Getting Started with Video Podcasting

1. Introduction and class overview: Hello, and welcome to This Getting Started with Video podcasting class. My name is Dan Lefeb and my background has been working with video for decades now from teaching video production techniques and software to the artists. They make movies at companies like Disney, Universal and Dreamworks. And then I got into podcasting back in 2015, both for major corporations, and now I'm running my own award winning podcast. Whether you're new to podcasting or maybe you already have an existing audio show and you're just curious about adding video, you are in exactly the right place. This class is all about the key things you need to know to get started with video podcasting. Basically, everything except the content itself, which is by design because I'm assuming that by being here, you already have an idea for a podcast and you want to learn how to bring it to life with high quality video. So we're going to focus on the technical stuff while going equipment agnostic. That means we're not going to get bogged down with specific gear, after all. There are new models of cameras and microphones that come out all the time. Instead, we're going to focus on the universal settings that they all have, the techniques, the strategies that you need to master, regardless of the equipment that you have. Are you excited to dive in? Our next video breaks down the essential things you need to think about before ever hitting record on your first video podcast. Let's go. 2. Stuff you should know before starting a video podcast: In the movie business, they don't just grab a camera and start filming without a plan. When it comes to podcasting, we can save a ton of time and money by taking some time to think through our video podcast first. And that's what we're gonna do in this video. Break down some of the key things that you should know before starting your video podcast. And the first thing that you should know about video podcasting is it can take a ton of time, and that might cost you more than you want it to. Of course, money isn't everything. And I'm not just talking about money with those costs. Creating a podcast just for fun is a valid and extremely popular thing to do. But even if you don't care about making money from your podcast, even if you're podcasting as a hobby, just like any hobby, well, it all takes time. And we could just as easily paraphrase the saying time is money to simply say time is valuable. What do you find valuable? Well, let's be realistic about this because we all have the same 24 hours in a day. And when you start a video podcast, that's going to take time away from anything else that you have going on in your life. That's why I believe it's important to always be aware of how much time you're spending on your podcast, because that's really how you're going to know if the value that you get out of your podcast is worth what you're spending on it, even if all you're spending on it is time. So before you start your video podcast, I would highly recommend that you start tracking your time. If you've never done that before, here is a very practical way to do that easily. Grab a notepad and pen and just keep it by your podcasting setup. One of you sit down, jot down the time and a little description of what you're going to do. It'll also be helpful if you put your time entries into projects, maybe one for audio and one for video. Then do whatever you're going to do and then jot down the time when you stop. Now, if you're like me, you might prefer a digital time tracker. But if you need to place a start, my personal favorite app that I've used for years is an app called Toggle, TOGGL. The specific tool that you use to track your time is not as important as the fact that you're getting into the habit of doing it, of tracking your time. And then once a week, review that time log to see how much time you've spent on your podcast and what you've done. Personally, I review my time every Monday morning. And then you can see how much of that time spent correlates to just the video, like maybe setting up the lighting or getting yourself camera ready. And then how much of that correlates to the audio side? I would recommend at least five or six episodes worth of data points for this after you're comfortable with the editing side, because it'll always take more time to learn something new. So if you're new to editing overall, then that's going to just naturally take more time. But don't stop tracking your time even after you get comfortable because the goal here isn't to know how much time it takes you to learn the video podcasting side. The goal is to get enough data to know how long it takes to create your podcast audio and how much time it takes to do the video. Since video has audio, every type of podcast has audio. So when you track your time, tag the entries that are video only, and that will help you realistically know what you're getting into. Because if you think it only takes an hour a week, and then you find out that it's actually taking five or 6 hours, that mismatch of expectations between how long you think something will take and how long it really takes, that's a fast track to getting burned out. Now, you'll notice that I'm talking about multiple episodes. So yes, this will take some time to gather your data points. My recommendation is if you start a video podcast, set a deadline for it. Make it obvious for your audience that this is a trial of the video, because your audience will always be happy to keep the video if you find out you have enough time to do that video, but you can stop doing the video if it turns out to be taking too long. And at the end of the day, if you are stretching yourself so thin that doing video ends up getting you burned out, well, then your audience isn't going to have any content at all, and they'd rather have audio than nothing, right? In fact, burning out is so common in the podcasting space that long term podcasters even came up with a term for it, pod fading. It's when a podcast just fades away. And one of the most popular reasons for pod fading is when a podcaster starts the show and then starts to hit a wall where they get overwhelmed with how much work it actually is. But you can avoid that by being realistic with yourself and how much time you have. Think of it kind of like when you go fishing. That's a hobby that can take a lot of time. But do you really care if you catch a ton of fish at the end of the day or did you just have fun spending that time doing something you love? There's no right or wrong answer here because we're all different. But the point with tracking your time is to start gathering a log of how much time you're actually dedicating to your podcast, because regardless of whether this is a new hobby or a new business for you, a month or two down the road, you're going to be able to look back and then you'll be able to quantify if the time that you're pouring into this new podcast is really worth it to you. As much as we want to compete with everyone around us. You don't actually have to publish an episode every single week. You don't have to publish YouTube shorts, Instagram Reels, TikToks, or whatever other social platforms keep trying to tell us that we need to do to be successful. It's your podcast. You