The goal and dream is for one day this
to all be a studio upgrade.
Hey, my name is Matt Johnson
and I'm so excited to introduce you to who is Matt?
Studio 4.0.
Now you're probably wondering what I mean by 4.0.
And the reason I'm calling it 4.0 is that originally
my first ever recording space for YouTube videos was in Dallas,
and it was a bedroom slash office that I converted into a filming space,
meaning that aside from the one wall that was clear to film it,
everything else was pretty messy in that room.
Then we moved and we had enough space for me to have a dedicated
recording room, which worked well, but it was only ten feet
by eight feet or so, so I did not have a ton
of space to really set up a background or anything like that.
And it was good, but because we were renting,
I wasn't really able to modify the room at all.
After that we moved in and we bought a house
and so I needed a recording space, of course.
So I literally took up half of our master bedroom
with all of my recording equipment and sound blankets,
and I managed to make a pretty decent looking recording space
with the green wall paint that my wife wanted for the master bedroom.
So if you're wondering why the background was green in those videos,
that was not a stylistic choice on my part.
That was to keep my marriage happy. So that's why we went with that.
And so that brings us to
who is Matt Studio 4.0, which as you can see, is a lot bigger.
There's actually like
ten feet behind you as well that I haven't showed you yet. And
while this space looks amazing now,
it didn't look so amazing back about a year ago.
Whenever we bought this house, this was a workshop that was attached
to the main garage of the house, and it had a lot of cheap wood paneling,
concrete floors, stained drywall, you name it.
There were a lot of issues.
And so over the past year or so, I've been working on it.
Every few nights I would come out here, tear some wood paneling
down, take out some insulation, and then once that was done,
I had a large hole here because there used to be a garage door
here that went out to the garage.
But of course, me and my dad, we had to frame up a wall, put that in,
and then we had to put in insulation, which thankfully we were able to get rock
wall insulation,
which if you've done any home building, Rockwell is really good for soundproofing.
So while this room is by a street kid or cars at all, in addition,
I also put in a mini split AC unit to keep this room cool
because it's not a part of the main house air conditioning it's on right now.
Can you hear it now? It's fantastic.
Okay, I leave this thing on all the time and it is super quiet
and it keeps the room cool.
So it's a little side note for you if you're ever thinking about building out
a YouTube space, either in like a back shed or in your garage, etc.,
maybe split system.
Stuart Okay, super quiet, super efficient.
Don't even here.
I love it. You can record with it on no sweat.
Huge fan of it then had to put up new drywall re texture, all of the drywall
including the ceiling to cover up any imperfections that were in it.
And at that point the room was really a blank slate
where I could really start to do whatever I wanted to with it.
That, of course, led into the next main issue I dealt with,
which was the sound, as you can hear right now.
I think it sounds fantastic in here, but it did not always sound that way.
Concrete floors, bare walls with only an eight foot ceiling.
This room had tons of echo.
Welcome to the new studio.
And as you can hear, the audio is terrible.
Even if I get closer to the microphone, the audio is still terrible.
So much echo, so much reverb.
It was to the point
where I put up sound blankets in here that I'd used in the master bedroom
of the house.
But because the ceilings are so low and there was no carpet, etc.,
there was a crazy amount of reverb still happening, so sound like it wouldn't work.
Especially because I wanted to go with a lighter esthetic here
and putting sound blankets on the walls wouldn't really be a super cool look.
So I had to ignore the sound blankets and go
with a crapload of acoustic panels from GK Acoustics.
I believe there are 26
in this room, but they helped out a lot.
Talking more about sound panels for a second here,
I originally thought that I could purchase little square sound panels like this,
which hey yeah, there are like it does absorb
some of these sound, but not a ton.
So there's like a little band aid.
It's okay, but if you have a room this big with this much reverb,
you have to go more advanced than this.
So while I like these and I think they match the wall color pretty well,
I really wanted something more in-depth and thicker.
I had a lot of options for things to go with.
For that, I had purchased some acoustic max sound panels for the other room,
but I'd heard
really good things about JC acoustics, and I knew that they were also thicker.
So looking at this JC acoustic panel, you heard the sound reduction of that thing.
But this thing here.
Hello, hello.
It just kills the sound in reverb.
I love it.
And so what's great about these is you are getting that extra thickness,
better absorption and color wise, and they match the walls pretty closely.
I wanted a very white esthetic for this and I think that's working well.
So yeah, these panels, super sound absorbent,
you put enough up in your room, you're going to hear a huge difference.
I'm very, very happy with them.
In addition, I put down all of these rugs, many of which have been donated
by either my family or friends
or my mom found one in a dumpster and I was like, perfect.
It's going to be all over the place.
But I think it looks really cool, has a nice character
and the nice thing is that I can always swap these out as I get
bigger rugs or different colored rugs, etc.
For right now though, they're doing their job
reducing a lot of the echo and reverb and I'm very happy about it.
