Teleprompt+ app - which has both an iPad version and iPhone version - (they also have a free iPhone remote app to control the iPad version, but it's got some bugs in it - the full iPhone version worked great for us though.) You can load in your scripts via dropbox or google drive, and make changes, etc. It's a bit clunky in the interface, but worked great for a 8 hour shoot the other day..... That said, there's a billion of them on the app store - and none are outrageously priced... so we may try others as well.
It's worked great. We've used it on probably 7 or 8 different days of shooting walk-n-talk stuff, all with the Epic. (Shooting w/ Epic and prompter on the m10 requires stripping the Epic of everything except the basics and using a light lens, but it works great.) Tilt is limited due to how far back you have to balance the camera, but for most walk-n-talk stuff we're not doing a lot of drastic tilts anyway.
Matt or Drew, or anyone who knows for that matter - can you tell me what brand of Cheese Plate that is you have mounted to your top bar? Really appreciate it.
Got it here: http://www.cnchelicopter.com/tarot-tl80b04-carbon-fiber-single-battery-rack-group-dia-25mm/ It's a battery holder for standard 25mm bars... Been super useful. We threaded velcro straps through it to hold v-mount batteries, etc on the top bar.