Are you ready?
I'm ready. Let's do it.
Emily wants to get started on YouTube.
Erica is asking about filming for Stories and IGTV.
If you've ever wondered how to set up your own filming space,
you're in the right place because in today's video,
I'm taking you behind the scenes of my very own film setup.
And stay tuned until the end where I'm going to share with you my favorite way
to get started with video marketing for your business. Hint: short,
because I'm a big believer in starting with one small step at a time versus
letting you get overwhelmed.
I'm Elise Darma and I've helped thousands of entrepreneurs, freelancers,
and creators like yourself use Instagram to actually drive leads and
sales back to their business. And in today's video,
I'm taking you behind the scenes to show you my YouTube video setup,
including how I create videos for Instagram too.
The first part to any filming setup is the space.
So I've got a couple tips for you here. If you have a window,
I recommend that you face the window so that the light is coming on to
you. Natural light is your best friend when it comes to filming video. Now,
once you've found your window, you need to check the background behind you.
Is it messy? Is it cluttered? Is it looking like a cave?
You want to aim for a background that looks clean and relatively simple
so that it doesn't distract the viewer from you because you are the focal
point. Now you might be wondering,
what do you do if you don't have a window or maybe the light from the window
isn't strong enough to light your face, because honestly,
light is your best friend.
It minimizes wrinkles and blemishes and all that stuff.
So you want to make sure that you have a decent light source.
So this brings me to my next point:
the equipment that I have in my home office for my filming setup.
You may have noticed that I have a huge light on me,
and that is called a ring light.
The ring light has been really a great investment for my business because yes,
it's right here for film setup, but when it's not here,
it actually is positioned right in front of my desk so that if ever I'm
going live or on a call or on Zoom,
if I need a little bit more light on my face,
I can simply turn the ring light on.
The great thing about a ring light is it has so many different settings. So,
because it's kind of a darker day today,
even though we have all the blinds open and the windows are facing towards me,
it's not enough light.
So the ring light is really to help add more light to the shot.
We tend to keep the light on a cooler setting,
but most ring lights allow you to adjust this so that you can bring warm or cool
light to your face. So after lighting, you want to think about your audio,
how will you record crisp sounding audio that really picks up your voice and
does not pick up background noise?
Because if you're like me and you live in a city,
you know that there's a lot of street car or car noise you want to block out.
So for my setup, I have two mic options.
One of them I am wearing right here.
This is called a lav mic, or lavaliere. Is it lavaliere?
Lavaliere? I've only ever called it "lav".
The first mic that I use is the one that I'm wearing right here.
This is called a lav mic or a lapel mic.
And this is one that I've used for years.
I really like it because it connects directly to my smartphone.
So that way all I have to do is download the app from Rode,
plug in my mic to my phone, and then hit record through the app.
I find the audio is best from a lav mic because it's closest to me and my
vocal chords. Whereas sometimes you can use what's called a shotgun mic,
which sits directly on top of your camera. I do have one,
but I don't find that I use it that often because it picks up too much
background noise. So for me, I prefer the lav mic.
Now when I'm at my desk and I don't need to go through the whole lav mic
experience by connecting it to my smartphone, this is the mic that I use.
And honestly, I use this for most things,
including Zoom calls or live coaching calls.
It is from Blue Yeti, I believe,
or it's called the Blue Yeti mic from the Yeti brand.
And it connects directly to my computer through USB.
So this is my everyday mic that I like to use for clean and crisp audio.
So now we have lights, audio, and we need a camera.
So when I am filming myself, which in this case,
I'm working with a videographer, but when I'm filming by myself,
I will use this handheld camera right here. Wow.
Maybe I should move my hand out of the way so you can see it.
Let's try that again.
So this is a Canon G7 X and I really like it because the screen actually
flips forward and I can probably turn it on. I can actually see myself,
right? So this is really important when you are filming yourself,
you want to make sure that you're in frame properly and your head's not cut off,
for example. So this is the camera that I use,
and I don't use the audio that records while I'm recording.
I use my lav mic audio, because it just sounds a whole lot better. Now,
when I need to film something quickly and it doesn't have to be super high
quality, I won't necessarily use my Canon, but I'll use my iPhone.
So this is an iPhone 11 and has three cameras here that you can see.
And I find that the cameras that are outward facing film in really high
quality, the selfie camera is a little lower quality,
but honestly it's still high quality enough to film something and even run it as
an ad. So if you're feeling overwhelmed at all with equipment and you have a
smartphone, when in doubt, I recommend just film on your smartphone.
You just have to make sure that the output video is high enough resolution.
Now,
one more camera that I use pretty much on a daily basis is my webcam.
