Transcripts
1. Introduction: You ready to transform
your ordinary room into a professional grade home studio for creating dynamic
content on YouTube, Instagram Reels, or TikTok? Even if you're not a gear
expert in this course, I'll teach you everything you
need to know about setting up a DIY home studio
in any space you have, including how to choose and use various types of
equipment like cameras, microphones, lighting,
and even with your phone. How to design and arrange
your space to make the most of what you have tips on achieving the best audio
and visual quality, how to add personal touches to make your studio
uniquely yours, and also how to adapt your setup to different
types of video content, whether you're shooting
horizontally for YouTube or vertically for TikTok
and Instagram Simone, a professional content
creator with over 1.1 million followers across
social media platform. And despite my experience
with high end studios, I often set up DAY studios in Var living spaces due to
my semi nomadic lifestyle. This has equipped
me with a lot of practical insights
into maximizing small spaces for big impacts. And that's why I'm
excited to share with you my practical tips and easy setup techniques
for home studios. Whether you're just
starting out or you're looking to enhance
your current space, no matter how small that is, this course is designed
to empower you to create a functional and
visually appealing home studio. So are you ready to
start transforming your space into a dynamic
studio for your business, personal brand or
creative projects? If your answer is yes, I'll
see you in the first video.
2. Equipment: The first questions
that you may ask is, but what do I need actually to create a studio
set up at home? What kind of copper I need? What kind of lighting?
What about the background? How does it all work?
It's really important to understand that in order
to create a great studio, you don't have to
have fancy equipment, amazing gear, and, like, loads of different stuff that you buy from expensive website. Not at all. We can just create studios directly
in our bedroom in our small space with
things that we have in the house and even
just using a phone. The first thing that
we need, obviously is recording equipment. So whether we talk about cameras or whether we talk about phone, you need something to take obviously, if you're
shooting with your phone, you don't have any
choice regarding the lens that you can use because you just
put your camera, I suggest you use
the one x camera, whether you're using
iPhone or Android, because usually, that's
the highest quality. And then you'll just need
to point towards you, and then you need to make sure that the background looks good. In case you want to
go for a camera, then you have so many
different options depending on the budget.
For example, right now, I have a Sony a 73 right here, which I think is one of the best quality
overpriced camera that you can find right
now on the market. And then on top, you can
have a different lens. The best option at the beginning is going for a Zoom lens, which means that you can Zoom in or out depending on the
lens that you have. This one is a 16 to 35. 16 is super wide angle. 35 is obviously less
wide, but still kind of wide. Right now I'm
filming on the camera there, which is a Sony a 74, and I have a 50
millimeter fixed lens. The difference between a
fixed focal length and a Zoom lens is that usually
fixed focal length, they can go to a lower
aperture like F 1.2, whereas this one goes to F 2.8. And the difference
between F 1.2 and F 2.8 is that F 1.2 has a very
shallow depth of field. You can see right
now I'm in focus, but then now this camera is auto focus because
it's closer there, and also the background
is autofocus. As soon as you go higher
with the aperture, let's say, 2.8, 5.6, so on so forth, everything
will be in focus, so you don't have a
shallow depthal field. Usually, whenever you can go very low with aperture
like this one, F 1.2 becomes
extremely expensive. But you can find
some great deals. For example, the 50
millimeter F 1.8, which is also called the
Nifty 50 because it's a classic lens that everyone uses because you can go
very low with the aperture, but the price is super reasonable, no matter
whether they're using Cannon, Nikon, Dh
have the 50 lens. But again, this is
very restrictive. So if you want to
change your framing, you'll have to move
the camera itself and you cannot play
around with the lens. In terms of our studio setup, if you have a wide lens, you probably have to be
closer to the camera. Whereas, if you have a long
lens like the 50 millimeter, now I have it at maybe 1.5 meter from me. Whereas, if I'm using
a very wide lens like 60 millimeters, then the camera will be probably right here
in order to kind of fill up the space with my
body like you see right now. So the difference is that
if you have a wide lens, you'll have to stay
closer to the lens, and you won't be able to separate yourself from
the background that much. Whereas, if you
have a longer lens, you'll require more space because the camera has to
be further away from you. But then at the same
time, you'll be able to separate yourself from the
background a little bit more. Once again, the camera choice and the lens choice
doesn't really matter. You can always find
an alternative and adjust your studio based
on the gear that you. I'm going to show you also
in this class on how you can achieve a great result even
just using your phone. Then obviously,
if you are alone, you have to use a tripod in
order to hold your camera. You can use any tripod
that it's on Amazon. There are some very,
very cheap ones. There are plastic ones. Be careful if your
camera is heavy. I suggest you go at least for
an aluminum sort of tripod, but there's not really
a choice here because thousands and
thousands of tripods, whatever you buy is okay. Just make sure maybe if you can, that it's not plastic because the plastic one can
work for a few times, but it's easy to break and you don't want to break your camera. If you're using your phone, any any, any tripod will work. There's no problem because
phones are very light. Now, let's talk about the most
important element of demo. This is about lighting. Now, if we put on a scale, how much lighting will
change your setup 1-10, I would say is ten out of ten because lighting is the most important
element of the mode. It's more important
than the camera or the phone that you're using. And even if you don't want to invest too much
money in lighting, I suggest you buy some sort of artificial light that is made
for photography or video you can find them
extremely cheap, I think, starting from $40 on Amazon, you can find them
anywhere in the world, and they are just
simple soft books. So you don't want to
have a direct light, but you want to have a soft box. A softbox is basically a
diffuser for the light that will create very soft shadows that will look
extremely professional. Right now, let me
show it to you. I have a Nan Fs 60 B, which is a very small light
attached on a soft box. So this is the soft box that I have, which
is quite small. There are also huge soft boxes. If you want to have it bigger,
the bigger the better, but because I travel a lot, I need to have a small
one and this one, you can even fold it so that
I can travel with this one, and then as you
can see, the light attached to it is
extremely small. And this is my key once again, you can go with
any option that you want. If you want to go with
a cheap Amazon softbox, that's not a problem at all. But still, I strongly, strongly suggest you
buy some sort of light. Otherwise, some
alternatives could be Nan like Forza 60, which again, is 60 vat or the Godox SL 60, if I'm not mistaken, or there
are also some other ones. It's really important that
I think as a minimum, you should have 60
votes like this one. And with this one,
you'll be able to do whatever you want. And I use it everywhere I here where I am right now, I only have this light
with me as a key light. I don't have anything
bigger than this. Then also, we'll need
some extra lights to then light up the background. This could be also
some bed lamps like this one that I had already in my apartment
that I didn't buy. Or you can buy some pocket lights like this
one that you see. This is a non light little
light five C. This is super small and it allows you
to change any color because as we are going to
see in the lighting section, we'll be able to change different combination
to make our back interesting. I have also
another big light not with me, but it is a Nan
Light force to 200, which you can use for so many different things
because it's just huge. But for home setups, I highly suggest you don't go too big
because there's no need. This light is the cheapest
one that you can find and is super small and allows
for great visuals. As we are going to
see, we need to turn off every
single light that we from our bedroom, from our
living, wherever you are, and we're just going to play around with artificial lights, lacing them wherever
we want them to be. The next thing that we'll
need is going to be a microphone because
obviously you don't want to record with
the internal recorder of your phone or of the camera
because they are very bad, but you can buy some
cheap microphone. And here you're going
to have two options. Either you go with
a wireless option like I'm using right now here. So I have a receiver on top of my camera and
then I'm speaking and into this microphone, or you're going to
have a shotgun mic, which will have to be
linked to the camera. But again, we're going
to have a look at this in the audio
consideration video. Then if you want to make your background
more interesting, we might need any
combinations of light, so bad lamps or maybe
even that light, which is another similar to the one that I
have right here, but just without the softbox. Then we have plants, tables, unique shelves or any sort of furniture
that you want to use in your
background, a chair, obviously where you need to sit, maybe a table in front
of you if you want to, and also some paper wall like this one that I have
right here and I'm going to show it to you later
or some other things that you want to attach to the wall in case you don't
want to use the plain wall. And that's it. Obviously,
if you want to stay extremely low budget,
you can do that, too. For example, in this case, I just have my camera and I have a small cheap light
in front of me, and then I have a
bed lamp right here. I could do without that one, but because I have it,
I'm going to use it. And also this plant and some
cheap accessories right. So in total, this setup, excluding the light, which
probably is, I think, $250, 300, then this setup is
probably going to be like, I don't know, $50 or so. But now keep going with the class because
you're probably going to understand throughout
the overall course, how and what kind of elements you want to
use in your setup. Alright, I'll see
you in x video.