set the schedule, which means you need to be realistic about what works for your schedule. Not mine, not Joe Rogan's, not anyone else's. And here's a little pro tip about your schedule. It can change. You can start with a weekly schedule, and if that's too much work, then you can start to adjust to maybe fortnightly or monthly. When you're creating great content, your podcast audience will love to hear whatever it is you have to say whenever it comes out. So they'll thank you for building your podcast around a schedule that will ensure that you can keep the podcast coming out instead of getting yourself burnt out and never publishing anything ever again. And that leads me right into the next thing that you should know before starting your video podcast. You don't really need to do video. Statistics will always change. It's what they do. But one key thing that hasn't changed since podcasting started is that audio podcasts have always outperformed video podcast. That might be surprising since huge companies like YouTube and Spotify keep trying to tell us that video is the thing to do. But sometimes it's just easier to listen to a podcast when you're driving or doing tours around the house instead of watching a podcast. Think of it kind of like listening to music instead of watching a music video. Do you always have to watch a music video, or do you usually listen to music, and sometimes you'll watch the video. And I'm not here to combat the differences between whether or not YouTube is a video podcast or not. But when you're starting a podcast, none of that should matter to you because all this means is there's a massive audience of podcast listeners out there who love audio. And this is another statistic that will always change. But the general rule of thumb is it takes about four times as long to produce video content as it does to produce audio content. If you really think about that, it makes sense. With video content, you also have to think about the camera, the lighting on screen graphics, which means, oh, now you have to think about your brand style and colors and all those visual things that you don't really have to worry about when you're doing audio. So here's the practical side of this. Go back to your time log and next to the log, make a note of what you did tied to audio or video, kind of what I talked about before. Was this something related to the video setting up like the camera and the lights? It's not just about recording. It's all about the setup, too. And this doesn't have to be accurate down to the second. But if you get into the habit of jotting things down in the time log, as well as a rough summary of what you did, then as you review those time logs, you'll start to get a sense for how much time you're spending on just the video. And just the audio that has nothing to do with the video. And then that's going to help you decide if you even need to do video right now. Or maybe you start with an audio podcast, and then you add a video component later. Or maybe you start with video and audio. And then as you're tracking your time, you realize, you know, I really don't have time for video, and that's when you switch back to audio only. Okay, to recap, we learned some of the key things to keep in mind before starting a video podcast, and it really boils down to the time it takes and finding practical ways to make sure you actually have the time for it. There are millions of podcast listeners out there who prefer audio. There are millions of podcast watchers out there who prefer video. Your best chance at finding an audience that loves your podcast is by continuing to make your podcast. And that means you should be realistic about how much time you have. That's also why I highly recommend getting in the habit of time tracking now because life situations can change. Hopefully, you're going to be podcasting for years to come. And who knows what other things can happen in your life during that time? When you have a more realistic perspective of how much time it takes, that's going to help you know how many episodes of audio or video or audio and video that you can produce each week, each month, or whatever your best production schedule looks like. Again, this is your podcast. You are in charge, so you make the rules of the content that you create. Okay, so with all of that in mind, let's move on to our next video. Well, we're going to start the process of setting up for our video podcast, which actually starts with the audio. So I'll see you there. 3. Great video requires great audio: One of the most important things for your podcast is the audio quality. Obviously, that's true if you're doing audio only, but it's just as true if you're doing a video podcast as well. After all, we've all seen those movies where the volume goes from really loud to super quiet and you have to adjust or maybe videos online where you just can't understand what's being said at all. Those are some of the most common reasons why people stop watching a video because of the audio quality. So let's jump right into how you can get the most out of your audio. The best microphone for you to use on your podcast is the one that you have right now. Going to buy a high quality microphone is not going to make the content of your podcast high quality. So before you go out and buy anything new, use what you already have. With that said, if you have an external microphone, usually, that's going to give you a lot better audio quality than the microphone that's built into your computer. And I bet you already have an external microphone, even if all it is is a phone headset, like AirPods. Those are going to be closer to your mouth than the computer's built in microphone. So it's going to pick up more of your voice, less of the background noise, and that results in better audio quality. Now, if you want to hear all the technical stuff behind the different types of microphones, let me know. And I can do that in another class. But for today, there are two key types of microphones, condenser and dynamic. Condenser microphones tend to be more sensitive than dynamic microphones. What that means for podcasting, if you're podcasting in a studio environment where there's no background noise, a condenser mic can be great. I've used a condenser mic when I started my podcast, actually, and it was great. But most podcasters who are recording at home go with a dynamic mic because that won't be as sensitive to picking up background noise. Like, my condenser mic would pick up airplanes when it flew overhead, right? So I'd have to pause recording and then start recording again to not pick up that background noise. Or maybe the neighbor who always starts mowing their lawn the moment you decide to record. Now, because there are always new microphone models coming out, I'm going to attach a PDF that you can download with some specific recommendations if you'd like to see those. But once you're ready with your mic, the next key thing that's going to help you get the most out of your audio is some microphone technique. Of course, the type of mic that you have matters. Since we just learned condenser mic is more sensitive. You don't usually have to be as close to it, since it picks up more, it is more sensitive. But as we also learned, that can also mean picking up more background