Two things have happened since I started my studio tour series:
one, I've received a lot more requests for tips and tricks
for making or improving home studios, and two,
we're all spending a lot more time producing content at home.
So today, I've gathered together some of your favourite
photo/video YouTubers to get their tips
on improving your studio and your production.
Let's get undone.
[offbeat music]
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What's happening, everybody? I'm Gerald Undone
and bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica.
So, in my opinion, one of the simplest ways
you can improve your productivity and the looks
of your studio and shots is to stay organized.
For me, a sloppy workspace leads to sloppy ideas
and sloppy execution.
This means putting things in places that make sense
and where you can find them quickly when you need them.
And for the things that stay out, keep them tidy,
keep your cables managed, and your equipment secured.
Something that can really come in handy in this
pursuit are clamps. You can get an eight-pack
of clamps like these for as little as 10
to 15 dollars, and they're infinitely useful.
The same goes for Velcro cable ties.
Velcro is definitely an unsung hero of a good studio.
What is up, people? Dunna here from the channel Dunna Did It,
and I have a little studio hack that I absolutely love, and it
has to do with something that we deal with pretty regularly.
-And that, of course, is Velcro. -[Velcro ripping]
Turns out, it's not just for old people's sneakers.
You can pick up strips of Velcro that have adhesive on the
back of them, and you can stick them to all sorts of things!
You can use them to tuck away cables, you can use them
to secure a power bar to the side of your desk, maybe stick
your solid-state drive to the back of your laptop.
One of the things that I really love about this type of Velcro
is that it's a lot stronger than,
let's say, something like gaff tape.
I can't count the amount of times that I've tried to gaff
tape something up, and it keeps falling down over and over.
A couple of pieces of Velcro? No problem.
You can pick them up in little squares like this,
or you can get a big ol' roll of it and use it
by just cutting it down as you need it.
And the best part is, you can just take those things
off and put them back on whenever you need to.
Also, you got to admit, Velcro is oddly satisfying.
[Velcro ripping]
-Alright! -[Gerald] You know,
going back to my clamps, it was actually Dunna
who showed me that clamps make for clever and versatile
little headphone hangers, like this.
Anyway, so you've got your studio all organized,
but have you given any thought to the wall behind you?
Because you should.
I'm Becki from Becki and Chris, and today my tip--
or studio hack, if you will-- is to pick
a background colour that is a different tone than your skin.
You watch our channel, you'll notice that most of
our backgrounds are either black or really, really bright white,
and that is because my skin looks...
not good on a lot of other colours, so I choose
colours or tones that are completely opposite my skin.
So when I choose a white background,
I'm choosing a white that's a cooler white,
that has blue undertones in it,
not yellow because my skin against a cream wall just--
it blends in. You can't even see my face. It's just, like,
lips and eyeballs, and just, like, flat.
Or I'll choose a black or a grey neutral
because I prefer neutrals. So, if you are making over
your studio space or you're picking a little
corner in your house to paint for a background,
consider choosing a colour that you like that matches
your brand or a different tone than your skin.
Trust me, you'll thank me later.
Trying to colour-correct skin tones when your skin
matches the wall is, like, impossible.
Also, if you are painting, make sure you choose
a flat or a matte paint.
Eggshell, or semi-gloss, or even satin paint will reflect
the light a little bit more, and you'll see shine
on the wall, so flat paint, matte paint will cut down
on the reflection, especially if you're using lights.
Make sure you get a good quality paint.
This is not sponsored, but I always recommend
Benjamin Moore Regal Select in matte finish.
It's wipeable, and I just find it goes on like butter.
I have not used any other matte paint, so I cannot vouch
for any other brand, but that is my favourite.
I hope that tip was helpful!
And, uh, thanks, Gerald, for including me in your video.
That wall colour thing is so true and such a great point.
I've been in that situation many times with cream-coloured walls,
where you try and adjust your skin tone, and your wall
turns green. Or you lower the saturation of your face,
and all of a sudden, you're in a black-and-white movie.
Love that tip. OK, so at this point, I was gonna show you some
tips from Tommy Calloway, but I got an email telling me
that he dead-dropped the footage on a flash drive as part of his
new safety protocols, and he just sent me the coordinates,
so I gotta go get that now. Give me about 15 minutes.
[dramatic music]
♪
Luckily, I was able to retrieve it using stock footage.
Which is convenient because this video
is sponsored by Storyblocks. And this counts as one of my
tips because right now, it's incredibly challenging to get
a lot of the supplementary shots you might need to finish
your project, especially when working from home.