3. Read Your Room: It's time to go into practice
and understand how we can build a studio in our bedroom
or in our small space. And I'm going to
start with an example right here from my bedroom, which has also been my studio for the past eight
month here in Dubai. Usually, I move quite a bit. I travel a lot. I change
bedroom, I change apartments. I think I did it maybe seven or eight times in the last four
years and every time I move, I need to build a new
studio for my content. And one of the big challenges is to find the right spot in a certain room so that I can set up my studio without
having to move the lights, the camera, and all the
equipment every single time. That's why this first
practical lesson is about reading the room, understanding where
we should set up our own camera lighting
and background. There are two ways on how you
can try to read your room. The first one is try
to find a plane. So without anything
that you can build up with certain elements that we're going to see
throughout this class. The second one is try
to find elements that are already in your
room, in your house, in your living room, and
then try to use them to create an interesting setup
for your own content. In this bedroom, I had to
start completely from zero because there were no elements that I like that
I wanted to use. Therefore, I tried to
find a plain white wall, and then I built it up with some elements that I'm going
to show you right now. The goal is to find an area of your room
where you can have, let's say, at least
2 meters by 1.5. My space right here is 3
meters long by 1.5 meters, and that's enough to
build an area that is both for horizontal
and vertical content. Because that's another
very important element that you
want to consider. Do you want to shoot
only vertical content, or do you want to shoot
also horizontal content? Obviously, for horizontal conto, you probably a little bit
of a wider background. Whereas for vertical,
you probably need a smaller
section, obviously. But my goal, because
I don't want to move setup and change from vertical to horizontal
is try to have one for both. But even here, despite being pretty small, it works for both. Another super important factor whenever you're thinking
to build a setup in your space is that
you should be able to block out any natural
lighting coming in. So even in this case, you see
now that there is a window, but then I have
blockout curtains so that I can close it up, and then I don't have any
natural light coming. The reason why you want this is because whenever you have
natural light coming in, throughout your
recording period, the light is going to change because the sun moves around. And even if you don't see it,
because you're super slow, in your content, whenever you're editing your videos,
you're going to see it. And that's not something
that you want to take care of doing the editing
because you see huge pain. Now, I understand that
you may want to set up your own content space where you don't have the possibility
to have a pitch black. Later on in the course,
I'm going to show you a way on how you can improve it. But keep in mind that usually, if you want to edit your videos and then put together
all the pieces, you're going to probably
see a difference in exposure whenever you're
doing these cuts. Alright, let me show
you why I decided to set up my content
area right there. So this is my bedroom, and I just wanted to find the space where I
had the most depth. And probably from
here until here, it was the biggest
space I could have. As you can see,
it's about 3 meters long and it's about
1.5 meters wide. Whenever you're
setting up your space, you want to try to
have the camera as far as possible
from the background, and then probably you're going
to sit around the middle. This depends on the lens that
you have on your camera, whether you're shooting
on your phone. If you have a wide lens, you're probably going to
be closer to the camera, whereas if you have a long lens, a Zoom lens, let's say,
higher than 35 millimeters, then you'll have to stay
further away from the camera. This is totally up to you, depending on the gear that you the room that you have and also the effect that
you want to achieve. My personal favorite
is try to use 35 or 50 millimeter
with a lower F stop, lower aperture,
which means that I'm going to have a shallow
adaptive field. So I'm going to be in focus, but the background is not
going to be in focus. Now that I identify
this space as my set, I need to understand exactly
where to put the camera, and we decided to put
it as far as we can from the back then I'm going
to have the background, and this is going to
be in the next video, and then I just need
to position myself. Once again, I'm going to have a starting position in the middle. But then we can move, depending on the lens that you have a little bit closer
to the background or a little bit
closer to the lens. If you have a wider lens, you have to be
closer to the lens. If you have a long lens, 50 millimeters or higher, then you have to be
closer to the background, or let's say, further
away from the camera. And now it's time to
set up our background.
4. Design your background: Key that you need to
think about whenever you're setting up your
background is balance, especially when you are in small room in small
spaces like this one, you don't want to have a
clatter background with too many elements because this is going to distract the viewer. Remember, the focus of the attention whenever you're
creating content is you. You don't want the viewer to be distracted by the background. And that's why we
need to find balance between the elements in the
background and yourself. Now, there are a
few key elements whenever we speak
about the background. The first one is the wall. And in order to treat the wall, you have several options. First one is that you
just leave it blank, and maybe we're going to
use pieces of furniture, lights, plants to try to cover
and making it interesting. Or what I've done
here is that I bought some non destructive paperwall to then attach it to the wall. And then whenever I'm going
to leave this apartment, I'm just going to take
it out, and if needed, I'll just go to repaint it. So now, after eight months of using this studio on and off, I need to remove the paperwall because I'm
living this apartment. So now we're going
to find out together whether this solution was non destructive for real
or whether it left any mark on the wall.
So let's find out. In a Alright, first bar gun, there's absolutely no marks, which makes me extremely happy because that means I don't have to repaint it on top. Alright, let's keep going
with the remaining. You who? That was a success. For this paper
wall, I decided to go for a black wood texture, which I really, really like, and I think it looks
amazing when doing videos. But then depending
on your style, depending on the effect
that you want to achieve, I definitely suggest you try
to check out what kind of paperwall you can find in your
area. It is not expensive. It's quite easy to apply. I think we apply this one in
1 hour, 1 hour and a half. And then is ready ready to go. Now, it is not amazing to
see this black patch in my bedroom comparing to
everything else that is white, because I didn't want
to do the full wall because it would have
taken much longer and would have been much
more tedious to then remove when we are living. But this is a choice
that you can make. Wherether you want
to just set up your own corner for Compton? You want to just do the
whole wall and then make it pretty so that
whenever you go to sleep, you're going to have
a nice bedroom. For me, this is not a problem to have it my bedroom
is totally fine, but again, it's up to you. Because I really like
the dark texture and the dark color,
the dramatic vibes, I decided to go with a very
dark depending on your niche, you might want to choose
something different. If you are a girl
and you're doing some paint content or maybe you're doing
some makeup content, surely don't go
for the black one because that's not the
mood you want to go for. So try to match the paper
wall that you're going to buy with the mood that you want
to go for in your content. And then whenever you have
decided your background, whether you want to
use a plain wall or a paperwall or
something else, then it's all about
adding elements that will make your
frame more interesting. And when talking about elements, there are three key things that I like to have
in my background. The first one are light then
plants and then furniture, which can include cabinet with shelves or
tables like this one, or any other drawer that
comes in your mind. Especially lights are
super important because those will be able to increase
the depth of your frame. I see so many content creators have a
beautiful background, but is completely turned off. There are no lights, and that is just missing out quite a bit, because if you could just add one more light in
the background, you'll be able to increase quite easily the depth of your frame. Because whenever you're
creating content, there are always two layers. The background and you. For example, look at
this framing right now. Yes, I have the white wall because I'm not Zoom dim enough. I don't have the
right lens to record content right now because
I'm doing just the class. But then look what happens when I turn on that light right here. We have a simple light
turned on in the background, but now it's illuminating
the background, and it creates much more depth. The same thing if I add
that light over there. There you go. And
now it's already starting to have some
sort of great shape. So if I now Zoom
in with my lens, if I change lens on my camera, you'll be able to see that I
have one light on the left, one light on the right, and
it looks already amazing. Then the last step
that I want to do is that maybe I want
to add a plant. And this one, I can leave that plan that I have
right there in this side, but I can also put it
on the other side. I think I'm going to put it on the other side because I like it a little bit more whenever
I'm shooting horizontal. So I just have this
plan right here. You can see, this is probably
like 60 centimeter plant. It's not too big,
it's not too small, I think works perfectly
in this setup. So I'm going to place it just
right here. There you go. And then maybe I can
point this light towards the plant so that we see
it a little bit more, and now it looks
already much better. If pis them in with my lens, let's see if we can
make it happen. There you go. Just go to
move the camera a bit. And there you go.