noise. So if you're like me, and you're using a dynamic microphone now, then you're going to want to make sure you stay as close to the microphone throughout the episode so it can pick up your voice. For example, I'm going to switch the audio to this dynamic handheld mic that I have here. So you're probably going to hear the audio quality change slightly because it's a different microphone. But you're also going to notice that my audio sounds different depend and this microphone is pointing. Like, if it's pointing towards the camera here, it's not pointing towards my mouth. The audio quality is gonna sound different than if I'm actually pointing the microphone towards me. So for a dynamic microphone like this one, I'm going to switch back to this microphone here. You want to get close to it, but you don't want to talk directly into the microphone. Notice I'm not talking directly into it because then it might pick up plosives. Those are the bursts of air coming out of your mouth, especially when you say words like P or H or letters like P or H or words that have them in there. Since those can cause the bursts of air to come out of your mouth, and if your microphone is right in front of your mouth, that's going to get picked up. So you can really test this by saying that old tongue twister, Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. Now, great rule of thumb is to keep the microphone at three fingers distance from the corner of your mouth, and then try not to move so much throughout your interview to avoid getting a difference in volume levels, especially if you're using a dynamic microphone. The further away you get from the microphone, the volume level is going to change than if you're much closer and then you're going to have that volume difference starting to happen in your audio. As a little bonus tip, the plosives are not the only sound the mic can pick up from our mouse. If you find you're getting a lot of mouth noises in your recordings, there are a few pre recording things that you can do as well. First, Make sure you're hydrated water. This helps make sure that your mouth isn't too dry and creating mouth noises. Or you can use toast or crackers to kind of get the opposite of that. If you have too much moisture in your mouth, the toast and crackers can help reset that moisture in your mouth, or something like a green apple or even lemon water can add a bit of something acidic that can help stimulate your saliva production, so your mouth doesn't get too dry as you're talking. The key here is not to overdo it. And just as importantly, about the things that you should include in your pre recording ritual to figure out what works for you, I would also recommend avoiding things either before or during recording, like alcohol. I know there's a lot of podcasts out there that have drinking and recording. But to put it simply, alcohol can dry out your mouth, so it can cause your mouth to stick, and then you're going to get more mouth popping noises in your recording. So I would recommend avoiding that as well. Candy or sugary things like pop or juice can make your saliva sticky and start to create extra mouth noises, too, especially if you have in your mouth. I've actually had some clients sometimes where they're chewing gum while they're recording. They couldn't hear it while they were recording. They had headphones on. They couldn't hear it while they're talking, but the microphone heard it and picked it all up. And the audio was pretty unlistenable. I had to have them re record everything without the gum. Caffeine is another thing that can quickly dry out your mouth causing it to stick or get more mouth popping noises in your recording. Of course, you can continue to go in depth with this and try things that I haven't mentioned. For example, another general rule of thumb would be to avoid things like dairy products like milk or cheese because they tend to coat the mouth and can cause some extra pops and smacks in our mouths when we talk, and the microphone picks that up easier. Ultimately, we are all different. So this is something that's going to boil down to some trial and error on your part. So now your homework is to test some of these different things. But before we get into that, actually, there are two more things I want to point out about the rest of the audio. The first is the environment itself. Now, I can't control your recording environment. And in many cases, I'm sure you can't control the shape of your room or whatever you're recording, anything like that. But as a general rule of thumb, you want to avoid things like flat bare walls or floors. If your room has bare wood floors or a lot of glass, sounds can bounce around and then start to create an echo that the mic picks up. That's why you'll see some podcasters even using things like clothes or pillows to absorb that sound. And then there's known background noises as might seem straightforward. Obviously, if you can avoid recording when your neighbor is mowing their yard or planes flying overhead, then you're going to want to do that. But there are other background noises that you might not be aware of that your mic is hearing. For example, maybe your air conditioner or heater, if that kicks on while you're recording, and the microphone is close enough to the vent in your room, it might pick that up, maybe an overhead fan or maybe one of the most common things if you're clicking a pen or your own computer is making noises like the computer fan or for example, maybe you're using a mechanical keyboard. Those things can have a loud sound when you're typing. And so if you're typing as you're actually recording, the microphone is going to pick that up, usually a lot or a lot faster than you're going to recognize it yourself. The same with a mouse click or even, again, the pen click if you're using a to take notes while you're recording. Shifting gears to the technical side of recording. There are a few settings that you should look for in whatever tool you are using to record. The software that you're recording into or if you're like me and using a hardware recorder, I'll get to what I'm actually doing towards the end of this class. But the settings are going to be in different places on different devices, but the settings themselves are the same. First, you're going to want to make sure you're recording at 48 kilohertz if you're doing video. That works best with syncing the audio with the video. So it's a de facto standard in the industry. Secondly, you're going to see a setting for bit depth somewhere. Set that to at least 24 bit. At least 24 bit will let your recordings have enough dynamic range that it doesn't get too clipped. It doesn't clip too much. And then this gives you a ton of control in editing once you get to that. And then speaking of clipping, the third is to make sure that your gain is set properly on whatever software or hardware you're using. Generally, you want the audio to bounce between negative 12 decibels and negative 6 decibels on your audiometer. But of course, what you specifically set your gain to on your recorder will vary depending on everything from your microphone, your environment, even how loudly you talk. And then optionally, if your software or hardware gives you a choice, I would always recommend recording an uncompressed wave