- What's up, everybody?
Peter McKinnon here.
It is Tuesday, which means,
for those of you who follow this channel,
it is Two Minute Tuesday.
Now, I had an idea already worked out last week.
I have lots of ideas, surprise.
However, when I started to make today's video,
I thought, you know what?
Let's scrap this and do something completely different.
What if today's Two Minute Tuesday was
how I make a Two Minute Tuesday?
And I thought, wow, that's super meta,
and I love that idea,
so that is what we're doing today,
but first we gotta rewind.
(suspenseful music)
(rock music)
See, it usually starts with a notebook.
I like to write all my ideas down
in this here notebook so that
I can have a decisive, clean, straightforward path
through my thought process,
so that my video ends up exactly how I want it to end up,
because when I don't have a plan
and I don't use a notebook,
things can sometimes get a little wacky,
and then, you know, hours and hours go by
and you're like, "What am I even doing?"
So, writing it down to start
is the way that I love to begin a project
if I'm gonna do it properly.
So, for instance, I know that I wanna talk about my process
through making a Two Minute Tuesday video,
which means I need to show the equipment that I use for it,
I need to show the setup that I use for it,
how I position certain lights, certain cameras,
right on through to the color grade, et cetera.
So, to start that, I've taken out the Mobi Pro here,
because I'm gonna use that
to capture some of the B-roll
with regards to showing the equipment that I use.
So, now I will balance the 1DX II on the Mobi Pro,
get those shots, and meet you back here.
And a little side tip is that,
while I'm talking about the fact
that I'm going to use the Mobi Pro,
I've already shot a couple handheld slow motion clips
of the Mobi Pro to overlay on top of me talking about
using the Mobi Pro.
I'm pretty sure that made sense.
It made sense to me.
Watch it back if it didn't, but I'm pretty sure it did.
Okay.
All right, I'm going to set up the 5D
to do a little time lapse while I balance the Mobi Pro,
so that I don't just suddenly go
right from sitting down to Mobi Pro shots.
Let's go with 24 mil,
and put these on the Gorilla Pod.
I will face this that way while I balance this camera.
Let's do that.
(dreamy music)
All right, so after you have shot the B-roll,
which we just did, I like to put everything away
as I work because it makes me
a little bit more efficient,
knowing that my space is clean.
Sometimes it gets out of hand
and I can't always keep up with that,
but I've shot the B-roll,
the Mobi is back where it belongs,
all the cameras are back, everything is back,
the ND filters are back, desk is clean,
and that way I can kind of just
nicely and neatly move on
to the next segment of shooting, which would be
setting up the lights, making sure the mic
is in the right position,
and getting the C200 ready to go.
That is typically what I'm looking at
when I'm shooting a tutorial
or a Two Minute Tuesday, anything like that.
I shoot everything in-studio, in-office, on this C200.
It tracks my face ridiculously fast, it's 4K,
I can shoot in C log three,
which color grades nicer in post,
which I will show you.
I used to shoot everything on an H4N
and record the audio separately.
I used to use lapel mics, but just being able to
swing this over, position it where I need to
so that it makes sense with my videos,
it's out of frame, I don't have to wear anything external.
It just makes my life so much easier.
Turn that on, turn that on, and then this bad boy
is what lights me from the side.
So, this is the Aputure 120D.
It's always on, so that I can use the remote.
Everything is plugged into the back,
so it's behind the desk,
so it's out of the way when I'm shooting,
so all I gotta do is sit down, grab my remote,
make sure I turn it on, and there you have it.
I can adjust the power and everything from here.
Same for the light that goes in the room behind me,
which I'll show you in just a second.
Next thing I do is I move this big light bar
to this side so that it's in-frame.
It gives me a little bit of Tungsten light
to kind of separate itself from the background,
which I gel and light completely differently.
This just has a nice little toe switch, boom.
Actually using a Lightstorm LED panel
for light number three that you never see in the videos,
but it's what lights this room up.
And I use some gels here to make that Kelvin nice and blue,
so that the room itself isn't as white and washed out.
It's got a little more of a tint
that contrasts nicely with the light bar here.
Let me show you that.
All right, now that that's set up,
it runs off the same remote as my main light,
just a different button, and there you go.
Now we've got that nice blue light inside the gear room,
we've got the nice Tungsten light here,
and the last thing to do is to turn this one on,
but the lat problem is the window light.
So, I've actually put these hooks in the wall,
and I've actually put them on either side
so I can hang this acoustic blanket,
which does two things.
One, it cuts all of the light out from this window,
which lets me control the scene way better,
and it dampens the sound, which makes my audio sound better.
Okay, now that all the lights are set up
and the window's blocked out,
and the audio's ready to go, and the camera's prepped,
gotta stick a lens on it, we got this all situated,
ready to go, now is where I would actually start to record
the tutorial itself, before I even take into post
and do all of the post processing, and color grading,
and exporting ready to upload a single video to YouTube.