As you can see, now this looks
already pretty good, which is definitely quite wide. Usually, I use a longer lens, like a 50 millimeter
so that I can have the camera a little
bit further away from me. I can have a lower aperture, which means that I have a
shallower depth of field. So I'm going to be in focus, and the background is not
going to be in focus. Now, let me show you one
more thing that you can add to this background to make
it even more interesting. And this is by adding a
backlight. There you go. This is a pocket light. In this case, I'm using a non
light little light five C, which is a very small light
that can change any color, can become purple, blue, red, green, whatever you want. But I'm going to
use it just yellow. Reason being it's
because I'm using a white key light
in front of me, and then I want to contrast it with a complimentary yellow, warm, white on the
opposite side. I placed it on a tripod so that it can be a
little bit higher, like, so here, I want to have it on the
frame because I don't want to see
it in the frame. But then let's see if
we can make it happen. There you go. And now I'm
gonna Zoom back in again. And there you go. You see this yellow reflection
on this side, that's the back
light, and it adds so much depth because it really separates
me from the back. In addition, it also simulates
as this light right here, this bed light that
you see right here, is almost like it's the one that is hitting me on this side. But actually, it's
not true because if I turn the pocket life off, you see that it's
not doing anything that light because
he's too weak. He's not powerful enough. But then when I turn it back on, Boom, you can see that it
really makes a huge difference. Now, I want to show
you the difference from a 35 millimeter, which I'm using right now
to now a 50 millimeter. So this is the 35, and this instead is
the 50 millimeter. As you can see, the
background now is a little bit more blurred than
it used to be with the 35. I love this lens so much
because it goes down to F 1.2, which means I have a very
shallow depth of field. So now I'm in focus and the
background is autofocus. This is a very expensive lens,
and it's not a must have. You can do with
any lens that it's all about adjusting the
position of the camera and trying to be
as far as you can from the background so
that even if you have a higher F top like F 2.8 like we had before or F 3.5 or 5.6, then you try to have as shallow depth of
field as you can. And now I want to show you that the same setup works
also with the phone. Now, keep in mind that
when I made this one, I made this one for the camera, so it's not super perfect
because the phone, especially the front camera
has a wider camera than I would have had to have more
paperwall on the wall, but I want to show
that it works anyway. Now, let's use this
telepotspoe to hold my phone. And now I'm going
to just try to find a position where I don't
see the white wall, but I just see that
black texture. So probably it's going
to be close to here. Let's see if we can make
it happen. There you go. And now, as you can see, it doesn't look bad at all. If it's too bright, I can
decrease my key light power, or I can also tap
on my face and just decrease a tiny bit
of exposure, like so. And now I'm ready to start speaking and create content
directly with my phone. As you can see, my phone
is super close to my face, and we're very close
to the background. The reason being is because no big enough the black patch. Whereas when we use a long
lens like a 50 millimeter, then that will compress
the background, and therefore we don't need such a big space in the background. But with the phone, this
is what looks best. So as you can see, the
position of the camera, it really depends on
the lens that you have on the camera and
on your background. If you have a very
wide background that takes up a lot of space, then you can use that
space at your advantage. But if like me, you have
just a small patch, then you're a little bit more
restricted in this case. But later on in the
class, I'm going to show you with a bigger
living room with a bigger space on how you can manage all the
different elements. Now let's move away the phone right now because it's time
to talk about lighting.
5. Lighting: Lighting is probably the most important element in your setup. It doesn't matter about a
fancy camera or a phone. It doesn't matter about the lens that you have and
everything else. It's all about lighting. If you can manage
the light properly, if you can understand how to position yourself and how
to position the light, you're going to have
an amazing setup. All the time, it's guaranteed. To start off, I want to show
the difference from using an artificial light like the
nine light 60 B that I'm using right now as
a key light and also the back light with the light that I
have in my bedroom. Let's switch them off. This
looks pretty bad, isn't it? I just turned off my key light, the T bag lights, even the small pocket light, and I just turned off
my bedroom light. That's why I highly, highly suggest you turn off everything and you just
use artificial light. Now, let me open
the window to see the difference
because now it's off. I close the curtain,
let me open them. Okay, that's already a little
bit better than before, but the problem is that the windows coming from
the side and not from 45 degrees in front as it should be to have
an amazing lighting. But as you can see, there's not even to compare from having a controlled artificial
lighting like the nin Light 60 B or any
other sort of lighting, like a softbox that you
can find on Amazon. It makes a huge,
huge difference. Let me show you that by
turning on the back lights, we already have a
massive difference from just using one
single window light. This is not bad, of course,
if you don't have a keyle, but I think our situation
before was a little bit better. So let's go back to it. And
that's it, much better. Now I want to show you
how you can position your key light in
different positions to obtain a different result. The first one, which
is the one that we have right now
is the classic one, is the one that most people use because it's used a
lot in cinema as well, is when you have your key
light 45 degrees towards you, a little bit higher
than your eyelines. And the goal here is try to have a triangle on this
side of the cheek. And that what makes
it very cinematic. It's called Rembrandt
Light. It's widely used. You can even Google it.
You can try to find lots of different examples
of movie that used it. But then depending on the
position of the light, you can achieve
different results. For example, if I want to
have a more dramatic scene, I just need to move my light a little bit
more on the side. Let me show it to you.
I'm just gonna grab it. And then I'm going to move it towards the side,
just like that. Now, because I put
it closer to myself, it's gonna be brighter on me. And therefore, I need to reduce the intensity of this light. I have an app that allows
me to control the lighting, so I'm just going to reduce it. And this is more
dramatic because I have this side very bright and
this side much darker. But then this pocket
light helps me a lot, brightening up this area. If I turn it off, it's
going to be even more dramatic because this
side is super dark. So I'm going to turn it back on. There you go. And I really, really like this setup. As you can see, my light is not on the same
level of my eyeline, but it is higher on me. And that's also a key element whenever you
positioning the light. If you have it completely flat, you're going to
have a flat face. You're not going to have
any shadows on your face, and it's not going to
make it interesting. It's not going to
make it cinematic. So let's try to have it a little bit higher
than our eyeline. Now, one more thing
that I want to show you when positioning
the light is what happens when
you actually have it basically right
in front of you. So we're going to position
the light right in front of me just like here. And we're going to
have to increase a bit the height and boom. Now we have it
right on top of us, and I really like
this framing as well. We have this side a
little bit darker because it's maybe just switch on
the side, just like that. In case you want to have
it completely even, then you should have a C stand because now it's a little bit positioned towards my left because otherwise it
would enter the frame. So when you have a C stand, he's basically doing this, this right on top of you. Now, let's go back to
our original position. Where I'm going to have
it slightly higher than my eyeline on the
side. There you go. I want to show you what happens if you have
it too bright. So if I increase the
brightness of my light, you can see that I'm
basically burning. Here, this is too bright. Now it's not okay anymore. This part has become
completely white and I cannot even recover
it anymore in post. At the same time, if
I turn this one off, you can see then
now I'm too dark. I don't stand out anymore
from the background, and that's also not fine. So you just need to
find the balance. It's all about how
it looks good on your eyes that is not too
bright or not too dark. And I think just like here, 60% seems to be right. Maybe 14. There you go. Even the position of
the back light can change depending on your liking. If I put it more on the side, then it's going to
even out quite a bit, as you can see here
at my key light, and this side, I have the pocket light hitting on
my left side of the face, which I don't really
like to be honest. I prefer to have it like this so that I
have a bright area, shadow, and then the
reflection of the backlight. I can even change the
color of this one. So if I don't want
to have it yellow, I'm going to put a different
color, let's say, blue. And there you go.
I said it to teal, and even this one looks great. The reason being is because I decided to go for
complimentary colors. This one is, let's
say, more orange, warm yellow, and then
a complimentary color is teal, teal and orange. Have you ever heard about well, you can play around with all
the colors that you want. Even if I set it on purple,
I think it will look good. Let's try it on. There you go. Even this one, it looks amazing. The reason being is because
I have a black background, and I think purple and black
really look good together, but at the same time, I can play around with colors also
in the background. So let's say I don't want to
have this backlight anymore, but I want to have a
colored background as well. Then what I can do
is that I can place this one on the background
instead of this one, for example, and then
let's see what we have. There you go. Or
maybe I want to have it just coming from
the bottom. Let's see. There you go. I have
it from the bottom, and maybe I can switch
up with this plant on the other side so that we have it illuminated
by the light. Just like that, and that's it. I have it purple and yellow. But again, it is totally
up to you feel free to play around with
all the lighting and all the colors
that you want. But it's really
important to have one key light, one backlight, if you want to have more depth, and especially lights on the background that are
lighting up the background. This will create so much depth. I hope you enjoyed this video, and I'm going to see
you in the next one.
