- So, the keen-eyed among you have noticed
that the last few videos on my channel have been filmed
in a brand new space,
and that is because in the last couple of months
I have been building a brand new workspace and studio,
and in this video, I'm gonna give you a quick tour
of that workspace.
Let's get started.
(elegant music)
Okay, so, the biggest change about the space
is actually the size of it.
I am finally out of my bedroom.
I've got a proper, I think it's 400 square foot space
to work with now,
which is so much better for the versatility,
and we've got kind of four areas I'm gonna show you here.
We've got the desk area.
There's a podcasting slash film set area
that's really versatile
and can actually have multiple different backgrounds.
We have a music area,
because I've been doing a lot more music lately
and then finally we have our storage area
where we keep lots of C-stands
and lights and lenses,
and all kinds of stuff like that,
but let's get started with the desk
since that's probably the thing
most of you are interested in.
So, the desk itself is a Jarvis Bamboo Standing Desk
which means it has this little controller over here
which lets me raise the desk
or lower the desk,
or I can actually program in different presets
so I could do a standing preset
or a sitting preset.
So we did a dual monitor video a little while ago
and these dual 4K monitors were featured in that video.
I won't talk too much about them.
The other kind of big thing on this desk are these monitors.
These are Yamaha HS7s I believe
and I now have them on the speaker stands
which put the Tweeters at roughly ear height.
So, even though this space isn't perfectly treated
for audio production,
the monitors are at least at the correct height
for me to mix music,
which I've been trying to learn how to do recently.
Also on the desk we have
a couple of music production things.
There is a Native Instruments Maschine
which they use as a drum pad,
and a S61 Mitty Controller
which works really well for kind of composing songs
and then we have a Corsair K95 Gaming Keyboard,
a Logitech G507 Wireless,
which I have been wanting them to make for years.
They finally answered my prayers.
And a few other knick-knacks.
We've got a wireless phone charger
which my editor, Tony, gave to me.
A few of these.
These are SanDisk.
I think they're SSDs,
but in an external enclosure form.
So, these are actually incredibly fast
and I can edit off of these just as fast
as I would off of an internal drive
which means if I have to travel,
then I can just take one of these with me,
and even if I don't have enough space on my laptop,
I can just put files on this and edit like normal
which is pretty awesome.
So, we also have, we have a Stream Deck here.
So this is the El Gato Stream Deck.
Now a lot of Twitch streamers
and people who do game streaming,
they use this for like tweeting while they're in the game
so they don't have to Alt Tab out of it.
I do something different.
I actually use auto hotkey
to bind each of these buttons
to a different folder that I have
to open really often on my computer.
So, this button is for the current video's
main footage folder.
This one down here is for my screenshots folder,
and when I hit it,
I can automatically bring up a window on my screen.
So with all that said,
let's talk about why the desk is so messy,
because it's definitely not like
a minimalist desk,
and part of the reason for that is
I've been working on a project recently
where I had to use LogicPro to mix some audio,
but I wanted to use all of this hardware.
So, I've got a dock over here
which charges my Macbook
and allows me to plug in
all kinds of stuff into it,
and then right here is what's called a KVM Switch.
This, if I hit this button,
will allow me to switch the keyboard,
the mouse, and the speakers,
the audio interface,
and the monitors over to my Macbook
which I just set in this dock here and plug in
and I'm good to go.
I can use my Macbook just like a desktop.
All right, so underneath the KVM
we have the audio interface.
This is a Scarlett 18i8 from Focusrite
and it's got I think like 18 different inputs,
but I use the main four on the front.
So, a couple of these are podcast mics
which I'll show you a little bit later
and the other two are
well, number one I have my SM7B mic right here
which I'll use for voiceovers
or for vocal practice sometimes,
since I started singing lessons about a year ago
and there's another mic over there
which is for the same purpose
but is a condenser mic.
Also going into the interface
are of course the HS7s
and then these Sennheiser HD 600s
which are my absolute favorite headphones
and I do most of the mixing for the audio in my videos
on these headphones.
Last but not least,
we have the computer on the floor.
It's a good editing computer.
It's got a Core i7 in there.
GTX1080, and it let's me get
most of my editing done,
and then the chair is an Office Master OM5
which I actually learned about from
a Linus Tech Tips video.