What's up, everybody?
Peter McKinnon here, and welcome back to
yet another Two Minute Tuesday.
It's so great to have you here,
see all your smiling faces.
Today, we're talking about how I actually make
these two minute videos, which, let's be honest,
are never two minutes.
Today's no exception, forewarned.
All right, now I've done my intro, ready to go.
The rest is basically talking to the camera,
and then we jump into post,
figure out the rest of it from there.
That was pretty good.
I'm running low on water.
Been drinking too much coffee today.
Taking a little break!
So, the reason I wanted to show you guys this process today
was for several reasons.
One, I get asked all the time
how I actually make these videos,
and people wanna see the process.
They wanna see what goes into it
from the beginning to the very end,
and I thought that's a great idea,
I just never got around to doing it.
And today I wanted to do another part
of our Two Minute Tuesday that we
talked about last week, which will come,
but I thought it would be really interesting
to make today's Two Minute Tuesday about
how to make a Two Minute Tuesday.
I think there's a lot of insight to be learned
about how different people do different things
throughout their workflow and online.
Like, I'm fascinated to see my friends work.
I love watching different people's setups,
I love looking at behind the scenes,
I love looking at different lighting setups,
and audio setups.
There's so much to be learned doing that.
This isn't to just boost my ego
or make me feel good about
the amount of work I put into each video,
but hopefully you guys get to see
this whole process and think to yourself,
"Wow, I never thought about blocking out a window like that.
"I never thought about an acoustic blanket
"to actually help the audio from a boom mic
"sound a little bit better.
"Hell, I need a boom mic!"
So, it's all these little things that,
hopefully in you seeing, you'll be able to take
little bits here and there
to help your own workflow, make your own videos
a higher production, and a little more professional.
I never used to do all of this.
I used to light everything with window light,
I would wear a lapel mic,
I would just set up my DSLR in front of my desk
and just start riffing.
It wasn't until I met Matti
and started seeing how he worked,
and talking with him, and jamming with him,
and shooting together, and vice versa that
he learned some things from me,
I learned some things from him.
Mainly, use a light and a mic,
and it's improved my workflow
and my video quality dramatically.
So, it's all part of, he would say,
it's all part of that filmmaking process,
which it most definitely is.
It's the same reason I think people do
what's in my camera bag and why those video series
are so popular, because it's very interesting to see
what other creators are using in their camera bags
to get the content that they're putting out
on a weekly basis.
Now, it's important to also say,
I hope this process doesn't discourage you.
It should not, it's not meant to whatsoever.
I understand that it's easy to look at something like this
and say, that's a lot of gear,
it's really easy to make great videos
when you have a mic, and you have lights,
and you have fancy cameras that can just
stay stationary so that you can
make these tutorial videos,
but I did not start with any of this.
I started with zero.
When I left my last job,
I had to send all my gear back,
so I started with nothing.
I bought one camera, I bought one lens,
I had a set of lav mics from when I used to do weddings,
and I would mic up the groom, used those,
and just used the available light
and the knowledge that I had
to make the best videos that I could.
Different types of videos, different types of people,
different types of workflow,
different types of equipment,
but that's the best part of this whole thing,
that there is no right or wrong way to do it.
It's just however you like doing it,
and this is how I like doing it.
All right, no more talking, because I've blown that timer.
I can already tell.
Haven't started editing yet, but I know I'm way, way gone.
This is like a 15 Minute Tuesday.
But let's jump into the edit,
and let me show you how I organize,
color grade, export, and upload,
finish one Two Minute Tuesday video
for you guys on YouTube.
Let's go.
Once I've shot all the footage that I need from
all the different cameras, and the C200,
everything like that, I get all the memory cards together,
and I start to organize that within one single file,
which is the name of the video that I'm trying to make.
So, for instance, I'll make a new folder and I'll title that
"How I make a Two Minute Tuesday," hit enter,
and inside that folder, I'm going to name a folder
for each camera that I've used, 1DX Mark II.
I used the 5D Mark IV, and I also shot these talking points
on the C200.
Once I've done that, I will stick
all the memory cards in the computer,
and I will begin to dump and copy the footage
into the appropriate corresponding folders.
Once we've done all that, I open up Premiere,
and I start a new project.
I go over to the project panel and begin to make bins
based off all those same folders.
So typically I will make a folder for the 1DX Mark II,
C200, the 5D Mark IV.
I'd like to make one for my screen sharing files,
my intro, depending on which one I use,
some miscellaneous stuff, depending on what goes in there.
Another one for music.
I save the project and that's pretty much it.
