- So far this school year, all the classes
that I teach have been online.
And now that we're like, I don't know,
a month and a half into the school year,
I added it up, and that has been over 100 Zoom classes,
which is way too many Zoom classes.
But I feel like I've gotten pretty good at it
and I've gotten two setups because I do my teaching
from home three days a week and I do it
from my classroom two days a week,
although there's nobody else in the classroom, it's just me.
And so I've set up basically the same setup
at home and at school.
So I wanted to share with you what I have set up,
why I have it that way, and how it works for me.
(upbeat music)
What I've done here is basically set up
like this mission control center.
And so the whole thing hinges on my 16 inch MacBook Pro.
This is my same computer at home, the same computer
that I edit all my videos on, just my personal computer.
That's what runs all the Zoom stuff.
I have it connected to a TV over here.
And on this TV, I have a timer app called Red Hot Timer,
which lets me add in multiple timers throughout the day
for the starts and stops of classes.
And I also have just a short checklist
of what I need to cover in my classes.
All my audio's running through a RodeCaster Pro, of course.
And my main audio source is this Rode NTG2,
which is a great sounding XLR mic.
This is another one of my personal pieces of equipment.
It's a sampler, so they have all kinds
of goofy sound effects added in here.
Normally we use this in our daily broadcast
to just liven up the show.
But I figured if I'm doing Zoom meetings,
half of the job is to be an entertainer.
So now it's here to liven up my Zoom meetings, as well.
For lighting, I have two aperture 120D's.
And if I turn off the overhead lights,
that's kind of more what the setup looks like.
This one is being used as a backlight and a hairlight.
And I also do just like to have it in the background
because students see it and then they ask
like, "What is that light?"
And then that lets me tell them more about lighting.
A lot of this setup is definitely over the top.
But I feel like as a digital media teacher,
I should have a good looking setup for online classes.
But also, the more little things I can throw in
that make students ask questions makes it easier for me
to then teach them about those things.
I've got my classroom as the backdrop.
And the whole setup is on these risers here.
And the reason for that is so that my main shot,
you can easily see almost like an overhead view
of the classroom behind me.
I've got these little acoustic panels here
to try to reduce echo.
These are Auralex like standalone panels.
There's four of them.
They work okay.
And then the camera rig that I'm using an EOS R, of course,
with a Sigma 24 millimeter 1.4 lens.
But it's on a tripod head that is attached to a C stand.
And the reason for that is so that way,
I don't have to have more tripod legs
on these risers, which was kind of dangerous
and the camera could fall.
So the C stand is super sturdy.
It's here, and it's just projecting the camera out
to be in the exact spot that I need it.
And with the EOS R and the Rode NTD2,
this is my basic setup.
Normally I actually do have these lights turned off.
So now you can see here's the key light that I have,
here's the backlight that I have.
And when they're both together,
this is kind of what it looks like.
Now I've got all my sound effects here,
lasers, goats, dog barks, all the really important things.
But the reason I really like using the Sigma 24 1.4
is not just because I like the way that it looks.
But it gives me that super shallow depth of field,
which even though I'm physically in the classroom,
because it's so blurred out right here,
it kind of looks like a green screen.
And I've had a lot of students think
that I'm standing in front of a green screen,
this is like my Zoom virtual backdrop, and it's not.
And then when I actually go back here,
they get kinda tripped out a little bit.
So that's a great opportunity for me to start then
talking to them about aperture and F stop
and depth of field, and stuff that they might not
be interested in if I just showed up and said,
"Hey, we're gonna talk about F stops today."
They're not gonna care.
But if suddenly they have a question,
like why does your shot look like that,
how is the background so blurry,
now I can explain to them in a way
that's actually gonna be more relevant why that's the case.
So half of what I do is just providing these opportunities
for students to ask questions about something
they're curious about, and then I can dive in
and teach them more about it.
And they're gonna be more interested in it
because they asked the questions.
And right now, I'm just running everything
through an Elgato Cam Link
since I'm just doing one camera angle.
Sometimes I will bring my ATEM Mini and set it up
with a second computer over here
to switch between angles.
And then since part of my program includes
a Broadcast Production class, sometimes I actually
have a stream from here, which is our broadcast studio,
which I just do because it's fun.
It's a full on studio.
It's a little bit of visual variety.
But even though we have our nice three camera setup
with all our fancy switchers and stuff,
I usually just sort of set up my EOS R
kind of right here and just stream directly from here.
So I do like to change up my backgrounds for my students
just so they don't get bored,
because seeing the same thing in the same way
every single day can be a little bit boring sometimes.
So when it comes to teaching online from home,
which I do three days out of the week,
I've tried to basically just create the same setup here.
But it's actually a little better
because it's got some more versatility built into it.
And the whole setup is still based
around my MacBook Pro plugged into a 34 inch
ultra wide LG display.
