You don’t have to be the host of a late night talk show, or President of the United States, to benefit from using a teleprompter.  In fact, anyone who’s ever had to look straight into a lens and speak for more than 30 seconds, knows how beneficial a promoter can be.
If you don’t know what a teleprompter is, check out this post on wikipedia.
Ok… fine… they’re awesome. Â But how much do they cost? Â Brace yourself. Â It’s easy to spend well over $3000 when shopping for a good teleprompter. Â Thank goodness we have the iPhone, and Bodelin’s $9.99 ProPrompter.
ProPrompter provides an easy-to-use interface, along with smooth, variable speed scrolling.  You can customize the text in a wide variety of ways.  Your scripts can be entered directly in the app, or you can copy and paste them from an email.  They also offer free access to their ProPrompter Producer Site for additional script management.
Typically, when using your iPhone as a teleprompter, you’ll need to secure it somewhere close to the camera lens, and pray it doesn’t fall to the ground. Â Bodelin has made this much easier with their new mounting bracket called the ProPrompter Wing. Â Essentially, it allows you to safely mount your iPhone right next to your lens. Â It’s a great idea, but a little pricy at $130. Â Then again, it’s a small price to pay for the easy of setup, and piece of mind.
Here’s a couple other prompter products currently available in the app store.  If you use a teleprompting we didn’t mention, we’d love to hear about it in the comments.
Saftalk’s AutoPrompter has fewer features then ProPrompter, but comes in a half the price. Â User reviews have been mixed on this one.
This one’s quite basic, but it does offer a few features geared towards practicing, and timing your speeches.
2 Responses
Sweet- looking forward to the review of the ProPrompter Wing… I hope the review covers usage of the whole bit – their app, the wing and the site.
In my experience, the prompter should be located under the lens, not beside it. The viewer can accept (or not notice) someone who looks down slightly when talking, but if the person looks to the side, it’s a dead giveaway. I’m surprised Bodelin engineered the mounting bracket to be on the side.