Hey, this is Scott of Photography Banzai.
Today we're doing a behind-the-scenes look at some of the
videos that I make. Specifically the hands-on videos at
Camera Craft where I take a piece of gear.. check it out.. film it.. go back.. make a
voice over, do all that stuff. First off, I have the equipment that it take to
Camera Craft to do the filming. I use one of my M50s with the cage usually and a
little tripod that it picked up. It's pretty versatile, so I can get low, get
higher with it. Sometimes they bring a second camera if I need it, but usually
just the one camera. Works out pretty well. I bring an extra battery.. memory card..
A memory card for the camera I'm testing. Usually it's camera bodies and that
works pretty well. I do also have a light with a battery of course that. Just
to get some extra light on the situation.
Now I usually sit in an area (that's) little bit brighter...
It's just at the end of their big display case thing, but definitely
more light is a good thing in that situation. From there I have the footage.
In that case I usually want a review it pretty soon after I mess with the camera
so I can get my thoughts down. I take notes. Sometimes I'll take all the clips
render them together in a low resolution file. Put it on a phone. Go to some type
of restaurant and review that footage, so I can write down notes on my phone as I'm
doing it. That works pretty well just to get a different location.. situation.. to
look at the stuff. Like I said, at that point I have my notes to look at and
then I'll just do the talking portion. And then we'll eventually get to the
other pieces of the puzzle. The main step with the video editing to get started is
to take that talking portion and use it as a base for the entire video in this
case. With the talking portion there are usually breaks in my speech. There are
errors that I make. I re-do it. I try to do one long take when I can, but a lot of
the time I just try to get started and get myself working properly in that
mindset. Eventually, I get a take that's pretty decent. I roll with that one
and use it in the video editor. The editor that I use is Magix Vegas Pro 15.
I got an a nice Humble Bundle buy very cheap for that software. I was using the
consumer version of it for a long long time. It seems to work pretty well with
my style. Of course, there are a lot of options out there so... That... all these
nonlinear editors work pretty similarly. Once I'm happy with the talking portion.
How it's clipped up. I take all of my b-roll,
which is all the clips of the camera itself. Trying it... A lot of clips that I
try to get when I'm there at the camera shop. And then potentially I'll pull in
other clips for cameras that I want to compare to the one I'm talking about, or
lenses... Anything that I'll just include in that video. The goal is to put
b-roll where I make a mistake. Where I try to shorten what I'm saying.
So in those situations I actually clip those up. And you wouldn't want to see me
doing that because it would be really weird looking to see it clipped. So anyways,
what I do usually is get that b-roll and use it as a cover for me talking. Of
course, when I do the voice-over I do extreme cuts on that. I clean it up
a lot in Audacity the audio editor. Editing that audio to that degree is
also very time-consuming compared to just clipping it. Once I have the video
done for the most part. It has all the b-roll in. It has all the talking portion
clipped up, and it flows pretty nicely... I'm gonna take the entire audio section
of the video. Pull it out. Put it into Audacity. Adjust the levels. Adjust the
peaks of where the audio is so that there are no points where I'm talking
really loud in one section. Use a compressor. Use an equalizer potentially.
I'm trying to get a little bit less because a lot of my past videos have a very
digital like over processed sound to them. My voice is higher than it probably is
normally. I know it's hard to know what my actual voice sounds like. And then the
noise reduction right at the end to clean up any background noise, which is
always a problem with the pre-amps on cameras and the microphone that I'm using.
So.. just trying to make it decent sounding. Trying to make it level and compressed
so that no one talking piece is louder than other. Now, it's extremely challenging
depending on how I'm facing with the camera. If I'm using clips from when I'm doing
screencasts, or when I'm talking to the camera like this. Once I'm done in
Audacity I render that out in highest quality wav file from that program. Put
it back into my video editor and replace that big group of little pieces of audio
with that one cleaned up piece of audio. At that point I will go into there. I'll
just check things out. Sometimes I do re-edit sections and all of that. But the
last step is usually music. So I do try to put some type of background music.
I've had complaints years ago where there was no music, they complained. But
then sometimes the music is too loud... people complain, or... There's always things so try
to find a nice balance of having some type of music. I use all of the YouTube
audio library music, so I don't have any issues with copyright. So far so good
with all that. I don't want to use any type of Creative Commons stuff, or these
companies that you can order music from. I don't know how those work out. I just
don't want to spend that money. With the YouTube audio library it's decent stuff.
It's good enough for what I'm doing. With vocal audio I try to have -1 dB.
doesn't cross that point. So it's pretty loud with the talking, which is what I want...
Of course, that depends on your final output. With YouTube I think that's
a good option. With the background music when I'm talking I want it to be
around -30 DB plus or minus a few. But really not over that. Usually
under.. so with the background audio it really varies quite a bit, and you have
to be careful not to have a section where it's really loud and irritating
compared to other sections that are pretty quiet. When I'm not talking I
try to do -21 DB with music. It's pretty loud at that point, but it's
not irritatingly loud. One thing you really should check out with your
computer is make sure it doesn't have any type of auto leveling.. auto voice
features enabled in your sound settings. Because what it does is it levels all
the stuff out. It makes it equal, but when you're editing. When you're watching your
video, all that, you'll think your audio is good. But in reality you probably are
all over the place with your audio. Your voice, your background music your whatever...
So just make sure that your computer, the settings, I don't know about Apple... what
they have. But with Windows there is a setting you want to turn off. Just make
sure that's off when you're doing editing. Once I have the background music.
Maybe a little piece of ending clip with some music just to have a little area...
Maybe 5-10 seconds, I don't go to a full 20 seconds or whatever with YouTube.
It's just a waste. Check it out, to render it. Review it a few times.
Re-render it a few times probably, and then of course
all the upload and everything.
So that's pretty much it with these hands-on videos.
I probably missed a few little pieces that I do. Of course, I didn't go
over tags. Going over the description, the thumbnail.. uploading. All that extra stuff
to it with the Instagram, which I've been doing lately. It is enjoyable, but there...
again... takes, it takes a lot of time, which is the biggest thing.
Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this video.
That look behind the scenes at those hands-on videos.
Again, thanks for checking out my stuff.
I'm Scott from Photography Banzai. If you did enjoy this video...
please consider subscribing. That helps me out a lot
Likes and shares help out a lot as well.
Thanks again!