6. Audio Considerations: Talk about the audio setup. And now I want to show you a few examples so you can decide which one is your favorite and works best for your
type of content. Now, the first one,
which is what I'm using right now is
a wireless setup. So basically, I have
this one right here, which is a magnetic microphone
that I attach to my shirt. And then I have a
wireless receiver on my camera right now. So that you'll be
able to hear me, even if I move, and if I go
anywhere, I can stand up. I can go in another room, and you're still going to
hear the same quality audio. The one that I'm
using right now is by Holnt and it's
called Lark two, and I really like it because
it's super easy to set up. You barely see it, but the
audio quality is quite nice. Another wireless
alternative, it could be the Road wireless go to or the Jobe wave of air,
which I have right here. Even in this case, I'm just
going to position this one, attached to the camera, and this is going to
be the receiver. This is going to be a little bit bulkier than the one
that I have right now. But what you can
do with this one, which I really like is that
you can attach a lovely mic. So you just plug this one in, then you're going to
have the little cable coming in from your shirt, and this is the microphone. And this is really handy
in case you don't want to let the people
see about this one. It's a little bit more
tedious to set up. There is a cable involved. It takes a little bit more time. But again, this could
be a great alternative depending on what kind of
content you want to create. Then there are also the DGI make wireless,
which are awesome. So it really there
is so much choice that any would work
for a wireless setup. I just really like this one
because it's super fast, and I can also attach
it to my phone. We just plugging it in and
it's going to be very quick. Another alternative Dev you
have is using a shotgun. This is usually
used for logging, so you put it on
top of the camera, and these are the
best ones on the go. But many times I use it to
record in studio as well. If I don't need to move, and if I don't want
to use this one, I prefer to use this one because I know that
it's always there. Where's the problem with using lovelier my this is that
maybe they can move. If they get out of battery, I don't see it, and so on and
so forth. Whereas this one? It's always there, and
I know that it is super reliable and even sometimes higher quality than
the small ones. But the problem with this one is that it requires a cable, so it's not wireless, and you need to attach it
to the camera somehow. Usually when I want to use
this type of microphone, I use an extender cable. So this is a 3 meters
long extender cable that I can attach to the
microphone just like that, and then I need to find a way to take this cable to
the camera itself. So let's say I put it like this, then I have 3 meters, and now I can decide on how I want to bring this
cable to the camera. And I have a couple of options when I use this
type of microphone. First option is using a tripod, so having it from the bottom. So just like that, I'm using
this Jobe telepot sport. I'm attaching it right here. I'm going to place it
out of frame as close as I can to my vote to my mouth, let's say, probably like here. And the quality of this is
going to be quite good. Then I just need to bring the
cable towards the camera. And then I'm done I can speak directly here,
and I'm, let's say, probably 40 centimeters further
away from the microphone, and that's going to bring
me a great quality. Or another alternative
that you have, if you want to increase
the quality even more, is try to have it
from the bottom. And to do this, you basically
going to have a sort of a C stand that will make your
microphone go like this. And then you're going
to bring the cable out, and you're going to bring the
cable towards the camera. Now, to do this, either you buy an expensive C stand or usually when I travel
because I travel quite a bit, I try to find some cheap ways to create this sort of setup
because I really like it. I don't have the
microphone in front of me, especially when I'm doing some
tutorials on the computer, then the microphone is
going to be in the way. So usually, what I do is this. I buy some very, very, very cheap
plastic tripods. I think I paid for three of these probably $15 or
something ridiculous like that. And then I'm going
to place the stand, the other part of the
stand right here. This is meant to hold,
like, a background for a photography or
something like that, but I never use for
the background. I use it for, like, some sort
of ditty stuff like this. Then I'm going to try to create myself the C stand
just like that. Then I'm going to have
it a little bit higher. Okay. And then what
I try to do is find a way to attach the
microphone to this one, and you can try to
use clips like these. That somehow you can try to make it happen
with a microphone, but I found another
super sketchy way with an arm from
my telepotsport, which is not meant to do this, but I make it do it anyway. So I'm just going to
place it right here, and then I'm going to attach
the microphone to this. So I'm taking it, and then Cool. And basically, that's
it. Now, I just need to make this
one out of frame. I'm going to touch
the cable and then go around and then go directly
in the camera from the back, but that's another way
on how you can have it. So if I make it higher, you just need to make sure
this one e it out of frame. Let's say, so I'm
just going to make the direction
towards me and boom. That's another microphone
setup that you can have, maybe a little bit
higher because I can still see it in the frame. Then for the third option, we have Podcast mics. As you can see, this one
is the classic one that you see on Podcast is the one that has the
highest quality. But the problem with
this one is that it requires quite a few extra
equipment to make it work. And now I want to
show you exactly how it works with this setup. Now, as a comparison, I want to show you the
difference between this podcast and the
lovely mic that I'm now using as well to record
my audio directly on camera. Because the difference is that
these type of microphones, with an XLR cable that I'm
going to show you later, you need to record with
an external recorder, for example, in a laptop. So now I'm going to show you, you need to have an
interface that goes directly into the laptop
from the microphone, and then in post production, you will have to match the
audio and the visuals. Whereas, for example,
with the other microphones that I've
shown you before, it's already sync so you don't have to do
anything afterwards. And it's a much faster
approach to content creation. Obviously, if you want
to create podcast, maybe having this setup is going to be the
best option for you. But for me because
I travel a lot, having a wireless mic and
different smaller types of mic that go directly into the camera is probably
the best option, just because they're
super light, super quick to set up, and there's not much
to do around it. But then if you
have your own home and you're not going
to move around, you're not going to travel,
then I would highly suggest if you have budget
to go for this one. Now, this is quite an
expensive microphone. This is the golden
standard for podcast. Is the Shure SM seven B, and it's quite expensive. There are also cheaper
alternatives out there. But again, if you want to have
the sicket setup, you one. Now, as I said, you need
to have an XLR cable that goes directly from
the microphone into an audio interface, and then this audio interface goes directly into the computer. There are also cheaper
alternatives that have also a USB interface so that you can
link it directly to the computer instead of
having an Excel R cable with, for example, a USBC cable. Or what you can do, but again, is going to be a
pretty expensive option is that you can have an ELR interface directly
in Sony cameras. So there is an accessory
that allows you to record internally the
audio within Sony camera. So inside camera, this is an accessory that is quite
expensive and personally, I don't own it
because once again, I want to travel as
light as possible. But it's a great alternative
in case you don't want to record your audio in
a separate entity, let's say, a laptop and then sync it after in
post production. So now let me show you
how this all work. So, this is the microphone. You have the Ehler
cable that goes here. Then again, I have
all this long cable right here that goes inside
two audio interfaces. These are two audio
interfaces by short. There are plenty of
options for this. But in this case, we have
this one right here. And because we have two
microphones in this studio, you can see that we have
two audio interfaces. Then this is the cable that goes inside from the microphone. And then there is another
cable that goes outside, so out, and then it goes inside
the computer right here. So these two are the
audio interfaces that actually go
inside the computer. And then with garage band, we can record the
audio separately. And then here you can see
that I recorded externally my audio from a previous
video that I've done before. So this is the studio setup
that we have right here. We've got the camera
just right there. Then we got the key light and a bunch of back
lights and rip light. Then I have the computer
right here where I record the audio
from the podcast mic. Then if there is something
else that I can do to improve the audio is actually listening
with some headphones. So I linked these
headphones to the computer, and then I can listen
myself back so that I'm going to just make
sure that the audio is right, that I don't click or maybe that is not too low or that I don't hear some weird noises coming
again from the microphone. I want to give you
two tips on how to improve the audio
in your studio. The first one which is going to look very
silly is to place a Duve or some bedsheets or a cover or pillows
in front of you. Currently, I have the studio
right here in my bedroom, and I use two cheap
stands to lift up the Duve right here next to me that you don't
see right there, as high as possible in front of me just to stop any reverb. Now, yes, it looks silly, especially from this side, but it makes a huge difference
in the audio quality. Then you want to
keep the microphone as close as possible
to your mouth. This might sound
obvious, but is key. The closer the microphone, the mirrer the quality
of your voice. A cheap microphone very
close to your mouth will sound way better than an
expensive microphone far away. Now, obviously, if you're using a wireless microphone like
the one that I used until now that you see right here
is different than if you're using another
microphone that is fixed, like the one that I have to
record this individual clip. And now I want to show you the difference of
staying right here, which is about, let's say, 30 centimeters from my mouth. And then if I go close, I just need to talk a
little bit less loud. But you can hear already
that the voice sounds so much better because I'm
super close to the microphone. And now you can really
hear the difference. This one is just
about 35 centimeters. But then also with the duvet run in front of me and another
COVID right there, then the audio stays here. There's no echo and
it sounds good.