file. Expect a larger file from this, but that's going to give you a lot more flexibility and higher quality when you're editing. I do not recommend recording or editing MP three files because MP three, by its very nature, is a form of compression. So if you record in a compressed file and then edit it, you're going to export that edit as another compressed file, and that's going to double or even triple, depending on how many times you're doing this. It's adding extra compression. Now, if you've ever seen a JPEG image on the Internet where you copy and save it over and over and each time it loses quality and looks a little worse, basically the same thing that you're doing when you record in MP three and then edit that MP three and export it. You're compressing it multiple times over and over. So I would highly recommend that you work in uncompressed wave files for the audio, and then the MP three file is the final edited podcast episode. Okay. So I know I threw a lot at you in this video. And if you want to know all the technical stuff behind any of the things that we talked about, let me know, and I'm happy to do a lot more technical class. But now that you know the key things for making your audio the best it can be, now it's time for you to do some homework and figure out the best audio setup for what you have right now. That means it's time for some trial and error. You're going to need about 3 minutes of content. What you record doesn't matter, but you need something to record so you can test your microphone and test for things like lip smacking and stuff like that. And if you need something, I'll attach a PDF to this that you can grab and read for your recording. First, hook up your external microphone if you have one, even if it's AirPods or something like that, then position the microphone about three fingers from the corner of your mouth. If you're using a different microphone, make sure it's positioned, about three fingers from the corner of your mouth, something like that. And if you have a mic stand to keep it there perfect, if you don't can hold the mic. Get used to where that location is because that's going to become your default location, right from the microphone, to know, Okay, this is my default. You don't have to do this every single time. You start to kind of get a sense for where it is. And then as you're talking, it's going to become second nature that this is the default, not this here, you know, not this here, not this here. This is going to be the default location of where you keep that microphone to get the best quality audio. And then the next step is to make sure that your mouth is not too dry. Drink some water, avoid alcohol, maybe even eat a bit of green apple, if you'd like to test that out. Figure out that combination because if you have a long recording session, you might need to drink more water or take a break from recording to eat a little bit more of the apple. Step four is to double check your recording environment. Try to avoid surfaces that are going to give you echo or reverb, and now you're ready to record. Sit down and record your test content. Then go back and listen to the recording. Did you notice any mouth noises? Maybe you need more water. Grab a cracker to reset your mouth and then rehydrate. Is there echo in your recording? Maybe you need to add a pillow around your computer to absorb some noise. Record again, and repeat this process until you have everything sounding just the way you want it. Now, take it outside. Literally, a lot of people listen to podcasts in their car or going for a walk outside. Listen to your recording in your car or as you're going for a walk outside. Is everything still clear and easy to understand? If not, go back to recording and try to make some changes and try again. And as you can tell, this might take a little bit of time to do, but a good rule of thumb is to block off an afternoon to get this done. Keep repeating the process. You can record the same content over and over again as you're repeating this process until you're happy with the quality of the audio. And when you are, jot down the steps that you took to get there so you'll remember it. What is your pre recording ritual? Is it a glass of water and a slice of green apple? Do you have to set up some clothes hanging around your microphone or a pillow each time that you record? There's not really a right or wrong here. The point is to get the best quality audio first before we layer in any video. Now, before I let you go for right now, though, if you are looking for some solid microphone recommendations, I will include a PDF that you can download with my current recommendations. Making it a download makes it a lot easier for me to update, since there are always new microphone models coming out. But the techniques that we learn in this video are universal regardless of what microphone you're using. And of course, as you're doing the homework, if you have any questions, feel free to share them with the rest of the class to get feedback on your specific setup. And once you're happy with your audio quality, you have that figured out. When you're ready, I'll see you in the next video, we're going to make sure that we're all on the same page for how audio and video work together. But 4. Starting to set up our camera: In our last video, we learned all about audio. And now that we have a good handle on our audio, it's time to start focusing on how to add video. So let's take a couple moments to make sure we understand how we can get our camera settings configured properly. The most important thing to keep in mind is exactly what we are creating with our video podcast, a video, right? But what is a video? If you're a fan of film history like me, you'll know that video used to be called moving pictures. Hence the movies. They're called moving pictures because video is nothing more than a sequence of still images that sync to audio and then played back at a certain speed. The most common speed for video podcasts is 30 frames per second or 30 still images per second. That is important for our camera settings because we have to choose the settings on our camera as well as when we are editing our video podcast. For example, if our camera records at 24 frames per second, but our editing software is set to 30 frames per second, well, the video that we shot with our camera 24 frames per second, that might not sync up very well to our audio like we expect it to. Now there are ways that we can do things like a frame pull down or conversions to get them to work to convert 24 frames to 30 frames or vice versa. If you want to see classes, getting into the weeds of the technical ways to do that, let me know. But generally speaking, it's a lot easier to make sure that things are done the same way upfront, so there's less fixing that we have to do in editing. The other key setting in our camera to keep in mind is the resolution. If you hop over to YouTube and look at the settings for most video podcasts, you'll find that what is the most common resolution to great balance of quality and speed for your audience's Internet connection is 1080. That is HD quality video at 19:20 by 1080. And if you're watching a story size video, that's rotated 1080 by 1920. That's why some people actually shoot in four K, which is much larger