Put this phone behind your camera and read from it. The words move as you say them, wait at the end of each cut, and go back when you say “take that again”. Press Enter to start a new cut — a cut is one stretch of filming, from starting the camera to stopping it.
↑ the lens is up here ↑
Press Start, then walk to where you’ll stand; the words appear after a five-second count. At the end of each cut it waits for you: say “take that again” to redo it, “that’s the one” to mark it as the keeper, or “move on” to continue. Mid-cut, say “prompter” first: “prompter, take that again”.
One row per attempt at a cut, with the time it started, so you can jump straight to it in your footage. The log records what happened and never picks a best take — that is yours to judge. It cannot yet hear loudness, pace, pauses or background noise.
Saved on this device, so they stay the same for every script.
Set these for how far you stand from the phone. Text size and line width decide how big the words are and how many fit on a line. Typeface: Instrument is the page's own; Atkinson Hyperlegible was drawn by the Braille Institute so every letter looks unlike every other; Lexend was built from reading-speed research; Inter is made for screens. Line spacing and letter spacing add a little air — a touch more can help at a distance. Mirror is for a teleprompter with glass in front of the lens: the glass reverses the screen, so the words are drawn reversed and read right in the glass — left–right is the usual; up–down if your phone sits the other way round in its tray. The reading line is the fixed spot where the line you are saying sits: higher keeps your eyes nearer the camera; lower keeps more of what you just said in view.
The phone hears each word a moment after you say it. Grey words are the ones it has heard; the green band is where you probably are, this many words ahead. If the green runs ahead of your mouth, turn it down one. Style: the words slide up two lines at a time, or the whole cut holds still. Countdown: five seconds after Start, time to walk to where you will stand. Follow: your voice moves the words and the spoken commands work; or a set speed moves them on their own, the voice is off, and a tap pauses — it still waits at the end of each cut for a tap.
Each command has two ways to say it. Change either. A phrase that is already in your script is refused, because saying it while reading would set it off.
These three switches stop your own words from being taken as commands. Say “prompter” first mid-cut: inside a cut a command needs “prompter” in front; at the end of a cut plain words work. Only when off the script: a command counts only if the words around it were not in your script. Not when about to be read: a command that appears in the next few lines of your script is ignored.
The microphone it listens through — the one in this phone or laptop, for now. A paired Mac, for when the phone is too far from your mouth, comes later.
checking…