7. Branding Elements: This video, I want to talk to you about something
that can really make a difference in your
content and it can help you be discovered and be
recognized by other people. And this is about adding branding elements to your
background to your setup. But what does it mean adding branding elements
to the background? Well, think of a person that is scrolling on TikTok
or on Estrom, let's say, you have
about 3 seconds to grab the attention. If this person keeps
scrolling and then he sees an element that
recognizes in that video, he's more willing to stay. If he's a photographer and he sees a camera into that video, maybe he goes like, Oh, yes, I'm a photographer, too. This might be
interesting for me. And that can be a
branding element. So for me, because
I'm a photographer, I can try to think of
something that can identify me as a photographer,
as a videography. And in one of my
previous setups, I used quite a bit of
equipment in my background. Right now, because
I'm in a very, very small room, I
decided not to use it. But, for example, I can show you that instead
of this plant, which I really like, and that's
why I decided to keep it, I could use, for example, a camera right here. And now, when you're
looking at my content, you instantly recognize that I do something about cameras. So if I'm on YouTube
and I'm doing tutorials or I'm
explaining camera things, and you see that there is a
camera in the background, I don't have to
tell you that this is one of my favorite
tools that I use it daily. You know what I
mean? You understand already that I am
a photographer. I'm a videography, and I talk
about that in my content. Or I could have a shelve unit with loads of cameras, loads
of equipment in there, and you instantly
know that I'm all about equipment and gear and cameras and all
this sort of stuff. If you're a painter
instead of a camera, you might have some
brushes or you might have some paintings that you've done before. You might have a canvas. If you're a flower
designer, for example, you can have a lot of flowers
in the background just to make sure that people understand that you are a flower designer. And you can also customize
these branding elements, again, with colors as we
seen in the lighting video. So if you're a woman, maybe it's all
about pinky stuff, you want to have
that girl vibes, instead of having yellow,
maybe you can use spin. Or maybe your logo is green. Then you can have maybe green color so that whenever
people look at you, they are reminded of your logo, and they instantly remember
you remember what you do. And also, in my studio
that I have in Italy, right here, I put a logo just
right there on the side. And it looks pretty
good. It's neon. It is the color that
I wanted just to have the steel and orange kind of blue and yellow,
sort of vibes. And also, I have a
tube light right here to create this blue effect on the side as a worrying we're going to see this
full setup later on. If you're a YouTube and
you reached already 100 K or 1 million or
over the 1 million, you probably received
your YouTube plate, and that is a great
branding element to have it in your background. So whenever someone opens your video or your
content knows already, can identify you as a
great content creator. This concept works for both
vertical and horizontal. And especially when we talk
about vertical content, you literally have 3 seconds
to grab their attention. So if you're a software engineer and you're making
content about coding, just try to have a
computer in front of you so that people don't
think that you do makeup, but they know that you do
something with your computer. So try to think of any sort of element or any sort of
gadget that you can add to your background
or to yourself to your videos without
making it too clatter that can lead people to identify you within
a certain industry. Alright, let me put
my plant back now. And let's move on
to the next video.
8. From Horizontal To Vertical: This video, I want to
show you how you can turn this horizontal frame into vertical for short form videos. And it's going to
be quite simple. The first thing to do
is rotating the camera. Obviously, this is obvious. We just need to move
the camera 90 degrees. And then the second thing
that you want to do is take care of the background
with the new framing. Obviously, the proportion
and the balance will change, so we're not going to have
much space on the sides, but we probably have to manage
the top and the bottom. So let's try to do that
and see what do we need to adjust in the background in order to make it a good framing. Now, the first thing
that I want to do obviously is
rotating the camera. Just like that, and then I
want to adjust the framing. I'm probably going to move the camera a little
bit closer because I want to have a tighter
framing, just like that. See if I can
increase the height. Like, so I think this looks good if I'm
going to stay like this. That's it. Then
I'm going to just move the focus right there. And I think here we're
really good already. Now, I'm a little bit closer to the light
because I move the camera, so I want to decrease the
brightness, just like that. I think this looks fine. And then the first thing that
I see right here is that the plant in the background
is not in the right position. Now there is not much
balance because I have the light and the plant
in the background, the same position, and I have
this side that is empty. So I probably want
to move the plant on the other side.
Just gonna take it? See where it should be, I think, right here, that
looks fine to me. The only problem
that I see right now is that the plant is
a little bit too low. I might want to have it
higher, and to have it higher, I can just put something in the bottom and see if
it goes higher up. I'm going to use this
little thing right here to place it
higher, just like that. And now this is perfect.
That was super simple. You see, a little
adjustment structure, understand the
balance on the photo, and now I'm ready to
create killer shorts. Once again, if you want to add any branding element or
maybe you need a computer, you can do whatever you want. And in this case, the computer, because we have a
different framing is already in our
bottom of the frame. So if I'm doing a tutorial,
I'm already ready, you can see the computer
in the foreground, and then I can just
type to the tutorial, speak to the camera,
and that's it. Now, I want to show you one more cool thing that you can do, and this is about spraying
a little bit of smoke. So let me grab the
smoke machine. So this is called Smoke Ninja, and it's basically
a smoke machine. It's a professional
smoke machine. Uh, design for photographer, videography, and everyone that needs some professional smoke. This one is completely
not dangerous. Even if you breathe in,
even you can eat it. You can put it on your clothes. You can put it on your
body, in your hair, and it doesn't do anything.
It's completely safe. It's made by a
company called PMI, and I use it a lot to make more cinematic vibes
when I record videos. You have three different modes, and you can just
spray a little bit of smoke, just like that. Just gonna put it
in the background. Now you have a sick framing
to create short form videos. Obviously, for long form, it doesn't really work because maybe you
need a long time, and then after a while,
the smoke will disappear. But something like
this, for short videos, it's amazing for me,
and I use it a lot. I think it really adds
up to the overall mood. I in case you want to have it more plain because you're doing, let's say, more girly
things, more calm things, and it doesn't need
that dramatic effect, this doesn't apply to
you, but I thought I would show it to you because
I think it's quite cool. It is quite expensive,
this machine. But again, it depends
whether you're full time or you're just hobby, depending whether you want
to invest in your content, whether this one could
work for you or not. Okay, I hope you enjoy this lesson, and I'm going
to see you in the next one.
9. Live Calls Setup: Say you now have a six
Studio and you want to use your setup
for Google Meets, for Zooms, for
Microsoft Teams meti, basically any online call
that comes in your mind. Well, it's super easy, and I'm going to show you
how to do it right now. This will work with
the majority of the cameras out there
and also microphones. The microphone is best
if it's USBC so that you can connect it
directly to the computer. That's how we'll be
able to dialed in the input instead of having the microphone of our computer, then we can use the microphone instead that we have right
here, the external microphone. The first thing that you want to do is basically setting up the camera as close as possible to the webcom
of your laptop. This way, you'll have
a natural angle. The first thing
that I want to do is try to have the camera a little bit closer
to me, like that. In this case, I'm
using a wider lens, let's say, a 16 35
millimeter right now. Then I just need to
position it so that is as close as possible to my
webcom Just like that. That's it. Then
we make it wider. Cool. That is perfect for now. Obviously, because
we change lens, then this setup will look slightly different
than if we have, for example, a longer lens like a 50 millimeter
that we had before. Now I'm going to move it a
little bit zoomed in again. Just like that, that's it. Then probably slightly higher. Okay. Okay, and this
looks pretty good. Now we're going to jump into the computer and
we're going to try to modify the input of the webcam
and also the microphone. The first thing that you
want to do after you link your USBC microphone
to the computer, you're going to go into settings and you're
going to look for sound. Then here, you'll
be able to choose the output and the input. Now, we want the input
to be changed so that we can change the
input to our microphone. And in this case,
as you can see, because I linked my SRV
seven plus to the computer, I have this option right now. So I can choose whether
I want to have as input, my MacBook Pro microphone
or my shornV seven plus, and I want to use my
Shore MV seven plus, and that's pretty much done. Now the next thing that
we need to do is also modify the camera input. And in order to link the
camera with my computer, I'm going to use a USBC cable from the camera to the computer. Just like that, I'm going to put one side into the computer, and then the other
side into the camera. Now, once you do so so USBC
from computer to camera, then the camera will ask you what kind of mode
you want to access. In this case, we need
to tap on live stream, USB streaming. And there you go. And once it entered this mode, now I can go into any software, let's say, Google Met, Zoom, Microsoft Team or
wherever you want and simply change
the input mode. So let's open a new
Google Chrom window, and then I'm going to type
Google MD and then right now, I'm going to tap on create
an instant meeting, start an instant meeting. There you go, now I am
inside the meeting, and as you can see, it recognized already that
I'm using a camera. Now, in case this is not using the camera that you linked,
but it is using, let's say, the webcam, you
just need to go on this button right
here, video settings. And then from here, you'll be able to choose
whether you want to use the FaceTime HD camera or the webcom that you
have on your computer, or you want to use this one, which is the camera that
I'm using right now that I just connected to the now, once again, if you
want to modify anything in the
background, you can do so. But then make sure
also that the audio is set to the microphone that you
have linked, and to do so, you just need to go into
audio setting right here, and then you'll be able to choose the input and the output. So right here, I have the input, the short MV seven plus, which is this
microphone right here, and then I can change it
to the McBoper microphone, or I can change it to the
camera one as well in case you have a microphone that is attached to the camera. And also here you can
change the output. So whatever you hear from
the other end of the call, the other person
speaking, potentially, you can also link your
airports as an output. So in this case, no
audio will be disturbed. And to do so, I'm just
going to plug my airports in just like that. So now they are connected. As you can see, now we have
the input, my microphone. There you go. And then we
have the output, the airport. So I'm going to hear
the audio here, and then I'm going to speak
through the microphone, and I'm going to be
seen from the camera. So super high quality,
as you can see, we have the bouquet
of my F 2.8 lens. And then, again, it's
just so much better than the webcome because let's see the webcome how it
would look like. Face time right here.