than that because you can capture more resolution to give you more options in editing. It's kind of like when we were talking about video recording an uncompressed wave that gives you more editing options once you get in there. But of course, that also adds to our editing time, as well as the space for those four K videos that they take up on our hard drive. So again, this is something that we can get into the weeds with if you want a separate class on all that technical stuff and the reasons why you might need four K and so on, or why you might not. But when you're first adding video to your podcast, quite honestly, there's no need to go four K right away. As a general rule of thumb, it is easiest to stick with the same settings in your camera that you have when you're editing software. For example, great default is to stick to 30 frames per second with the resolution of 1920 by 1080, or it might be called 1080 P for progressive in your camera settings. So this is what it looks like on my camera settings to be at 30 frames per second. And then in my editing software, the project is set to be 30 frames per second, as well. Now, obviously, the camera and the software that I'm using on my side is probably going to be a different combination than the camera and the software that you're using. So now it's time for your homework. Look in your camera settings for the frame rate and resolution, set them to be at 19:20 by 1080 for the resolution or might say something just like ten ADP, like I talked about. And then look for the frame rate and make sure it's set 230 frames per second. And then the same for whatever software you're using to edit the video. You might have to look up your software and camera manual to find where each of those are at in the settings. Or, as always, feel free to share a screenshot from the software, along with your cameras making model if you need help finding where those settings are for your camera and software. Once you've got the camera and software settings ready to go, you'll notice that we haven't actually physically set up our camera yet. So I'll see you in the next video. Well, we're going to get some tips on composition for our video. See you there. 5. Figuring out the composition: In this video, we'll get some tips on composition for setting up your video podcast. Now, I know I said this a couple times already, but this is perhaps one of the biggest things that's going to be different on your side than mine, because, well, obviously, you're recording in a different space than I am. So, of course, the composition, what you see in your camera, that's what composition is, is what your camera sees, that's going to be different than mine. But there are still things you can do to help add to the visual appeal of your video, starting with one of the key standards in the moving making industry, the rule of thirds. Now, you might even see your camera has the option for a grid like this one here that I've turned on. That is for the rule of thirds, and it's intended to help you frame your shot by visually breaking up what your camera sees into nine equal parts. Then as a general rule of thumb, you're going to want anything interesting to be along one of these lines or the intersections because that tends to be where the human eye gravitates to. So obviously your side is going to be different than mine. But here you can see an example of my video podcasting setup, where I placed myself right in the center so that I can have more editing control later, for example, when I do a split screen with my guests, things like that. But I also place my mic along one of these lines because I actually went out of my way to get a microphone that looks vintage because I have a history podcast. So it's kind of part of the set decorations. And you also notice that I have particular items in the background on each side, and all of those have conscious decisions that I made for the composition of the overall shot in the video. With the rule of thirds, that helps you make sure that you have enough headroom, which is the space above your head so that the framing doesn't feel too cramped, or if you're zoomed out too far, it can look too empty. Once you have a basic setup for how you want your talking head video to look, then you can start figuring out how to expand on that at all, starting to add things like the decoration in the background. Or, for example, in my case, I actually shoot my video in four K, so that way, I can easily crop in if I need to without losing any resolution. I also have plenty of distance between where I am sitting right here in the frame and the background. So that way, the background can get blurred off a little bit more. Or maybe you don't want any of that stuff in the background. Maybe it's too distracting. Maybe your podcast is going to have some slides or things like that edited in, and you want a clean background so you can give yourself some room for editing those things in later on. So here's an example of another setup that I have where I have a clean background. And this is so that I can edit in slides or just not have as distracting of a background for different types of shots. No, it's your turn. There's really no right or wrong. But as always, you're free to throw up your composition tests into the class to get feedback from myself and other students. Once you're happy with the composition of what you see in your camera's view, the next step is to get the lighting set up. So we'll look at that in the next video. 6. Crash course on lighting your video podcast: In our last video, we set up the camera to get the composition figured out. In this video will make it look wonderful with lighting. Probably the easiest way to get great lighting is to use yet another industry standard from the movies, three point lighting. Like the name implies, three point lighting consists of three lights. The key light is the main light that usually sits right next to the camera and casts the most light on the subject, which of the video podcast, of your video podcast, you are probably going to be the subject. So here is an example. I have my key light right up here, and here's an example I'll cut to where I turn the key light off. So this is an example of what it looks like with just the key light turned off. All my lights are still on, only the key light is turned off, and you can see how much that affects the overall lighting in the scene. And then this is with the key light turned back on. So you can see the difference of just that one light. The next light in three point lighting is the back light. That is, behind the subject, my back light is back over here, and that's going to give what's referred to as rim light or simply backlight. And that light helps separate yourself if you are the subject of your video, so you don't blend in with the background. And again, I'll cut to an example. Here I have just the back light turned off, so the back light is over here, and you can see the difference when I have this turned off. And then my back light turned back on. The third light in three point lighting is a fill light, which usually is set opposite of the key light. So if the key light is above and the camera kind of looking down on the subject, then that's going to cast some shadows under your chin and nose just naturally. So