My wife is a Pre-School Teacher and in this a Covid-19 impacted year, her Pre-School wan’t able to have their normal Christmas concert. Instead, she was asked to write a play and video the children taking part in it – with the end result to be sent to the parents.
This was not a case of preparing the children and then doing a single performance that could be recorded. The aim was that each child would be involved in some way but the nature of Pre-School means that each day of the week consists of a different consort of children. So rather than a single performance, the video(s) would be made in many small parts and then edited to create the end product for each day. This would also enable the editing out of any prompting needed by the teachers.
Filming was to be done with an iPad and this brought with it various technical issues. Firstly, ambient noise was a problem, so a shotgun microphone was purchased. This then meant my wife was balancing an iPad, microphone and script (for prompting the children). It was at this stage I stepped in and offered to come up with something to make it a little bit easier.
Half an hour in the workshop, raiding my stock of offcuts and bit & pieces resulted in a pistol grip based holder for both the iPad and microphone which could be held in just one hand. It also allowed the angle of the microphone to be changed.
The parts list for this little contraption consists of:
- 17mm thick plywood cut to hape for the pistol grip and main horizontal piece.
- 30mm square pine – with 10mm routed channel to hold the iPad
- Several thin rubber pads to provide a tight hold for the iPad
- Offcut of 15mm square pine to support the microphone
- 1/4in bolt and wing-nut
- 1/4 in bolt to screw into the microphone tripod fitting
Total cost = $0