"The Parrot" Is A Portable, Inexpensive Teleprompter That Uses Your Smartphone

For a long time teleprompters were considered bulky, unweildy, and often required you to be tethered to a laptop or other control station. In the last few years, more affordable options that used wireless technology and compact mounts began to hit the market. Now, "The Parrot" might just be the most compact system I've ever seen, and it uses a device that the majority of us will already own: a smartphone.

The Parrot has a small mirror system that reflects an image of text to the person facing the camera. A slot just below that mirror allows for several models of smart phones to be placed in it securely, with an app displaying and scrolling the text of your script.

Rather than needing a rail system or tripod, it is instead thread-mounted onto a lens with a 77mm diameter. Thread size adapters are cheap and can make The Parrot usable on just about any lens that is 24mm and up (wide angle lenses may see some vingetting.)

The creators of The Parrot are trying to raise $30,000 on Kickstarter to get this product into development. Below is their video.

I've shot many videos of myself speaking into the camera, and had to reference notes to deliver lines to the camera. (I'm not good enough to just wing it!) Having a system like this that packs down into a small travel kit would be quite convenient!

Before I could even post this, all of the early bird discounted offers were gone! Check out the Kickstarter Page to learn more about The Parrot and what rewards are being offered for supporting the development of this product.