But even in normal circumstances, it can often
be budgetarily or logistically unfeasible
to acquire those ideal shots.
Well, Storyblocks has you covered with an impressive
collection of stock footage covering a wide range
of subjects with unlimited downloads and 4K video.
They're also amply supplied with backgrounds, overlays,
and After Effects templates, and the interface is easy
to use and navigate, and the clips are royalty-free
for both personal and commercial use,
so you can use them as much as you want, wherever you want.
So if you think you could take advantage of a fantastic library
of quality stock footage and effects, check out
Storyblocks using the link in the description below.
Alright, now let's see what Tommy put on this thing.
I always use my own quick-release plates,
regardless of what system I'm attaching my cameras too.
Tripods, gimbals, sliders.
I use the little Manfrotto RC323, or 232,
I don't remember which one it is, but I buy these things
basically in bulk and attach them to everything that I get,
because, I mean, having to switch between
different quick-release plates with different things is really,
you know, time-consuming and irritating.
Everyone should have a grey card because white balance.
But two, if you put it on a light stand,
if you're using a manual focus lens, you can use this
little target to manually focus from behind the camera
and then walk over in front of the camera and do your shot.
And if you use the white balance card as your stand-in, you know
that you have a good shot of a grey card for white balance.
And my last tip for making life easier around my studio
is wall-mount all the lights, and whatever you can't
put on the wall, stick it on wheels.
You clear up a ton of floor space, and it's just so much
easier to reorganize and get set up when everything's on wheels.
Yeah, that's probably my favourite tip: put everything
on the walls, and if you can't
get it on the walls, put it on wheels.
That walls and wheels thing definitely plays
into the concept of staying organized,
but I really like the white balance stand-in idea.
That's pretty useful if you're shooting by yourself.
And speaking of white balance, if you learn
how to do it correctly, then you can do some pretty
great stuff with lighting on the cheap.
So I think one of the easiest ways to make my studio
look a little bit more interesting on the cheap is...
I use practicals everywhere.
That's a practical.
An ordinary incandescent bulb is a great way to add
a little bit of interesting depth to your shot.
The one behind me on the wall, this is kind of, like,
adding a little bit of dimension,
but also information about me, about my character.
You know, there's things on the wall,
it looks kind of utilitarian and...
There's-- like, these are my tools,
and "What kind of tools is he using?" Right?
It kind of tells a little bit about me.
So if you have an extra light, like, you know,
an Aputure MC or a Yongnuo LED, you can motivate the practical.
You can make it into a rim light, or an edge light,
and make it-- make you pop out from the background even more.
So now we put it over there, and it kind of looks
like it's motivating that practical.
But if we move it on this side,
it'll look like it's motivating that practical.
Right, and so now, there's like this nice,
orange glow around me.
It's-- it makes it look a little bit more dimensional.
Right? So practicals... that's kind of their job.
Their job is to hide extra lights, but sometimes, you know,
if the room is, you know, not as big as this room,
the practical is gonna be giving you the light,
and that's OK too! Incandescent bulbs
are actually pretty colour-accurate.
As long as your white balance is set,
you're not gonna have all these crazy spikes of green or magenta
that kind of plague cheaper LEDs.
So, incandescent bulbs are pretty awesome...
if you know how to use them right.
OK, so we've got an organized space, nice walls,
and dynamic lighting, but what about sound?
One of the biggest changes you can make to your studio
that your audience will appreciate
is taking care of their ears.
A lot of us are working in spaces that are not
acoustically treated, and I think that one
of the biggest things you can do
is acoustically treat your space.
Now, it doesn't have to be anything super expensive.
You can, I mean, if you're all-in,
you can go get some custom bass traps for your space.
That's gonna be the number one thing you could do.
But if you don't have the money for that,
and I understand if you don't,
sound blankets can be a great choice as well.
My number one studio tip is going to be sound blankets.
I use tons of them. For around 30 to 50 bucks,
you can pick up an 80 x 80 inch.
They don't look as fancy as Gerald Undone's sound panels,
but they do the trick, and you can store them easily.
I've put them on rolling stands so I can move them around.
[slightly echoey] So to give you an idea of what this actually
sounds like, I'm in an area of the studio
that has no tiles, or no blankets,
nothing at all, just a normal office room.
And now I'm gonna walk toward the area where I normally sit.
By the way, I'm just using the built-in microphone
on the GH5 to even let you know how great this is without
-a special microphone. -[clearer, more focused audio]
So, now I'm in a spot where I normally sit to film videos.