This is a Logitech camera and it's 1080P so it's
pretty high resolution. This is the camera that I use for Zoom calls.
I don't use the camera.
That's built into my laptop because the resolution is quite a bit lower.
So if you ever wonder how people look so well lit or good on
their Zoom call,
I think it's generally because they've purchased a high resolution webcam like
this one. And I'll be honest with you.
Sometimes I will film demos or trainings in my paid
products, just using this camera and my desk mic,
and it looks good. So sometimes you don't have to over-complicate things,
but I highly recommend to at least invest in a webcam so that you're
showing up in high resolution for your calls or your trainings.
So now that we've covered cameras, that brings me to my next category,
which is tripods.
So especially if you're filming yourself or you're filming on the road,
you're going to want a tripod to set your camera on top of. Now,
this is the first tripod that I bought. I believe the brand is called Manfrotto.
And it was good.
I bought a really small one because of my travels and I just didn't want big,
heavy equipment. I do use it occasionally. I do find that you can see here,
this leg is a bit loose.
So it basically lost its ability to lock into a position that's not just,
you know, all the legs splayed out, so it probably needs to be replaced.
And I did replace it. I replaced it with a slightly bigger tripod.
This is a Joby brand tripod,
and you can see here that I chose a tripod with adjustable and bendable
legs. So I do find this really handy.
They've all stayed stiff so that I can adjust them. You know,
they haven't worn down over time.
And what I also like is this topper right here,
I can untwist and then adjust if my camera's pointing, you know,
straight up, down all that great stuff.
So I do find that this is the one that I will film with more so than the
smaller one, whether I'm filming myself or filming on the road.
So I really like this tripod. Speaking of filming from the road,
occasionally I need to film for my own YouTube channel while abroad.
I tend to work remotely for a couple of weeks or a couple of months at a time,
but I don't want to bring all this heavy equipment, especially this guy,
like this is probably, I dunno, eight pounds or something like this.
So this adds up when you are traveling with a suitcase.
So what I like to use instead is this mini desktop microphone.
It's from a brand called Shure. And again, it's USB powered.
So it just plugs directly into my laptop. So for Zoom,
for group coaching trainings, even recordings for my paid programs,
this mic works just as well as my big Yeti mic. And it's, like,
way lighter. So I really like this for being on the road.
One more piece of equipment that I like to bring when I'm traveling and working
remotely is this mini set of ring lights because you saw
how big my at-home ring light is. I'm not going to travel with that one.
So this is something that I picked up from Amazon and I filmed with
this when I was in Costa Rica. And it was actually really handy,
even though Costa Rica is very sunny and bright.
It still helps to have sunlight directly coming onto your face just to even out
any shadows. So that's what I use this for. It has a huge clip right here,
so you can just clip it to your desk. Um, and this,
I believe this is a phone holder, never used it,
but I found that these ring lights were really handy because I could just bend
them forward to come quite close to my face,
to bring as much light as they could directly onto my face.
So this is really good for travel as well.
Last but not least when it comes to travel and needing a little bit of light to
your face,
I sometimes use this really old school Lumee phone case.
Maybe you've heard of it when the Kardashians made it popular,
but what you do is just hit this button here and then you can see when you have
your phone in the case, it just creates a nice ring of light around your phone,
so that if you're doing selfies or video work,
it just adds a little bit more light to your face. Now,
for anything that I've shown in today's video,
if you want to check it out or buy it for yourself,
I'm going to leave a link for every single product right below this video,
in the description. All right, there you have my filming setup,
whether it's for YouTube or Instagram Stories or Instagram TV,
that's all the equipment that I use. Now, you might be wondering, well,
that's great Elise, but how do you actually record your videos?
What's that process like? For that, I recommend check out my video right here,
where I covered my video content creation strategy,
including how I script out my videos so that I'm actually not reading a script,
but just talking points.
So go ahead and check out that video for all the background on how to develop
your video content.
So if you're feeling inspired and ready to dive into video marketing for your
business, which I highly recommend by the way,
but maybe you're feeling a little intimidated,
especially when it comes to long form video, like YouTube videos.
Here's what I recommend for you.
My product Videos Vault is 300 video ideas
for short form channels like Instagram Reels and TikTok.
If you're new to video marketing, that's how I recommend you start.
Start with short videos, and that's exactly how designed Videos Vault to be.
It is 300 video ideas for TikTok or Reels all divided up
by what your business offers, whether that's coaching,
services or products. So go ahead and head to VideosVault.co.
I'll leave the link right below this video to check it out. To ease and revenue.
I'll see you in the next video.
Thanks for watching today's video on my YouTube video setup.
If you liked this video,
don't forget to subscribe to my channel and hit the bell so that you don't miss
any future trainings just like this one.