Boom, this is it. Like, this looks
absolutely terrible, and it just makes a massive difference on
going to the camera instead. And that's why I think
it's so, so epic. Now, potentially, if you want
to change the light because now we're looking towards down and we're not
looking straight. So now the light is a
little bit too high, we can change this one and
make it a little bit lower. Just like that, we can go in front in case we want to have more of a butterfly effect, so not too contrasty,
and that's it. That looks absolutely amazing. And you're going to stand
out in all your calls. You're gonna look
super professional. And as you can see, the
setup is super, super easy. Now, I want to show you one
more thing because usually, when you are about
to enter a meeting, you will be able to select
these options as well. So let's say I just joined
a meeting right now, you'll be able to select already here the settings
that you want to use when you're
entering the meeting. So here, again, we have
the same exact options. We have the input. So this is my microphone. Then
we have the output. In this case, the airputs
because I have my airputs in, and then here we
have the camera. Or you can choose,
again, the webcde, which looks absolutely terrible. So again, this is going to make a massive difference
in your calls. People will take
you more seriously. You'll build authorities. So once again, it's super easy. It takes not much
time to set it up, but you're going to look
so much more professional. And as soon as you enter a call, people will go like, Oh, wow, this guys like, is a pro. You know what I mean? It's like, you just
build authority, you build credibility,
and you're going to close up clients faster as well. Also, just for fun, I want to show you how you can do the same
thing using Teams. I never actually use Teams, but it's the same for every
software, so it's quite easy. So you create a new meeting link or you schedule a meeting, or you join whatever. It's going to be the
same process, basically. Whenever, let's say,
you're joining in, then you have the option
to turn on the video, turn off the microphone. Then somewhere you
have setting options. And then here, as you can
see, we have the web camera. We want to change
it because we want to use our dub camera. So we're going to tap on
open device settings, and then here we
have the same thing as we had in Google MIT. So I can decide the speaker
that I want to use, and in this case, is the output. So I'm going to use my
airports that I have linked. Then I want to use the
microphone, not from my airpods, but I want to have the
Shore MV seven plus, which is my microphone. And as a camera, I don't
want to use my webcam, but I want to use my
camera right here. And that's it. That what super simple is that's how you
do it in Microsoft Teams, and you can do it in Zoom. You can do it in any software. You just need to
change the input and the output of the
audio and the visual. Okay, I hope you
enjoy this lesson, and I'm going to see
you in the next one.
10. Example 1 - Living Room: On in my kitchen
and living room. And while I'm not teaching you how to cook or
anything today, I'm going to show you how
you can build a setup, even in a kitchen
slash living room. And the concept and the
steps that we need to take are exactly the same as
we learned in this class. We need to first read the room, understand what kind of
background we want to use, understand whether we want to position ourselves, the camera, the lighting, and then adjust
based on the situation. Now, again, today we
are doing the day, and I'm going to show you how we can make it a
little bit better. I think, because this is a super long kitchen
and living room, I want to use this depth to try to create a
beautiful frame. And because we have a table
right there in the middle, I think I want to use this as
kind of a desk to then have a computer on top of it and have the camera probably on that
direction towards that back. I think I like this background, but there's only one problem. It's made out of windows. And as you can see already, from this frame, probably
it's too bright. So it's not going to work unless we make those window darker. I don't have blackout
curtains here, so there's no way I can
make you pitch black, but I can try to improve
it a little bit by closing the curtains that I have. So let's try to do that. So this is probably going to be the frame that I want to use. I'm going to sit on the
other side of the table. Then I'm going to have the
windows as a background, and I'm going to try
to use the symmetry of the windows because I
think that would look good. And then I want to cut
out all the kitchen side and the TV because I don't so now that I decided that I want
to go for this space, I'm going to set up the
camera, see how it looks, and I'm going to set
up also the light and then try to adjust the background and their
overall scene. So I'm going to take
the camera right here, and then I'm probably
going to position it where I think
it can look good, which is probably
somewhere here. So I positioned the camera just right here because I'm
going to sit right there, and this is going to
be my background. Now, I'm using, again, a 50 millimeter lens, and this is how it
looks right now. This is going to be the framing. As you can see, right now, it looks pretty bad because
the windows are too bright, so there's too much light
coming from the windows, and then I'm too dark, and not really a great
setup, obviously. But I think there is potential. I really like that we can see the symmetry of the
windows in the back. So we're going to try
to make this work. And the first thing
that we need to do is try to take care
of the background. So right now, I'm just going to close the curtains that I have. Even though they're
not blackout, they're going to help a lot, try to make the overall
scene a little bit better. And that's already
much, much better. As you can see
these curtains are acting as sunglasses
for our windows, and they're going to help a lot. Cool. And this is the
frame that we have by just pulling
down the curtains. And I think it
looks already way, way better, but we are still
a little bit too dark. So let's try to bring
in the key light. As always, I want to bring the key light 45
degrees towards me. So I think I'm going to try to have it right on this side, and then I'll just need
to adjust the height to make sure that it's not
too high, not too low. Probably like this
will look good. We just need to make sure to be out of frame
with the lighting. Okay, still in the
frame a tiny bit, so I can move it a
little bit on the left, make it a little bit higher. And now we should be able to have it out of the
frame, still not yet. I'm going to move it
again on the left. Okay. And there you go.
Now, let's have a look. Cool. And now it looks way, way better than it used to
be without the key light. Now, as you can see here, there is a triangle on my cheek, which is a remembrant
light, which I really like, but in case I want to have
it a little bit more flat, I can move the key
light in the front just making sure that it
is outside of the frame. So here we'll probably
have to have it higher. Just like that.
And this is fine. Then you just need to play
around with the light. If it's too dark and
it's not bright enough, the light that you have, you can increase the eyes
of your camera. Now, I linked my camera
with my phone right now so I can control
it directly from here. And as you can see
now everything is brightening up and it
looks really, really good. Now the last thing
that we've left to do is taking care
of the background. And as we know already, we can play around a lot with lights, unique shelves, and plants. So I can see already that I have two bed lamps that I keep there all the time
in my living room. Maybe we can turn those two on and see the difference
that they make. So let's try to do
that. And there you go. This looks already much better. So, so good right now.
We have a symmetry, che lights, one on the
left, one on the right. We have a key light coming in, and then we have also
a background where we can see what's going on
and it's not blown out. Now we can do things
maybe to make it better. One is, let's see
if adding a plant, like the big one that we had
on the other room before, and also adding a back light can make our frame look better. So let's do that. We're going to add this big plant right here. Maybe we can try to
have it on this side. Just like so like that. And then eventually
we can also grab the small pocket
light that we had before to have it
as a backlight. Once again, I want to
have it opposite my kilo, so I'm going to have it
right in this position. Make sure that
it's out of frame, and then we can make it
yellow because I really like the yellow opposite to the cold white that we have
as a kilt right there. Maybe we increase the
intensity a tiny bit, just to make sure that it
hits. And there you go. Now we added a back and we added also a plant
in the background. As you can see, this
reflection is coming from the pocket light that I
just put here on the side. If I don't like the
plant in that side, maybe I can try it on the other side and see how it looks. So let's move it
on the other side. Just like here, see whether
it's better or is worse. It's all about trial
and error here. And, yes, I think the plant on that side looks way
better. And there you go. If I want to have my iPad here, because maybe I'm
making some tutorials, I can have it just right here. I can move out the
phone because I don't need to see
my framing anymore, or maybe I can keep it hidden. I can have the computer on the other side and you can
have whatever you want. Alright, I hope you
enjoy this video where we transform
my kitchen and my living room into a setup for creating amazing content.