you're going to place the fill light on the opposite side to fill in some of those shadows more. So my fill light is right over here. Again, my key lights up here, Filt is over here, and I'll cut again to an example of what it looks like with just my fill light turned off. This is an example of just my fill light turned off. So the fill light is right over here off camera. So the key lights still on, back light still on. All my accents are still on haven't changed anything in the camera settings. The only difference is that the fill light has been turned off. And then here's my fill light turned back on. Now, you might have noticed in my setup, there's more lights than just the three. There are, because you'll notice there's some colored lights in the background as well. And that brings us to an option that a lot of people use with three point lighting, because if you notice with three point lighting, all the lights are focused on the subject. Well, depending on your setup, maybe you're going to want some accent lights in the background. And that's what my other lights are. I actually have multiple accent lights just to give different options. You'll notice there's different colors in the background. So I'm going to cut to some different shots where you can see what it looks like with my background accent lights turned off, starting with these here. So here's an example with my accent light turned off. Not all of them. You'll notice I still have some accent lights on, but I have two big soft lights that are just pointing in the background, and I've turned those off. So you can see some of the different accent lights that I have, and that gives me control over changing colors on some of the lights and not on others in order to create different blends for different episodes of my podcast. And I also have these smaller accent lights in the background set decoration itself. So I'll turn these off too, leaving just my three point lighting with nothing in the background. All of my accent lights in the background have been turned off, so you can see the difference between when these are turned off and turned on, how much those accent lights can add to the video itself. But it's not really affecting the lighting that's on me. It's just really accent on the background. With this sort of optional lighting on the background, you can change up the lighting to make different episodes look different. For example, I did an episode about the movie Napoleon, and so I did blue, white and red colors of the French flag. Or I did an episode about the Indiana Jones movies because Indi explores a lot of jungles. I went for more green lighting in the background. Of course, those are just examples. But you can start to get a sense for how you can get yourself lit well with the three point lighting, and then you can start to use accent lighting just to add an extra little touch to your video podcast episodes. Now, you've probably noticed something. Three point lighting means you need at least three lights. If you want to throw in some more accident lighting, that means you need more lights. And let's just be realistic, who has at least three lights for video just laying around. So if you want to be serious about adding video to your podcast, the lighting is going to be something you're going to want to invest in. Even if podcasting is your hobby, sometimes it requires buying things, and if video podcasting is your thing, then lighting is something you're going to want to invest in. And if you think of it like a hobby, your hobby is golfing, then eventually, you're going to need to buy golf clubs for your hobby. And just like I mentioned for the microphones, I'm going to include my current recommendations for lighting in a downloadable PDF because models can change. But before you go buying anything, my recommendation is always to use what you already have right now. Even if you don't have specific lighting for video, use whatever lights you have. Try to arrange them in a way that gets you the best three point lighting possible. Now, if you only have two lights to use, maybe a phone light or something like that, a ring light and a phone light, you're going to want one of those to be your key light. I would probably have the ring light the key light, and then the phone could be a fill or you can be clever with your background. Maybe if you have dark hair like I do, then you can get a brighter color background so your head doesn't disappear into the background, and then you don't really need as much of a backlight. After all, it's kind of the purpose of the backlight is to help avoid the subject disappearing from the background. So those are some creative ways that you can do the same sort of thing to get good quality lighting without actually having all of the different lights and going out and buying all of them right away. Or maybe if you only have one light, that'll probably want to be your key light. That's the main light. And then you're going to want to try to find the best way to avoid shadowing in your face that's going to that the fill light would usually help to take care of. A great way to do that is actually with diffused natural light. So maybe you have a window, you can use diffused light, maybe a curtain or something like that over the light, so it's not just harsh sunlight. But then if you record during the day with natural light, set the timing of when you record, that can be some of the best lighting that you can achieve without ever needing to buy anything else. But the catch to that, of course, is if there's a window there, then as we talked about with the audio, you might get some echo as the audio is bouncing back. So you're going to want to play with maybe some clothes or some sort of pillows or something to block that reflection. So make sure to test your audio again after you started to place some of these things around to make sure you're not losing the audio quality that you had. Now that you know the concepts for three point lighting, you can be creative in how you achieve the same result. The key light on the subject for the bulk of the lighting, the fill light to remove the unwarned shadows from the face, and the back light to help the subject pop out and not disappear into the background. Okay, now it's your turn. As you're setting up your lighting, if you don't have the professional video lights right away to get set up, perfectly fine. Don't go out and buy anything yet. Get creative with the ways to get the best lighting with what you already have. Focus on trying to achieve the same goals with three point lighting, the key light, the fill light, and the back light. And if that works for you without buying anything new, great. You just saved yourself some money. And I'm sure the rest of the class would love seeing your setup to see how you achieved what you did so that they can learn some tips and tricks, too. Now, if you're finding that the lighting just doesn't work with your setup, of course, feel free to share photos of your setup so we can try to help. But it's also okay if it doesn't work. Realistically, the lighting setup is another great opportunity to make sure that adding video is something you want to do with your podcast. As we talked about at the start of this class, you don't have to do video to have a successful podcast, and audio doesn't have to have the lighting. So maybe audio only is the way to go for now. And that's okay, too. And remember, all that matters is what your camera sees. So make sure to consistently check the lighting in your camera. And that actually leads right into the next thing that we're going to be learning about because there are three key things in your camera settings that can drastically affect how your camera sees the light, and we'll learn all about those in our next video. 