And this is actually not my own display.
I was able to borrow it from work to use
while we're doing online classes.
But it is really terrific, and I definitely want my own
when it has to go back.
When I'm teaching from home, the ATEM Mini
is kind of the heart of everything.
And if you haven't seen my video all about the ATEM Mini,
I'll put a link to it up here
so you can kind of learn about this.
But this thing is absolutely amazing
and pretty much, on a daily basis,
I run three cameras and a computer through this.
And the first camera, the main camera,
is my EOS R, which is actually in a small rig cage.
It has a little monitor attached to it.
All of those things are 100% unnecessary,
but also very very fun.
And my second camera is actually an overhead shot over here.
So right now, I've got my 6D Mark II
with the 24 to 105 lens mounted on a C stand.
I made videos about C stands.
But I ended up getting a second one.
This one is a Flashpoint C stand which I chose
because each end of it has a quarter 20
and a 3/8 inch mount on it,
so I can put a ball head and then the camera right here.
It's also spring cushioned here, so if it does happen
to fall down or anything, it doesn't just slam down.
It kinda softly bounces a little bit.
So it's a little bit safer, although it's not
quite as heavy duty as the impact C stand,
which I have over here on my key light,
and that I made a whole separate video about.
And the overhead shot is really helpful
for things like this.
Just yesterday, we were talking about storyboards.
I was creating some amazing artwork
to show students how to use storyboards.
You know, fill up the whole frame,
don't just, even if you're using stick figures,
don't make it totally useless.
And so being able to show this really cleanly and clearly
is incredibly helpful, and that's where the overhead
camera comes into play.
And then I do have a third camera, too,
which I don't use too often,
but really does come in handy sometimes.
And that is, if you look in this little preview window,
the Sony RX100 Mark V.
So now, look, here's me talking
into the microphone recording this.
But this camera is great if I do need to just sort of show
a close up of something I'm explaining
or just some kind of detailed view of something.
Having a little small portable camera
to show things really closely, really easily,
is really really helpful.
And the fourth input on the ATEM Mini
is actually my 2013 13 inch MacBook Pro.
And the reason for using this is to play
like Keynote presentations or video clips,
because even though I could do screen sharing through Zoom,
which is what all of our classes are run through,
when you screen share on Zoom and you try to play a video,
the quality is bad.
It's very stuttery, it looks like 12 frames per second.
But if you play a video off of the MacBook,
use that as an input on the ATEM Mini,
it plays really really smoothly.
And then also, if you've ever tried to share
or screen share a video on Zoom,
you know that the audio settings
are always just a little strange to get going.
And then having the audio from the MacBook
going into the RodeCaster, I can make sure
everything looks good and sounds good.
And for audio when I'm teaching online,
I use the Rode NTG2, which is an awesome shotgun microphone.
This is not my own microphone.
It's another thing that I'm borrowing from work.
And I'm sure it's no surprise,
but this is all running into the RodeCaster Pro
where I can bring in my audio, I can bring in the sound
from my MacBook that's attached to the ATEM.
I can bring in all of my sound effects,
all of those very important things
to just deliver high quality audio.
And then back here behind it all is just an absolute mess
of wires and cables, and you know what?
I just don't care.
I know how wonderful it looks
when things are beautifully cable managed.
I love that too, but the reality is
this is what it looks like when you're doing this stuff
every single day and I'm breaking parts of this down
several times a week to take to work
so I can teach from my classroom,
and then I'm bringing it back.
And the result is that it's just not going to be practical
or feasible to keep everything beautifully cable managed
all the time all day every day.
Now I do find myself really fortunate
in that when things switched to doing classes online,
I literally had a room that was already set up to film
because of my YouTube videos.
And even teaching classes online
is really really similar to livestreaming.
Like you're literally checking the chat
and trying to monitor everything.
And so that weird form of multitasking
is something that I had already kind of been able to build
a muscle memory for, just from practice on my own.
And so I feel fortunate that that helped
this super weird time of having to stream your classes
be a little easier for me.
There's obviously downsides to not being able
to meet in person, but in general,
it's been a dream stream with my student team.
I didn't start doing YouTube videos
to have it become part of my job one day.
But just because I started doing something
I was interested in and something I was excited about,
enthusiastic about, eventually the dots connect
in really weird ways that you could never plan for.
And so this is how I've been setting up my online classes.
Total overkill, but I think it looks great,
I think it's a ton of fun, I think it's good
for the students to see it.
And the only reason that I was able to do it
was because, you know, years ago I just started
poking around in little areas that I was interested in
for no reason other than that I was interested in them.
That's one of the best things you can do.
Just explore stuff that you're curious about,
that you're interested in.
And down the line, those things can come together
in very very strange, yet useful ways.
(funky music)