This is what it sounds like with blankets.
Checking one, two. [echoey] Check one, two, three. [focused]
Check one, two, three. [echoey] Check one, two, three. [focused]
So, that was the built-in microphone.
Throw a decent microphone into the mix,
-and things just sound amazing. -The first question that'll
come up: "well, can't I just use furniture pads?"
Of course. You can use any blanket
you have available to you or that you can afford.
However, there are some advantages to sound blankets.
Number one, these are black on one side, white on the other,
so you can use them also for your lighting design.
But more importantly, they are much denser than furniture pads.
Furniture pads and moving pads are made to be lightweight
and yet protect your furniture. These are much, much heavier.
You can put them up on C-stands
if you can't leave them up permanently,
but they will make a world of difference in your studio
and make it much easier on the ears of your audience.
I'm not sure if you've ever had one of those "Aha!" moments,
and you're thinking to yourself, like,
"Why wasn't I doing this before?"
Or, "Why didn't I think of this?"
Now, I'm gonna preface by saying that
this is not my idea, and I actually took it
from Caleb Pike from DSLR Video Shooter.
He actually came up with this thing,
and it saved me a ton of time.
It's actually this contraption that you see here.
It's basically this RØDE microphone arm
attached to a moving light stand.
It's brilliant, but the idea is
that whenever you're checking your frame,
and the freaking microphone is in frame,
you can easily-- I mean, I know this has happened before,
and I apologize if the, uh,
audio changed because it's a lot closer to my mouth,
but you can just look at your frame and then... boop!
It's out of frame! It's that simple! I know, I know. Boom!
Of course, even if you go all out on sound treatment
like I tried to here, it's not going to stop your
neighbours or the outside world from ruining your shoot.
So, to maintain your sanity in those situations,
it's a good idea to develop a flexible workflow.
Mmm. I know, right? It's as if I work for this guy!
Like, what do you want next? Do you want me
to fold your laundry for you, Mr. Ger--
Having a flexible workflow is very important
because sometimes, the plans you make will not go as planned.
For example, my upstairs neighbour is an actor/singer.
The guy over there is a perfectionist musician,
he practices a song all day long, for days,
and then he perfects- he makes it perfect!
A costume designer over there, you never know. You never know.
Plumber, leaf blowers, this and that. And some days--
you may not notice about me, but I'm a very emotional person.
I like flowers, poetry, and [bleep].
So, sometimes, some days, you don't want to do this.
You know, some days you just want to be quiet.
So having a flexible workflow means,
if I can't do this, I'll work on my script.
If I cannot work on my script, if it is ready, for example,
I can work on the beauty shots.
Because it is much better to have something in hand
than waste the entire day.
Like, for example, this.
Hey, moms, you're still there?
Our last tip comes from a creator who refuses
to send his footage in 24fps,
even though this entire project is in 24p.
But he does have some great advice about the ongoing
quest to improve your studio and finished product.
My tip is, always be iterating, always be innovating
on your current studio space.
You don't necessarily always have to buy new gear.
You don't always have to buy new tech or cameras...
Some of us have a harder time of that than others...
but just take what you have and always try to find new ways
to make it better. Like, this shot that you see right here
is a shot that I use all the time for, like, my talking-head
videos, but all of the stuff built around it has changed,
like, three or four times in just like the last two weeks,
‘cause I'm always trying to gain efficiency.
And you gotta do that. You get--
take your current studio spot, take all of these
other tips that people are giving you today,
and iterate on them just a little bit at a time,
and then you can mould it into a better solution for working
in a smaller space, or working in any kind of space.
There you go.
And I think that's a perfect note to end on.
If you asked any of the creators featured here today,
or even look back at the previous work.
Links to all their channels in the description below.
It's clear that this process takes a long time.
Like anything that involves self-improvement,
it's a marathon, not a sprint.
Don't go crazy trying to perfect everything the first time,
and don't let the pursuit of that perfection
stop you from getting your work out there.
Because if there's one thing I can guarantee you,
it's that no matter how hard you work to do everything right,
even if you think you absolutely nailed it,
in a few months, you're gonna look back on that work,
think it was terrible, and start the process all over again.
And that's probably a good thing.
But I do hope this video helped save you some trial
and error and maybe a bit of frustration along the way.
Anyway, I hope that-- I hit all my cords,
‘cause I have the jankiest setup right now.
You'll look a little bit more...
pizzazzo! That's not a word.
[dramatic music]
♪