7. 3 camera settings you need to know for video: In this video, we'll go back to our camera to learn about the three core settings that you need to know for high quality video. So these three settings are aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. And it's worth pointing out that these three settings also affect how much light our cameras see. So if you're finding your videos too dark or maybe too bright, it's too dark, you don't have enough lights, you can adjust your camera settings to let in more light to help brighten your video, or you can also adjust these settings to darken your video if you want to do that, as well. The key thing to keep in mind with these settings, though, is that there are pros and cons to all of them. And realistically, each one of these settings could be an entire class by itself. So if you want to go more in depth, let me know if you want a more in depth technical class. But for today, it's most important to remember that there's not a one size fits all setting. It really depends on your setup itself, as well as what kind of video podcasts you're doing. For example, your settings are going to be different if you have two hosts instead of just one. So I am the only host of my show, so my settings are going to be different than yours. But I'm going to go through some of the pros and cons with each one. So let's start with aperture. In a nutshell, the aperture is a series of blades in your camera's lens that you can open or close to control the depth of field. The technical term you might hear for this is being wide or narrow, such as being wide open when the hole is bigger and a narrower hole when the aperture is more closed, which, as I'm sure you can guess, also means less light being let into the camera when it's more closed or a narrower hole. That's why it affects the brightness. But I also mentioned it controls the depth of field. So here's an example of what I mean by that. You can see when the camera has the aperture set wide open, notice that one of her eyes is in focus, but the other one is not. On the other hand, when I changed the aperture setting to be narrower or more closed, as you can see, now her whole face is in focus. And remember when we learn that video is a sequence of still images. So that's an example with photos, but the same is true for your camera's video. So, for example, if you have two hosts, you want to make sure that both hosts are in focus, right? So you're going to see in your camera settings, you'll see fractions like this. This is the aperture, F 1.6, F 2.84, F 5.6, it's referred to as the F stop because it's a fraction. If you want to get the BOCA in the background of your video, you're going to want a more open aperture, which is really going to narrow down that focus in that example photo that we saw where the eye in focus, but the nose is not, BCA is really just lights and things like that blurring in the background to create that effect. But the catch to this is it might mean that maybe your face is not in focus, if your co host is in focus, right? And so you're going to want to make sure that your aperture setting is correct for your setup. Next, we have the shutter speed, which controls the motion blur in your photos. A fast shutter speed can be used to capture the motion of sports or airplanes, like these example photographs here. Well, a slow shutter speed can make moving water look like smooth glass. When it comes to your video podcasts, realistically, most of the time, you probably aren't going to be moving as fast as sports players or an airplane or something like that. So the two biggest thing to keep in mind for shutter speed for video podcast is that the shutter speed still will affect how much motion blur you find in your still frames. Remember, we learned in an earlier video that movies are nothing more than a sequence of still images played at a certain speed. So the shutter speed is affecting the motion blur in each of those images. And you might not notice this when the video is being played back. But if you're pulling a still image from your video to use as maybe a YouTube thumbnail or something like that, that's when you're going to start to notice that each image's blur might be a little bit more depending on your shutter speed. The other thing to keep in mind with your shutter speed for video podcast is it's how much light is being let into your camera. And this can start to get technical really, really fast. So again, reach out if you have more questions about the technical side of this. But in a nutshell, you can think of the shutter kind of like your eyelids, right? So when you close your eyelids, the amount of light that you see, it's not as much light. On your camera, the sensor is the eye of your camera and the shutter are the eyelids. So when the shutter is closed, then the amount of light that the sensor sees is not nearly as much. What this means from a practical perspective is the faster your shutter speed is, the darker your video is going to be because there's less light physically getting into where the camera can see in the sensor. You can use this to your advantage to either brighten or darken your video to a point. This is where there's pros and cons. You can overdo anything. If you make the shutter speed too slow, you will start to see some extreme motion blur that can become obvious in video as well. But if you make it too fast, then it can start to get too dark. That's where you need to find what that balance is for your setup. And that leads right into the last of these three key settings that you need to master the ISO. The boring technical stuff is that ISO stands for it's an acronym. It stands for International Standards Organization. Those are the folks who came up with the standard measurements for a lot of technical stuff many, many years ago. What you really need to know is the IO on your camera is a measurement of how much light the sensor on your camera can see. So in your camera, you're going to see numbers like these for the IO, ISO 100, ISO 400, ISO 1,600. Thanks to the International Standards Organization, every single camera manufacturer uses the same numbers. It's a standard, right? So ISO 400 on your camera is going to be the same as it is on my camera. What's different is the setting that that camera is, right? But those numbers still correlate to how sensitive your camera sensor is to the light that it sees. The higher the number, the more sensitive it is. From a practical perspective, this is another way that you can brighten your image because a camera setting, say, IO 1,600, that means your camera sensor is set to be 16 times more sensitive than ISO 100. But remember how everything has pros and cons? Well, the pros and cons for ISO, the pro is that the higher IO makes the image brighter without adding