Making A Teleprompter / Autocue

In this video I make a simple teleprompter / autocue to help speed up my workflow for filming 

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Bluetooth remote: https://amzn.to/2JdCeQz (Amazon UK) https://amzn.to/2Jdv52R (Amazon US)
 
Glass cutting tool: https://amzn.to/2sIxGXb (Amazon UK) https://amzn.to/2LZZyik (Amazon US)
 
I had some scraps of thin plywood that I could use for this project
For the screen, I intended to use this - my old Lenovo Yoga tablet. It has a cracked screen but it still works fine.
I positioned the screen on to the ply, and marked up the size, leaving a a couple of cms around it, and then I made the cuts at the tablesaw to cut two pieces the same size.
I glued these pieces together using wood glue and hot glue.  The wood glue will provide strength, and the hot glue was just used to speed things up because it dries very quickly and I wanted to get on with the project without waiting for the wood glue to dry.
I then used some more hot glue just to seal the edge mainly just to fill any small gaps.
So the piece that I'm making here is like a hood to block light coming in , and I had a piece of MDF which I could use to make some triangular side panels for the hood. I marked up the shape I wanted on to the MDF and then cut it using the bandsaw.
Again, I used wood glue and hot glue to secure the sides, holding them in place for a few seconds until the hot  glue set, and then sealed the inside edges with hot glue.
Next I'd use some small scraps of wood which will later hold the glass in place. I offered them up and marked them for size, and cut them at the bandsaw.
Those pieces would hold the glass on one side, and I held them in place, marked a line, and then marked up to cut some more scraps to hold the other side of the glass.
None of this needed to be done accurately, I'm really not going for perfection here - the teleprompter just needs to work - it doesn't need to look pretty and I didn't want to spend ages making it.
So here you can see how the two pieces of wood will be fitted which will support the glass inbetween them.
Before securing these pieces I first needed to scrape off the old finish from the MDF so that the glue would adhere, and I used a chisel for that.
They were glued in the same way again with two types of glue.
I had some cheap black spray paint from the pound shop and I used this to paint the inside of the hood - this will help to reduce light reflecting on the inside of the hood and help to make the words more visible.
I then measured up for the piece of glass.
I had a couple of old picture frames in my loft which I could salvage the glass from. And cutting glass to size isn't something I am particularly good at so I already knew this might take more than one attempt.
I used a sharpie pen to mark up the size on the glass and used a cheap glass cutting tool to score it using a ruler to guide the cut.
The first score went really well, and the cut was nice and clean.
The second did not.
There's obviously a knack to this, that I've not yet gotten to grips with so I got glass from a second frame.
And the second attempt went really well.
I found a couple of old hinges to use for the lid of the box ad screwed those in place.
The shortest screw that I had were longer than the thickness of the ply, so I came back with my angle grinder to grind back the screws on the other side.
I foudn another scrap of ply for the lid, and I screwed that on to the hinges, and then closed the box, marking up the shape I wanted the lid to be, and then I could remove the screws from the hinges, cut out the shape, and re-attach.
The lid got painted black too.
Next I needed to measure the size of my camera lens, and there was no easy way to film this.
I found the centre of the lid, and then used a hole saw bit to drill a hole the size of my lens. 
Next I could fit the glass, but first I used some glass cleaning spray to make sure that the inside face was nice and clean as it'd be difficult to clean once it's fitted.
I used hot glue again to secure the glass.
And then I could attach the outer trim pieces.
Then I needed to figure out a way of keeping the hood open, and I had another scrap of wood I could use for this.
I keep lots of salvaged screws, nuts and bolts as you never know when you might need one. Once I found a bolt that was long enough and had a nut that fitted it, I drilled a hole through the side of the box, and also through the end of the piece of wood.  Then I shaped the end using the disc sander so that it was rounded.
 I then added the bolt, a washer, and a wing nut.
And after cutting the scrap of wood to the right length, it worked nicely.
The teleprompter would need to sit on a tripod so that I could have the ability to adjust the postition of it in front of the camera lens
And originally I thought about removing the tripod head so that I could attach a bolt to the bottom of the teleprompter lid and then I could screw it on to the tripod bolt.
But then I decided I could instead make something to slot inside the tripod head mount, and you can see here it opens and closes with a simple screw mechanism.
After taking a measurement, I found a thin piece of oak which I could use. 
I added a bevel to each edge using my block plane at roughly 45 degrees. And that worked out really well.
So I added glue and a couple of pin nails to hold it in place.
I did some sanding and wiped on some boiled linseed oil just to tidy up the look of it a bit.
And I blew away any dust using my air blower.