Teleprompter for Red One - Which is best

[Evolution]

I am very new to the red one, I have only had it a few weeks. 2 different jobs coming up call for a teleprompter. Is there a teleprompter out there that is already set up to work easily with the Red One?

I would prefer one that hooks straight onto the rails, but any suggestions are appreciated.

Thank you.

 

[Ernesto Lomeli]

I wouldn't worry.
Ive done a few prompter shoot with my RED and all i told the prompter operator was to prep for a 35mm shoot.

They either bring an extended baseplate that mounts between the Arri Dovetail and the touch and go plate.

or it is placed on a Rolling light stand that is placed infront of the camera.

If i remember right, we used a 15" screen and it worked great with our Angeuix 25-250 and a set of primes. we were able to quickly change height and distance from our white cync presenter.


If you de decide to go with one that mounts onto your tripod system, your going to need something beefy at the very least a Ocon 2060.

once again i liked the Light stand option and so did my 1st AC, we were able to change framing slightly with no issues or vignetting.

 

[Evolution]

Thank you very much for the quick response. At the expense of sounding incompetent, could you explain what you meant about "changing framing".

I am used to shooting with Sony HD, this is all a huge learning curve.

It seems that the simplest approach is the rolling light stand. i was concerned about having to move the camera while the subject is reading from the prompter (not sure how often this would be necessary). I am using an oconnor 2060 HD, my concern is how easily it would mount to the tripod head, then I am not clear on how the camera then mounts to the prompter base.

Thank you again

 

[david_winters]

I own one of these and use it a few days every month, I've shot a few red jobs with it.

http://www.prompterpeople.com/broadcast15-17.php

Issues:

1. Sometimes it's hard to get the FF lined up, depending on the lens, as the disks hit the prompter lens hood. For wide angle shots you may have to loose the FF.

2. Very hard to get a mattebox inside the prompter hood and still shoot wider than about 30mm.

3. With the prompter I have, and a light lens, I'm still winding a 2060 counter balance up to almost 90%.

4. With all the adapter plates and RED config the optical center is higher than a ENG style camera. Depending on your focal length, and distance to talent, the prompter operator my have to adjust scroll position to keep the eyeline at the right height.

5. Don't forget to compensate for the prompter lens stop loss. Generally 1/2 stop. I got hosed on my first job as we didn't have enough heat to shoot above a T2.

Generally I want a prompter rig attached to the head, not on a separate stand, as it's a pain in the ass to work with, unless you are shooting lockoffs for everything.

 

[Evolution]

David
I just got off the phone with someone at prompter people. I was ironically leaning towards the models you made reference to. The gentleman on the phone also mentioned the Proline Studio, which has trapezoidal glass (hopefully that would not effect shooting) that allows multiple people to read from the same prompter.

I appreciate your info, it is very detailed and helpful. Could you explain one thing you mentioned. Your 5th point: Don't forget to compensate for the prompter lens stop loss. Generally 1/2 stop. I got hosed on my first job as we didn't have enough heat to shoot above a T2.

I am used to an auto focus/auto verything sony HD camera. I am facing a major learning curve here, can you explain this in laymans terms (if possible)...thanks for your patience...

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

I've done a couple teleprompter shoots. Any prompter that mounts in front of the lens is a bad deal, IMO. I always warn the client of this, but yet some of them persist. The first one of these I did with RED last June was an experiment I guess. I didn't know how the RED would perform, neither did the client, and we just went with it. While the prompter didn't seem to invoke any obvious changes to the image, it did affect the overall image quality and especially the contrast. while also losing us at least a full stop. The image really suffered, IMO and that wasn't really apparent on the onboard LCD or 17" SDI monitor we had present. This was back on build 15, too so some of the noise in the shadows is pretty harsh. This was a QTV model, but I don't recall which one specifically, I didn't supply it - client did.

Honestly, I'll use hand-written cue cards before I choose one of these on RED again. Any extra glass in front of your lens is always a bad thing. This prompter may fly for use with an HD camera, but not here. We also had trouble with any lens wider than about 18mm on it. The Cooke 18-100, lens mounted for the picture here, worked pretty well as it was physically long enough to be mostly accessible and the 18mm wasn't too wide for the prompter to get in the way. A 14mm zeiss standard was also used and does show some vignette issues. We wanted to use a 10mm in one cramped space, but it was just unusable with the prompter and the call was made to stick with the 14mm so the prompter could remain on the lens. I offered to mount it above or below, but they wanted the talent looking right into the camera.

As for mounting. This teleprompter, as with most that mount in front of the lens, it had its own baseplate. A very flimsy one, actually. It mounted to the quickplate for the Arrihead, then I put my dovetail on top of it. But like I said, it was flimsy and made for a wiggly camera even though the dolly and geared head were solid.

 

[david_winters]

Hi,

I'll let someone else give a detailed explanation as I'm burning the clock in a client edit session right now. In essence whatever you lighting / exposure level is, without the prompter, you'll need to add .5x more light to achieve the same aperture once adding the prompter to the optical path.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

5. Don't forget to compensate for the prompter lens stop loss. Generally 1/2 stop. I got hosed on my first job as we didn't have enough heat to shoot above a T2.

Yep. This kinda hosed us on my first job as well. I was unaware of just how much light loss the prompter would have. I was expecting 1/2 stop, but this particular model was at least a full stop or more. We were stuck shooting T3 on that Cooke lens most of the shoot, even though we felt like we were about to set the talent on fire. It also didn't help that after all the daylight flos were in place, we still needed more light, so it was augmented with some tungsten and that didn't help a whole lot. We also had some flos running "goofy tube" where some banks were tungsten balance, some daylight.

But like I said in my last post, what caught me by surprise the most with the prompter was the flattening of the image and effects on contrast. Essentially it was like using a polarizer indoors and off-kilter from the sensor plane. Oh, wait a minute... That's essentially what a prompter is. :whistling: But those effects didn't show real well on the monitoring methods (and RED on-screen output) available at the time.

 

[david_winters]

Jeff,

Good advice, I feel your pain. I got so pissed off at prompter vendors / operators 'effing up my images that I bought my own rigs 9 years ago. I'll let production provide the operator but never again will use "their" hardware, I'll pass on the job first. My prompter rig, my AC or I build it, they can provide the operator.


Regrading sharpness, Pancro will make prompter lenses, according to their website, I've been considering ordering one to test out. The prompter glass I currently have is ok, a little softening, but workable for everything I've done to date on RED. Biggest finish as 1080p for HD-DVD in Q2 '08. And many greenscreen comps.

Contrast / color shift. This is from the monitor and prompter app. I bought four different software packages until I found one that made me happy. They key is to keep the brightness as low as possible and white text ONLY. The edit screen has a white BG, and I've hammered my operators to always keep the screen black when rolling and rehearsing, even if the prompter is not in use for the shot. The blacks are still lifted slightly, but it's consistent and I can live with it.

 

[Larry McKee]

This is going to sound like it won't work. But it does, very well. For the past year or so, I have been mounting a 7" VGA monitor onto a Noga arm and setting directly on top of my mattebox. No glass in front of the lens to cause any problems. It is fast to set up and adds almost no weight to the camera.

It looks like the talent is looking directly into the lens just like a traditional teleprompter. I have even used it with the Reflect media chroma key setup. I was afraid that the LEDs might be too bright and the screen would be hard to read, but that hasn't been the case. It is definitely the easiest way I know of to do teleprompting.