I'll see you in the next one.
11. Example 2 - Office: This video, I'm going to
show you how I created this super cool setup
again in a small room. This is a little bit bigger. This is the studio that I have in Italy in
my parents' house. This setup is a little bit more pricier than what I've built and what I've
shown you before. The reason being is
because this studio is in my parents'
house in Italy, and therefore, I could leave
everything right here. I didn't have to buy and then resell or then maybe throw away. So I could spend a little
bit more in this studio. But I think it looks
really, really good. As we've seen already,
this is my logo. So I decided to print it neon is a little bit bigger
than what I should have gotten because I
think now it kind of distracts at the viewer from me, but I really, really like it, so I want to leave
it right there. And then, as you can see here, I have a back light
that is blue. And if you look at me like this, you might think that this blue actually comes from that neon. But the reality is
that it doesn't. Boom, there you
go. The Nostin on, but now this light is gone. It's because I have a back light right here and I'm
going to show it to you everything from
behind the scenes so that you can see exactly
what's going on. But it's super cool
because now I'm simulating that this
neon is actually creating this super cool rim on the opposite of my key light because as you can see,
there is a shadow here. The key light is actually
illuminating this spot, and then in the back, I have the blue light right
here, which is a tube. Then on the other side, I have another tube light
with the plant. So in this case, this is
doing the yellow color, and it's just behind
the plant so that it creates this back light effect that I really, really like. Then in the back of my head, you can see that
there is a computer, which means that you
know that I'm somehow into technology and I have
my computer in the workflow. And then also, you can see
some fairy lights right here. They look amazing
because there is a plants coming down and
some fairy lights around. These are super
cheap, but they look amazing in any studio, especially if you have
a low aperture like a F 1.2 that I'm using right now on my lens because
this will be blurred, as you can see right now. Then I have just a key light, which is exactly the same that I had on the other studios. It's just a small softbox
on me coming from 45 degrees slightly
higher than my eyeline. Then why I really like this kind of functional setup
is because I have one single stand where I have attached the iPad
right here where I can see myself and it
works as a monitor. And then also I have another
arm for the microphone so that I have one single stand with basically everything. And then I just have
another tripod a little bit further away to
hold the camera. Then I have the cable that
goes into the camera. Alright, if you're
looking from this angle, then it looks quite
messy, right? But then as you can see,
right out of frame, we have the microphone.
We have the light. We have my iPad to
control the camera. And then also we
have white walls on both sides that I didn't want
to see in the normal frame. So now let's have a look
at everything else. So this is the setup, and then here, we
have the camera. As you can see, is basically
at the back of the room. Then there is just a cable that goes inside the microphone, which is right here. So even in this case, I decided to have the
camera quite far away. So at the end of the then
almost in the middle, I'm going to have myself
sitting down right here. And then here we have
designed the background. We got a computer, which is
my workstation in the middle. We got the plants
here on one side, and then on the
other side, there is my logo here in blue. Then here we have
more plants with some fairy lights that I
think look really good. Now, here we have windows. Obviously, I have blackout
curtains or whatever these are called so that basically you don't have any
lights coming in, but now we can keep
them up just like that. There you go. And
then here I have another tube light to have
the blue as a backlight. Then here we have the iPod, again, that you don't
see in the frame. We've got the microphone
with an arm that goes on the bigger tripod that
holds also the light. Now, talking about
the microphone, this is, again, a
manfroto magic arm, so I can extend it
and I can move it, and then I can have a long cable that attaches to the microphone, and then it goes directly
into the camera. This is also something that
I really like so that I can control exactly what I see
directly from the iPad. I can modify the
camera settings just using the creator's app from Sony because I
have a Sony camera. Then here we just have
the softbox, again, the 0.45 degrees a little
bit higher than my eyeline. For this tube right
here, you could have used anything that is colored. I have these tubes from
anlight these very expensive. But again, you can just use any pocket light that you have, like the one we've seen before, or you can buy them from Amazon in case you want to
stay low budget. Then again, here
in the background, I decided that I want to have
a very gray texture wall. So I painted this, and it was like a special paint or something that
creates this texture. And while you don't
see it much in camera, it looks really amazing, and even the touch is like
super industrial vibe, the kind of dramatic
vibes that I really like. And then another thing that
I haven't talked about is another light that I have
coming up from the desk. Just to have some
backlog of the computer. In the framing, you don't see it much because it's
not super powerful. It's not very important because
it's just behind myself. But again, it's a
great touch to add some more separation between the subject and the background. And that's, again, the
design of this room. Once again, I decided
to go for this length, I wanted to use that wall to film, so I
decided to paint it. I put a computer, and
then I tried to balance the overall framing by
using a plant on one side, a logo on the other side,
and some other plants. Again, here, the lights are
the most important element. It's always about that. Then to avoid having too many stands, I tried to attach
all the arms and all the things that I needed
directly to the main tripod, to the main C stand that
is holding my light. And then I have the camera
on a different tripod. If I wanted to be
even more tidy, I could have attached
another arm from this light to then
hold the camera. But in that case, I couldn't
have used a 50 millimeter because the light
would have been too far away from the camera. And therefore, I
should have used maybe a 35 millimeter or a wider length so that I could placed it just right
here in front of me. Once again, it depends
a lot on what you like. I really like the long
lens, and therefore, I want to use the 15 millimeter because it looks just amazing. But then if you
want to use a 35, you could have had it
much closer. All right. I hope you enjoyed
this breakdown, and I'm going to see
you in the next video.
12. Example 3 - Garage: This video, I'm going to
show you how you can go from this to this in a few
easy steps. Let's go. This is funny because
it's actually my very first studio that I created when I started
content creation. This is where I recorded
my very first course, my very first YouTube videos, and my very first TikToks and Reels when I was not outside. I love this background, but unfortunately, I
don't use it anymore. First of all, because
I'm not in Italy that much and also because
it's in my basement. So it's a little
bit uncomfortable to have to come downstairs every single time from upstairs where I have
my editing room. But what I love about
this background is that I built it with a very,
very low budget. Things that I only
found in my house, and I bought just a couple of things from Ikea that
I'm going to show you. Here, there was a
wardrobe before, but then I remove the wardrobe, and then I apply the paperwork
that you see right here. It's a white brick texture
that I really like. And then we just choose
small furniture right here. I put on top some small
objects and a broken camera, a couple of plants,
a couple of lights, and this is the result. But don't worry
because I'm going to show you everything
that I have right here. Background looks super good because of the lighting
combination as well. As you can see, I went with the teal and orange
kind of effect. So we have an orange
bed lamp right here. Then we have a blue, actually, small pocket light right there, then another blue light right there and another
one right here. So you can see that
there is basically a triangle of blue light and also a triangle
of yellow light, which is a little
bit less prominent. Goes from here, here, we have one here, and then we have another one
just right there. And also, I added some fairy
lights, which is very cheap. You can find them everywhere, but they make a huge
difference in your studio. For example, in this
plant right here, you see some fairy lights. And then also I have
some right there, which are slightly
out of screen. As always, as you can see, I have my Kela right here, 40 degrees on me. If I want to have it, let's say, more even, so light here, light there, I can move it a little bit more in the
front. Right there. As you can see now, I'm more lit on
this side, as well, but if I want to make it
more dramatic instead, I can move it a little
bit more on this side. And there you go. We have
completely different effect. I like to have it as always
in the middle, 45 degrees. So I'm going to
live it right here, just out of frame so that you don't see it, and that's it. I'm using now a
microphone that is wireless so that I don't have to have not a microphone
right here. But if I had to
create YouTube Studio or other courses right here, I would probably put a C
stand with a microphone right there just onto frame so that it will be super close to my mouth. One more thing that
I really like about this settop is that I
have space for a table so that I can keep my iPad
or computer or iPhone, wherever, just here,
very close to me. And now, for example, I have linked the camera that
you see right there on my iPad so that I can see exactly what's
happening right here. So that I can control the camera directly with the
app on the iPad, and it is a massive
life series so that I don't have to stand
up and then go there. Here I'm using, again, a 50 millimeter length, so I cannot reach it
with my hand if I had to record maybe and having
to be close to my camera, I could have used maybe
a 35 millimeter so that I can have the camera
a little bit closer to me, but I really, really like the effect of the 50 millimeter, and so I'm using that one
for this video as well. Because here this room
is a little bit bigger. So I have space to move the camera backward
and then also be away from the background so that we have a bit
more separation. One thing to notice here
