Innovating on the road... The story of the Amazon Kindle DX

One of the things we pride ourselves on at PrimeImage Media, is thinking outside the box. So often, videographers are taught that there's one way to do something, and that becomes a dogmatic stance that prevents them from seeing other solutions that might otherwise present themselves.

Case in point, our recent trip to Asheville, North Carolina to shoot a 315 acre estate. I took along professional presenter Andi Barness (www.andibarness.com) as the host. Normally when I work with Andi, we have a teleprompter for her, but working in a vast, outdoor windy location made setting up a teleprompter impractical. In other, similar situations, we've just taped paper to the bottom of the camera's lens, but this has its own problems, as the paper gets blown around in even the slightest breeze, and it requires printing before hand (not good for on-the-spot changes).

As it happens, I have an Amazon Kindle DX e-book reader which we recently reviewed on our tech-podcast, Neo-Fight.tv (www.neo-fight.tv). It struck me that it might make a good in-the-field teleprompter... so why not 'think outside the box' and give it a try!

So here's where our scripting process starts... on the plane with my laptop, where Andi and I review the details from our client, and proceed to craft the script. Not all of it will be on-camera (which would require a full-blown teleprompter). Rather, the snippets of on-camera that Andi does will be teleprompted, and the rest will be read as voice-over, and then we'll shoot "B-Roll" to cover her dialog.

This is usually our next stop... :-)

Here we are on-site. You can see the Amazon Kindle mounted on top of the XDCAM camera we're using. I used an old iPod windshield-suction mount screwed to a cannibalized flash shoe to attach the kindle to the camera. Let's take a closer look...

Here you can see the Kindle hanging above the lens. While most teleprompters use a mirror to sit right in front of the camera lens, we didn't have that option, so we mounted it directly above. As long as the talent is more than 10 or so feet from the camera, it's hard to tell they're looking slightly up from the lens.

Here's Andi reading from the Kindle. The great thing was that we could easily make changes to the script right on site on our laptop, and upload them wirelessly to the Kindle. That sure sped things up. No printer required.

Finally, here's Andi reading her voice-over from the Kindle back at the hotel. Once again, nothing to print, and easy to make changes. Of course, she could just as easily have read from the laptop, but really, how cool would that have been?

Got an innovative video product that comes from out-of-the-box thinking? Drop me a line at ben@PrimeImageMedia.com