Friday, November 18, 2011

Voxer

A little while ago my friend Maxwell told me about a little app called Voxer! Ever since I downloaded it I have been hooked. As much as its cool for friends It is also extremely useful for filming!
The App is used to voice text people you can connect it to facebook to see you is also on Voxer with your friends! You can group some of your friends. Film wise this is very convenient since you can make your crew into a group and during filming you can press the button down and tell everyone in the area that may not be able to hear you say "action" and "quiet all around". The entire crew will get the message (assuming they're all on iphone's, or ipods with wifi.) The App is also available for Android phone users but that version is much more buggy than the Ipod/Iphone app. You can also do a one-to-one chat with just one of your friends! And when you're not on set and you just happen to be a props master, you can ask "Hey does anyone happen to have this prop that I need for the next shoot?" I love it mostly because it is so much more exciting to voice text people and a lot faster than just texting them. NOW, say if you're in a class room and someone Voxers you. Hopefully you have your volume down! You can listen to the message later or if it's an immediate situation, you can text them right there on Voxer in the same window and just ask them to text what they just said to you. If you're in a crowded room full of loud people you can switch it to the ear piece built into your iPhone and listen like your listening to a voicemail. The only thing I didn't like about it at first was that you have to train yourself to wait a second and listen for the beep before you talk otherwise it will cut you off. It's also created a sort of new polite behavior, you also have to train yourself to text the person first and ask them if they're in class or if you can voice them, just a polite thing to do for your friends. Other than those tiny issues, it's really a very useful app! I love it and encourage others to try it too!

1 comment:

arturo said...

Excellent! I think you are right about it's use as a production communication device. I just downloaded it so I have not tried it but I am reading about it and it seems very useful and it would probably work better than the best of walkie-talkies in some situations.
I don't know if it is possible to isolate someone from a group which in some cases in needed for some announcements that not everyone needs to hear.
I'll play around with it. Tks for posting