first is the symmetry. While the elements on the
furniture are different, we have two furniture that are exactly the same on both sides, and then my head is
in the middle in that white space so that
you don't lose focus. Now, you might argue
that there is a bit too much going on
in the background, and I kind of agree. Maybe we can make it simpler. We can maybe change
the color combination. We can have less things going on in the background,
and I agree. But I don't know why, but I really, really like this. So because I have a lens that allows to separate quite a
bit from the background, I'm quite happy with this. Now it's time to have a look at all the elements that
we have one by one. So starting by these two pieces
of furniture, once again, I think I've paid probably
20 euros or 30 euros. Each we're extremely cheap. We're on discount on Ikea. And I think this model
is still available, despite I bought it
a few years ago. Then we have here a bed lamp with a yellow light bulb inside. I bought it on Ikea as well, and it was super cheap. I can't remember the price, but it was within
probably the 30, 30 euros mark, for sure. Then here I have a speaker, whatever, just to have
something random. I have another plan
with fairy lights, fairy lights are
really the best thing you can ever have some friends, which I even I didn't even
put any photos in it. This is just like the
standard whatever custom thing that you
have when you buy it on Ikea, super cheap. Then I bought also
some fake plants. Again, super cheap. There are some glass kind of thing
just to make it look pretty, but you can add
whatever you want. We have a world here just to symbolize the fact
that I love traveling. And then we have some books that I don't even
know what they are, but it's just like literally a putting stuff that look good, that maybe you
find your house so you don't have to
spend a lot of money. Even this one, I find it. I found it and I think online, it was ten years, but I really like it
because it's a Nastic. So it represents what
I do on social media, then we have another plant, and there's nothing
there because I just use it as a storage as you don't
see it directly in camera. On the other side, we
have very similar story. We have the same
piece of furniture. Then we have plant that is coming down from the furniture, which
I really really like. Again, I've put some fairy
lights on top of it. Then we I don't know, this is the empire state
building, I think, but you don't see
in camera, but I just liked I think
it fits the mood. Then I have a broken
camera with the cage. So this camera, unfortunately,
it doesn't work anymore, so I just put it there
to symbolize what I do because I'm a photographer,
I'm a videography. So use this as a
branding element. Then I have a couple
of plants in here, we have symmetrical,
but then we have two pieces of class that
are not symmetrical. Then the same thing here, I put some random stuff that
I found in the house. Then even here, I have
this box right there with an O and then some bunch of things that I
found in the house. Few glasses, another fake plant. And then here I
have some souvenir that I bought around the world. And then, again, we have
the color combination. We have a small pocket light in the background right there. This is a Nant five C that maybe is a little bit too
strong, so we can decrease it. This is at 1%. So, literally, whatever pocket light you buy is going to work to have
it in the background. Then we have, again,
fairy lights inside, and then we have another
pocket light in the back. That one is a little bit
bigger because I finished the pocket ones. I don't
have them anymore. In Italy is a little
bit too strong, but it's at 1%, so that's
the maximum that I can do. Then I'm using a tube ight
right here opposite to my keel just to create the backlight
that I love in videos. Max in, I have this white table. Again, this is from Ikea. This is the cheapest table
you can find on Ikea, and it's just right there so that I can hold some
stuff on the side, and I like to have a
table in front of me, and not in many studios, I can have a table because
there is not enough space. And then I have my keel. This is a fosa 150. But again, any keelte
would work right here. Because I started using this
studio with an ultra cheap, maybe $30 softbox from Amazon, and it worked perfly. The biggest problem that
I have in this basement, obviously, because it's a
basement is extremely short. So this is probably
about 2 meters high. And therefore, I cannot play around much with
the I need to stay, sit all the time, and I cannot do any type of
content standing up. But that's pretty much it.
Again, the concept here is that I have two symmetrical
pieces of furniture, and then I have a
bunch of objects and random things that I found in the house on top of the shelves. Then if you can try to have some branding elements
like the camera right here and the hashtag right there so that when
people watch you, they understand immediately
what you're about. Whether we talk about
the color combination, the objects that
I put, the pieces of furniture, the table, the inclination of the light, the colors of the lights, the position of the
light, this is up to you. It's all about what you
like and whether you want to modify and use different objects
is completely fine. But make sure to
have some plants because they look
good everywhere, whether you have a black
background, dark background, and any sort of
background will look good with plants and
also with lights. So try to play around
with those things. Now, let's say you found the preview setup a little
bit too messy and you want to try to make it simpler
or maybe spend less money or maybe
you don't have all the things to put
on the furniture. And therefore, for
whatever reason, let's try to make it simpler. We have removed all the
furniture with everything. And now we have just
a texture background, and this could be
already a viable option. Now, if you want to make
it slightly better, maybe we can add some
lights on the side. So let's try to do
that. If I take one tube light just out
of frame from one side, and then I put it blue
right there, like so. And then maybe I can use
another tube light on the other side and maybe
make it again yellow. Let's see if it looks good. And the tin, it's already a little bit better
than it used to be. You can add any sort of
color that you want. Or potentially you can also
have the light instead of coming from the side coming from the bottom. So
let's try to do that. Just like that. And
as you can see, it changed completely, and I
think I like this one more. It's a little bit more dynamic because we have
basically a gradient coming from blue and yellow to more like the
texturic background, natural color white
that we have. But then, let's say,
I want to try to add something that is not as messy
as it used to be before. Well, let's try using maybe a plant on one side
and see how it looks. I can add probably
this plant right here, and I can have it on
one side or the other. And I think this looks fine. Then if I want, I can add a colored light that goes from inside the plant
and pointing up. So let's try to do that. I'm going to remove this
tube light right here, and I'm going to remove also the other tube light that
we have on the other side. Maybe we're going
to use it later. Just like that. And then I'm going to use another
pocket light. Probably we're gonna
make it yellow because I think this is gonna look
best with the plant. We're going to place it
inside, pointing up. Let's see if I can
fit it. There you go. Now, let's sit down.
Let's see how it looks. Yeah, this looks already
really, really good. Potentially, we can add something on the
other side as well, because it's a little bit empty, so maybe we can try
with the tube light, and let's see how it looks. Just like that, let's
keep it yellow. Let's see if we like it or not. Yeah, this is already a
kilobag simply using a plant, a light in the plant, and then another light
on the other side just to have a little
bit of space balance. Then if you want, you can always change the color
of either light. So let's try to change this one. Let's maybe put it
blue, just like that. Let's see how it looks. Yeah,
this is not too bad either. Again, we try to have
complimentary colors. On one side, we have the yellow, kind of warm, and then the other and then this
side, we have the blue. Then potentially we can try
also a different combo. So let's put this one
at a different color. Let's go with the Joker vibe. So let's have it
green and purple. It's gonna be a little
bit harsh, but why not? And that's it. It doesn't
look too bad either, right? This is not my favorite
color combination, but again, it's another
option that you have. And as you can see, we
transform the same room in three different ways
or even more because the color combination that you can use are almost endless. So, again, it's all about having fun trying to design
your background using the colors that you prefer
and the objects that you have in your house in case
you don't have much budget. But I think two
elements that cannot be missed in any studios
are plants and lights. And that's all we have here, one light and a plant
with another light. Alright, I hope you
enjoy this video, and I'm going to see
you in the next one.
13. Conclusion: Congratulations on
completing this course on transforming your space
into a DIY Home Studio. Don't forget to
download the list of recommended gear
into description, and in case you want to hire me to build your own entire studio, you can book a
discovery call using the Link in the description
or the class project. Don't forget to
share your studio. I would love to see it in the
class project together with 2000 auditor entrepreneurs that already transformed their
space. I hope you've valuable insights into creating a professional great
studio right in your own home from selecting
the right equipment to designing a visually appealing and
functional environment. Throughout our journey, you've learned how to effectively use various tools from positioning your gear to designing
your background. We've also explored how to maximize small spaces to create impactful video content that resonates across
platforms like YouTube, Instagram Reels, and TikTok. Remember, the power of a home studio lies
in your creativity. With the setup techniques
that we've covered, you're equipped to bring
your unique vision to life with confidence. If you enjoyed this course, I'd be thrilled to hear your
thoughts with the review. Your feedback not
only supports me but also helps guide
others who are interested in
transforming their spaces into creative studios.
Let's stay connected. You can follow me on IG
and TikTok at Sparrow 21 and drop me a message saying you're
coming from this class. I'd love to hear from you
and I respond to everyone. I'm excited to see how
your new home studio enhances your creative project. See you in the next class, Chow.
Simone Ferretti, Professional Photo/Videographer
