It's time for a behind the scenes look at Life in Japan
And all the cameras and technology we use to make this show happen.
Well I have always been such a big fan technology: music, computers, video games and cameras.
Yes, I can remember my first camera. It was a little digital ELPH Powershot
That thing was so cool and compact.
Stylish, it had a little zoom there, just put it in your pocket.
I ended up taking a lot of pictures with that. I took it everywhere.
It would even take little videos, and I thought that was revolutionary:
That the same little device could take pictures and videos.
We don't think twice about it today because we all have cell phones that do that for us,
But 20 years ago, that was something else.
So before Ruth and I moved to Brazil I thought "I have got to get a camcorder. I've got to capture this."
And at that time, HD was the new thing.
And Sony had just come out with an HD camcorder
It used Mini DVs, and you put those little tapes in there, and you could record high definition video.
Oh wow was I excited.
I remember paying $2,000 for this camera, that was a lot of money for us 20 years ago or so.
So two years ago, when we went to start Life in Japan, I had this camera right here.
This is what I considered my main camera: the Nikon D500.
Bam! This thing is pretty legit, as far as a camera goes.
Awesome stills quality,
The video quality greatly improved,
But it didn't autofocus while taking videos!
So many times I was trying to shoot videos of the family, and I'd have to be fidgeting with the focus on here,
Stopping the video and refocusing and focusing again.
I loved the video quality that came out of this.
But with so many limitations, it was just not practical.
And would hand this to my wife and say "Hey, can you take a video?"
And she was like "I don't know what to do with that. Don't even give it to me."
Forget about that.
And she had been begging all along:
She said "Nate, just get me a simple camcorder I can open up and start shooting."
That's what I want.
And as I looked into it, I came across this:
It's the Sony FDR-AX53
This camera is the easiest camera I have ever used.
You open it up, and it's ready to go.
And it only takes a moment to get ready to go.
But what was really revolutionary was the in-body stabilization on this thing. It's fantastic.
You can hold it with one hand, zoom in, zoom out.
You hit record. Bam. You're ready to go. It's recording. It's doing a great job.
It's lightweight, it's easy to use. Anybody can use this!
You close the screen, it turns off.
You want to shoot again? Open it back up, and you're shooting.
What I found was that more often than not, instead of grabbing for the Nikon,
Which is technically a superior image, better lenses, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
But a pain to use, Instead of grabbing for this...
I went for Ruth's camera. And more and more I was using Ruth's camera, and loving it.
And the grill master. That's right.
We've got onions, potatoes and corn.
Hi! Hi!
Whoa! Do you like that? Is that your favorite?
And honestly, this is the camera we used all the up through the summer of 2019.
Tons of our videos were shot on this.
And outside, in light, it does a great job.
Indoors, it struggles a little more, because it has a smaller sensor in it.
But outside, nothing can beat this camera. It's handy. You through it in your bag and you go.
And it's a much better quality than an iPhone, say.
And, another amazing thing about this is that I think the internal audio is some of the best audio I've ever heard for any kind of camera.
You can literally just take the audio right off of this and you're ready to go.
What are we doing? Blowing bubbles.
Hey big guy!
Oh my goodness!
Sony's handycam absolutely nails it.
In fact, if I were able to, I would just keep using this.
What is it today that you do? A big huge earthquake drill.
Oh, an earthquake drill? Yeah, no, like a HUGE earthquake practice.
After the Summer of 2019, when Life in Japan saw breakthrough success, I decided to look for a dedicated camera to shoot our episodes.
I settled on the robust Canon XF400. This little tank of a camera comes with good audio and video options,
including many things I missed in the Handycam like built in ND filters and professional audio options.
The highlight feature for me though was the bigger image sensor that greatly improved the image quality.
Up until now, it has been our main A camera.
When I upgraded to this Canon [camera], the internal audio was not as good as the Sony I'm using to record on right now.
But, you could make up for that by using the shotgun microphone on here which does a great job picking [audio] up.
But I noticed it would only pick up things right in front of you,
When I would talk to the camera at different times, you couldn't hear it very well.
So that's when I researched and found this.
This is a Rode Stereo Mic.
It shoots it two directions, you can see left and right,
And it has fantastic audio.
Instead of using this massive microphone mounted on top of here,
I'm able to take this off and use the Rode microphone 95 percent of the time.
And that's the way we roll.
And then there's also a lot of specialty shots in Life in Japan.
Like those beautiful areal shots.
Well, a lot of those come right from here — the drone.
This thing is small, you can fold it up, take it with you.
It's easy to use, it's fun to use, it's safe to use.
And you get great areal images with that.
Another thing I love to use,
This little guy right here: the GoPro.
GoPro's are awesome because they're waterproof, they're tough, they're durable.
They have a really wide angle of view.
So you can hand them to kids and let them run through a playground.
You can mount this on your car and take a time-lapse while you're driving. Very cool.
And last, but not least,
Perhaps the most important camera that we use on Life in Japan,
Is this right here: it's the iPhone.
Because this is always in my pocket, so many times I've pulled this out just to grab a little clip of something that was happening.
And these [clips] are a huge part of Life in Japan.
After all the footage is shot, then comes the real task of editing.
Which is importing all the footage that we shot,
Organizing it and getting it ready to edit.
To store all of this footage, I bought a 12TB hard drive array.
This little monster by G-Tech is awesome,
But I've used 11TB of it so far, I'm going to have to look for the next biggest thing.
Which is not cheap.
I also produce music, so that's why you see all these keyboards here.
Because a lot of the songs that I write, I write for Life in Japan as well as for Paz Church and different places.
So much of my time is spent like this: editing at my computer.
I have a MacBook Pro which I bought specifically for editing video and producing music.
And I've connected it to my nice big monitor so I have plenty of screen real estate to use when I'm producing things.
And this really helps.
Once the video is all done and edited, the music is in, then it's time to subtitle everything.
I write out everything that is said, it usually takes a couple of hours to do that.
And then I send it to Ryoji and Miruka who translate it into Japanese.
There is a lot that goes into each one of these videos.
Then, once that's all done, you're still not done!
Because perhaps the most important part of the YouTube video is the title and the thumbnail you put on it.
Yeah, there you go. Smile! Go "Ah!" Ah!
You can make a great video, but if it has a bad description, or a not so good thumbnail, then it won't get watched.
The reverse is also true: if you make a great thumbnail, a great title.
Oh! People go in — they want to watch it, but it's not what they're expecting,
Then they're disappointed.
Sorry if I've done that to you before. I'm trying to learn!
Hey Dude! What do you think? Did you see this?
Is that cool? Do you like it?
When you're finally feeling good about the thumbnail, it's a huge relief.
Today was supposed to be the day that the olympics were starting here in Tokyo.
Since that's not happening, why don't you go to Life in Japan and watch Summer Weekends in 2020 — you'll love it!
And the weekend tradition continues: watching Life in Japan together!
So thanks for watching this episode of Life in Japan.
It's quite a bit different from the other ones that I've done before
But if you like it, give it a thumbs up,
We'll see you next time on Life in Japan.