any extra lights to your setup. The con is that higher sensitivity means the sensor itself can start to introduce digital noise and grain, especially depending on the quality of the sensor itself. And that's why some people buy super high end cameras, because you can have a high quality sensor, that you can crank that ISO up, have less lights in your scene, but still get a good quality image. But if you start to crank that up, you're still going to start to see noise and grain on the images. For example, you're going to see noise and grain on photographs like this one taken at night, usually because the IO is cranked up to be more sensitive because it's so dark outside. That's how it starts to introduce that noise and grain on the sensor in the camera. Now, in video, you might not notice that very much, especially because video is moving as opposed to a photograph, but you might. So that's yet another reason why the settings in your recording studio is going to be different than mine. And that leads right into your homework. It's time to set up the aperture, shutter speed, and ISO on your camera for your studio. And here are some general rules to follow to get you started. If you have one person on camera, go for maybe F 2.8, if your camera can allow it, maybe F four or F five for the aperture. If you have multiple people on camera, you're going to want to make sure at least start with F five and go higher than that, to make sure everybody is still in focus all at once. For the shutter speed, if your camera is handheld, the rule of dumb is that the focal length matches the shutter speed fraction. So say a 50 millimeter focal length on the lens means that you want at least one 50th of a second for the shutter speed. If your camera lens is, say, 100 millimeters, then your shutter speed should be at least 100th of a second minimum. That helps reduce the motion blur, especially if you're holding the camera. Now, for most video podcasts in a practical setting, it's going to be on a tripod or lockdown. Like my camera here is locked down on a tripod. It's not moving. So you can use that to cheat that rule of thumb to let in more light until you start to see too much motion blur. But generally speaking, 1/100 of a second is a good default starting point for your tests. Last but certainly not least the ISO. A rule of thumb here is to try to go as low as possible without getting too dark. So start around ISO 400 and go from there. And you don't want to go too high without starting to introduce too much grain. If you have to go really, really high on your ISO and the other settings can't balance it out, what that really means is you start to need to introduce more lights into your setup. As always, if you need help getting this part set up, reach out. Share photos of your setup, your settings, and what your camera sees with those settings, and we can figure it out together. At this point, you are almost ready to record. But before we do that, let's take a couple moments because you're about to transition from the concepts that we've learned about in this class and take those skills to your own recording. And I'd like to take a few moments to share what my settings are for my recording setup so you can learn from how I've set things up in case that's helpful for you. So we'll look at that in our next video. 8. Steal ideas from my setup: Throughout this course, we've covered a ton of technical stuff and camera settings. And if you followed along with the homework, you should be ready to record. Before you actually sit down to record, let's take a couple moments to recap what my settings are so you can steal ideas from my workflow. But first things first, your settings will be different than mine. You're in a different room. You're using a different camera, a different microphone, probably different software and hardware and so on and so forth. So don't worry about the specific settings. You don't have to have exactly the same shutter speed setting that I do. But now that we've gone through the videos in this class, you know what those settings do. So feel free to use my settings as a starting point or just as a comparison to see how my settings look in your recording studio. And let's start with my audio settings. I am recording using the SR 55 SH series two microphone. It's a dynamic microphone that runs into my roadcasterP, where I record using these settings for the audio. Then for my camera, I am using a Panasonic umixG nine with a 35 millimeter lens. My aperture is set at F five with a shutter speed of one 50th of a second, ISO 400, and I'm recording at four K quality using an external recorder called an atoms Ninja flame. Now, remember how I mentioned that you should use whatever you already have? This is a great example of that because my background was in video production long before I was podcasting. So I already had this little device, my Ninja flame from when I would use it in the field for commercials, when I was shooting videos and things like that. So when I started adding video to my podcast, I just repurposed the recorder that I already had by setting it up in my studio. The reason for using this recorder is to be completely independent of recording on a computer. You'll notice that both my audio and video are recording on different devices. So that way, when I'm talking to a guest on my MacBook, if that freezes up, it's not going to reflect my recording, and I haven't lost everything that I've done so far. I mean, not that I learn from experience and computers ever freeze up or anything like that, right? But that leads to my lighting setup. It's basically what I explained in an earlier video, three point lighting with some extra accent lights. But here is a diagram of how my lighting setup works. So you can see the key light, the fill light, the back light, which then I like to use a warm light on the fill light, so it helps brighten the colors on my face a little bit. And then the accent lights, I have a few of them to cast light on the background and in the set design on the background as well. So feel free to experiment with the lights on your side to get the look that you want. And that's pretty much it. But as I mentioned before, sometimes things can change here and there. So I'll throw a PDF in the resources for this class so you can download that and see what my recording tools are that I'm using and the settings that I am using in case you're interested in seeing that. Speaking of things that you might be interested in. If you would like to go deeper in the weeds on any of the technical things that we talked about today or want some help, maybe coming up with content ideas. We didn't even talk about the content ideas. I assume that you already have an idea of what you want to talk about in your podcast. That's why you want to do a podcast, right? And so we're talking more about the technical stuff today. But if you want help with any of that, feel free to reach out. And if it's something that I can help you with one on one, I'm happy to do that. Or maybe it'll be a great idea for a future class so everyone can benefit. But now it's your turn. With everything set up, record a clip to share with the rest of the class or share a link to your final episode, and I can't wait to see how you incorporate video into your podcasts.