Lastly, once I got all these sound panels up, I was still dealing
with a lot of echo and slap sound.
And so what I ended up doing was investing in some curtains
for all of the windows in the house.
And these floor to ceiling curtains really killed
a lot more of the echo this far as these curtains go.
These were purchased from Target, I believe.
Lots of Target stuff here.
You can't go wrong with buying cheap stuff from Target.
And in this case, these are also room darkening shades.
So it is daylight right now, but we have a window shade.
And then on top of that, the curtain as well.
So what's nice is that I can use all purely artificial light in here.
And so if I'm filming at night,
it's going to look the same as if I film during the day.
Of course I do have the option though,
with four windows in this room to be able to open this up
and then have some natural light coming in if I want to.
But considering that I'm usually filming and recording at night
after my child has gone to sleep, usually works better
just to have everything covered up and just be using artificial lighting.
Speaking of lights, then we had to put up lights before
there were fluorescent lights, tubes which are not the prettiest.
And I wanted something that had a good clean light color.
So we end up putting up these lights, which I'm using for this example here,
because we're just talking about the room, but usually these are off
and I have other studio lighting for that.
So now that you know how the room has been constructed, let's talk
general setup of the room.
Of course, first thing you want to notice, we have the old Medusa lamp.
Why would we not have
the iconic lamp that has been in all my videos?
Right. Got to be here.
Love it, love it, love it, love it.
And then in addition this over here is my old desk
that I used to use to edit videos on, etc.
in the office, but that has now been replaced with a
standing desk, which there's a whole video about giving you a tour of that as well.
Linked in the corner and the description if you want to check that out.
So now desk is in here and it's going to be used as a place
to put any products or anything else that I'm talking about.
Next thing I'm sure you're going to notice is the paper backdrops.
I always wanted paper backdrops, but I didn't have a big enough space for them.
Finally had space.
So we got the blue, we got the orange, we got white.
And I kind of want more,
you know, I kind of want like a green screen.
Green.
There's so many things I could go crazy with this.
Okay, but we're starting with three and I really love the look of this specially.
What you shine a light on it. It looks really cool.
Also, there's a plant by the plant.
To be clear, this is fake
from Target because yeah.
There's, there's no natural light coming in.
Rachel is now informing me that I could actually invest in some light
light bulbs that would provide photosynthesis to plants in here.
But I'm not trying to grow things.
I just I just wanted the cool background thing.
So we went with that.
Now lets talk rest of the room.
As you've seen, there's this whiter spot.
But one of the main reasons I wanted this room was the length of the room.
So if you come with me over here, we have storage
for all of my things, which this isn't never really going to be on camera.
I don't think.
If it is, it's no big deal, but not super esthetically pleasing,
just tons and tons of bags and cases
and things that I use often as well as a charging shelf sliders,
tripods, minor pods, random, other accessories, etc.
But then we keep going and there's more to the room over here.
What? Okay, so this is so cool.
So we have more sound panels here because I'm usually talking in this direction.
So I really wanted to make sure that these sound would be absorbed
and not be reflecting back whenever I'm talking so pretty open over here,
the rugs become significantly more eclectic at this point.
Here we have rooster rugs, chicken rugs.
I just needed rugs for the floor. Okay, let's not.
Let's not worry about
what we're using here, okay?
These might get replaced eventually, but hey, it's absorbing sound right now,
and that's character. Character.
So that leads us into my filming area, which this is all a filming area,
but you know what I'm saying?
Where I'm usually sitting on camera.
So main thing I want you to notice here, look at the depth of this room.
It's it's crazy.
I love it. Okay? It's just great.
So much depth here.
This is the main thing I saw as soon as I saw this house
and I saw this room, I said, I love this depth
because I have so much room to add different layers in the background.
I say that having not really set up any layers yet, but hey,
studio is a work in progress.
So this is all version 1.0 of Studio 4.0.
So of course, see, stand holding,
boom, arm holding, microphone
f1i This is actually a painter's pole that I bought at Home
Depot in 2009, still going strong.
13 years later, if you need a cheap boom pole.
Well, to be clear that you can buy a cheap one on Amazon these days.
But back in the day, there were not many cheap boom poles.
So I had to get creative talking specific microphones and recorders that I'm using.
This is the deity se mike two which super clean, super crisp.
I love how this microphone sounds that's running via excel
are down to the zoom f three which dude for YouTube recording
just turn it on press record you know you're getting good 32 bit for audio
I love it for that don't get me wrong I still love the test cam eight.
But that's more for weddings where I need more advanced inputs, etc.
for YouTube, just having this thing ready to go at any point.
Really, really magical video recording wise.
I'm using the Sony A7 s three, which I want.
Fantastic camera. Absolutely love it.
That also has a 24 Mm.
F 1.4 on the front of it which I'm lying to you.
It actually does it right now it's got a 16 to 35, but that's
because we're using the 24 millimeter to record this video.
So normally that's on here but nice.