Now I'm gonna go through to the folders
where I actually saved that footage,
and I'm gonna dump all those corresponding clips
into the corresponding bin
that I just made in Premiere Pro.
This way my project is completely organized,
I know where everything is at any moment.
I can just drop one of those bins down,
all the files from that camera are there,
and it makes editing and the whole workflow
way easier and way faster.
Now, depending on which camera I shot with more,
that clip's gonna go onto my timeline first.
When you drag a clip into the timeline for the first time
within Premiere Pro, Premiere Pro is gonna
change those sequence settings to match that
first clip you're dragging in.
So, if you've got something in 4K
and you've got something in 1080p,
which is our case today,
the C200 shoots 4K, the 1DX was shooting 1080p,
I gotta decide which timeline settings
I'm gonna favor, 4K or 1080p.
In this particular video, I have more 1080p footage,
so I'm gonna start by dragging one of those 1DX clips
onto the timeline, so that the sequence settings
are adjusted to what the settings are of that camera.
If I had dragged one of my slow motion clips on there first,
that sequence would be set to 120 frames per second,
and then everything would be off.
You wanna make sure that you're starting with
the right clips so that sequence is set
from the beginning, good to go.
Now, from this point, I just start cutting,
start editing the intro, start editing my clips,
make sure things are where I want them,
I try to position it, just move and repeat,
and cut and repeat, and back up, and delete.
Now, because we started with a 1080p sequence,
when I drag one of those C200 clips in,
you'll notice it's zoomed in twice the amount
because the footage is twice as big, it's 1080p.
So, the first thing I'm gonna do is
I'm gonna highlight that clip,
go over to effect controls, and bring that down 50%,
which is gonna fill the frame.
That's what I was saying a few months back where
your 4K footage scaled down to 1080p
is still better quality than just regular 1080p.
This would be a perfect example of that.
Now, I shoot all my videos in log,
which is no exception here.
This footage looks a little washed out
because I shot it in a log format,
so now I have to color grade it
so that it looks good and I can copy that look across
all the C200 clips moving forward with the edit.
Now, I use a third party plugin called Colorista.
They're not paying me to say this.
I bought it full price.
I'm going to do a full on review of this
because I wanna update my color grading video
because I do things completely differently now,
but I basically go through and I find that plugin
within Premier Pro, I drag it onto my clip.
Now, when we come over to effect controls,
we can see all my shadows, my midtones,
and my highlights are here.
And from this point, it's just a lot of tweaking.
The curve gamma, I can tweak to bring down the shadows
and pump up the highlights.
I can take those reds in my skin
and make them less saturated,
and I can pump up the oranges.
I can basically change my skin tone to whatever I want
to match the lighting.
The same thing goes for the color of the midtones
and the color of the shadows.
This is a very in-depth, incredible tool
for color grading that I promise
we will get into in another video.
But this is typically what I do
to get that one standard look across
all my footage in a tutorial.
That way, once I add a new clip in,
I can just right click and go up to copy,
and then I can add another clip,
go over to paste, and I can paste those attributes,
so that it's matching and I don't have to go through
that whole process again.
Lastly, once you've done the whole edit,
you've moved everything to where you need it to go,
you put the intro in, you've color graded,
you've done all of that, it's time to export.
And the export settings within Premier Pro
are actually very easy.
All you gotta do is come up to file,
hit export, choose media.
This dialogue box is gonna pop up
and over here under preset,
you just scroll to the bottom and choose YouTube 1080p.
Now, if you did shoot that in 4K,
that option is there as well,
depending on which clip you started with
and what you're favoring.
From that point, I do a little bit more custom tweaking
by hitting match source and use maximum rendered quality.
I change my output name and I name that
to whatever the episode is,
in this case, How I Make a Two Minute Tuesday.
I hit save, export, and you are finished.
Once that video's done exporting,
I upload it to YouTube, give it a name,
give it a thumbnail, I hit send,
you guys get notified, the comments begin,
and we start all over again the next day.
So guys, that is how I make a Two Minute Tuesday video.
It's quite involved.
I hope you've learned something from the process.
Even still if you didn't,
I hope you enjoyed watching the process.
It's something that I'm really passionate about.
I love doing it, I love, like I said,
watching how other people work
and the workflow involved.
Let me know what you guys do for a workflow below.
I love hearing about this kind of stuff
and we can get that conversation started,
so hit that like button if you liked this video,
subscribe if you aren't already,
and, and I will see you guys in the next video.
Oh, but wait, you're probably wondering,
what about the timer?
And because I just blew it so bad in this video,
I didn't even bother putting the timer in,
because let's just say it's just
getting embarrassing at this point.
Two Minute Tuesday is more of a phrase at this point,
but I still throw it in there
every now and then to try to keep the theme going.
All right, that's all I got.
Now I'm officially done.
I'll see you guys in the next video.
(dreamy music)