So F 1.4 if I want to get really boker licious with the background,
really, really great.
Next of course we have the aperture 120 d light workhorse lt absolutely
love it how I get the 300 or 600 total overkill
I know, but could be a lot of fun, especially with a room this size.
I would love to do maybe a book light set up of some sort, but for now
this is working well with the big soft box manfrotto tripod.
Still working good. Also from 2010.
Still great. Love it.
Small HD monitor for viewing myself.
This is the focus seven which I don't think they make anymore.
Unfortunately.
And then to help out with the film, I have a golden reflector on this side.
It's just picking up a little bit of that key
light and helping bounce around to the other side of my face, which is good.
This right here is a RGV led light.
Currently it's just set to white and I have this custom cardboard wall
that I put on it
so it would not be shining on my face, but just into the background.
There's also what I used in the previous room set up.
I just brought it into here like this, and so it provides
a little bit more light into the background.
Speaking of lights, we have a lot more lights to talk about lighting wise here.
I already told you about the 120 DX and the little RGV led
that's just filling up light in the background.
And my main thinking for this space is
I wanted to go for a lighter and airier feel to things.
If I was to think of someone that I was trying to
at least loosely emulate, it would be McBee HD with his very white
bright studio setups, more vibrant colors, more vibrant lighting.
That's kind of what I was wanting to do
because I never really have had the option for that in the past.
Version 1.0 Studio was just me in my rental house with gross brown walls
that I had to work with Studio 2.0 still gross brown walls that I was renting.
Studio 3.0 green walls that my wife paint.
And she's filming me right now.
So I cannot tell you if I love them or not because she's right here
and she'll kill me.
They were okay, but I wanted something lighter.
And so this space, I can make it as light as I want, which is really cool.
So just nice pop of color over here.
Shine a light on it.
Is the name light for a 60 B?
It is my color. I'm not using it for by color.
The main reason is that I have another name light for is a 60
that I wanted a little bit brighter.
So I have the B and I have the 60 and I figured that I would
just set them up like this.
So four for A, 60 B is shining here
providing a little bit of cool color on to the paper.
And then we have the other four is a 60 up here which I can turn on
and that usually acts as a hair light for my hair.
Lastly, we have the aperture 60 x, which whenever I'm not using this
as a wedding spotlight.
Wow. Does it make for a fantastic background light?
So I've paired it with the spotlight mini zoom, which is just a mass.
It makes this thing look like a bazooka, but I absolutely love it.
So that is shining in this way.
I clipped a little color gel to the front of it.
I could cut it. I'm planning on cutting it.
I just haven't gotten around to it because like I said, I literally just got this
set up very recently and I've filmed it like three times now.
So we're, we're still dialing stuff in, but I have a lot of other colors.
I like the orange, so with it it has a drop in filter
that I currently have set to this very fine sort of
wavy line set up here.
Before I had like lightning coming out of this light in the previous set up.
Now we have this cool lighting backdrop here.
Lastly, we have one more light
and that is this guy that's hiding up here.
Oh, this is the soon well,
since a tube TV and it is an RGV tube light.
That is pretty darn awesome.
It can do any number of colors.
Crazy large amount to them.
But I have to confess, currently I'm just using it with white.
Sorry about that.
Oh. So I plug it in up here.
Turns on and that provides just a little more fill light for the room.
Now let me turn off these overhead lights and you can see how the setup looks.
So as you can see, it's a little bit darker in here now
and my key lights over there.
So it's not shining directly on me.
But what's nice is that
I feel like I finally have a space where I can have
the color pop that I want, along with the white backdrop that I want.
And everything is still really customizable.
Like this is one setup, but I can literally move
this paper backdrop over here. I can move the plant out of the way.
I can change this entire color light here, remove it completely.
I love that I have the ability to shift things around.
And so my thinking is that eventually I would love to have everything on wheels
of some sort, have all the C stands on wheels, have this desk on wheels,
or maybe in one of those standing desks that has wheels.
And then I can literally just move everything around the space
to exactly where I want it to be and have it be a very modular space
where depending on what I'm recording, I can set up in different ways.
So yeah, this is who is my art studio 4.0.
I am so excited to have such a usable and variable
space like this with so much versatility.
I don't entirely know what I'm going to do with it moving forward.
There's a lot of options here, but it is a blank
canvas with good acoustics and that's all you can ever really hope for, right?
Anything else above that is just gravy.
So yeah, super, super excited
to be making a lot of videos for you in this space.
If you have any questions or need any clarification
about anything at all, please leave me a comment down below.
Would love to answer it.
Please check out my Standing Desk Guide as well.
That is linked in the corner and in the description.
And yeah, have a great day.
Upgrade upgrades.
Well, upgrade.
Upgrade,
yes. Upgrade upgrade.
No. Upgrade upgrade.
All right.
Well, hello from the garage.
So a little messy right now. Yes,
this is
well, hello from the garage slash workshop.
It's a little messy in here.
Renovating, renovating everything.