I like this chair,
but I think if I were to go back in time
I wouldn't buy it,
because, at least in my opinion,
I think fancy office chairs are a little bit over rated,
and I think it's more important to just get up,
take breaks,
make sure you're exercising,
make sure you're staying flexible,
and honestly, I've worked in wooden kitchen chairs,
coffee shop chairs.
They're all kind of the same.
So, I don't know.
Some people are probably gonna hate me for that opinion
but I don't think fancy office chairs
are all that necessary.
Anyway, let's move over to the video set area
which is also used for our podcast.
So, we have this table here,
which is just from IKEA.
There are a couple of Audio-Technica AT2035
Condenser Microphones attached to it.
These are what we use for the collegeinfogeek podcast
but this table actually pulls triple duty.
We use it for the podcast.
We use it for videos on my channel.
You've probably seen the digital file organization video,
or maybe the recent one that Tony and I did on the iPad
and its note-taking abilities.
And then we also use this as
kind of the main B roll set.
We'll sometimes set up C-stands
with cameras going overhead,
so we can film stuff top down,
or we'll use it for glam footage,
and we also have these shelves from IKEA
with plenty of fun little props
and of course, the obligatory llama on it as well.
And then on this side of the space
is all the music stuff.
I've been into music for many, many years
but in 2019, my head writer, Ransom,
he introduced me to an artist
named Tash Sultana
and if you haven't heard of them
you really need to go listen to them,
but they do what's called live looping
where they use a looper pedal to create loops
with multiple instruments,
and that I kind of went crazy when I learned about that.
So, I've got this looper pedal over here.
It's a Boss RC 300 which allows me
to do multiple loops at the same time.
There is a Line 6 Helix for guitar tones
and base tones.
We have a Korg minilogue xd synthesizer
which is polyphonic
so it can do chords,
it can do arpeggiators,
all kinds of fun stuff.
A Roland SPD-SX drum sampler
so I can do drums.
A mixer for all of it
and then the guitars
and the pianos.
This is a Kawai, I think, CA78.
It's a fantastic digital piano.
So all this runs into the mixer
that runs into this interface
and I'm able to plug my laptop into this if I want to
so I can record,
or I can plug into this PA over here
if I want to just output the sound
and just kind of jam out.
So, I've been doing that to create some compositions
like the one that I just recently put up
on Spotify called,
"Icicle Swords."
which sounds a bit like this.
(electric guitar playing)
And, of course, I'll have that linked
in the description down below,
but we're gonna move on to the storage area.
So, this is one of the reasons I'm really happy to be
out of the bedroom.
I have more storage for the gear that we need
to make better quality videos.
So, let's kind of start back in the corner here.
I've collected a lot of tripods over the years,
but my absolute favorite one is this Sachtler one.
MKBHD talked about this in his studio tour video
and this thing is amazing
because you can just adjust the height of it
with three little levers at the top
and that has enabled us to just
take a lot more B-Roll a lot quicker
and one of the biggest things
that I try to keep in mind when building the studio
and whenever I buy a piece of gear is
is it going to reduce the amount of friction involved
in creating something.
If I can make that friction go away,
if I can make the process faster,
that means I can make better things more quickly.
One other thing that I do want to note
about most of the tripods
not all of them
because we do have a bigger camera we're working with now
for some of the shots.
But, for the camera that Tony's holding
on the gimbal right now
we usually have these GorillaPod heads
on, we have Lorex detachment on every camera we use.
I actually have an old ADD right here.
So, there's the attachment right there
and then I try to keep a GorillaPod head
on nearly every tripod
or tripod attachment that we use.
That way, instead of having to screw into a tripod plate
which, again, takes time
adds friction.
We can just click it in instantly
and we're good to go.
So, I have that on here
I have that on the overhead setup
which we're gonna talk about
in a little bit.
I have one of this C-stand here
and that just makes creating things really quick.
I wanna give a shout out to Bob Clagett at
I Like to Make Stuff for giving me that tip.
And speaking of C-stands
we do have, I think, two C-stands right now
these things have been a godsend.
I used to use the cheap light stands off of Amazon
and, well, they work for cheap lights
but when we're suspending cameras over stuff,
when we're putting heavy lights on things
the all-steel C-stands really, really help.
And for anybody who does their own video production
you're gonna want sandbags
because if you throw a sandbag on a C-stand
this thing is not gonna tip over
even if you have a good amount of weight on the C-stand.
Anybody who works in film production will tell you
these things are worth their weight in gold
even though they're just their weight in sand.
Speaking of lighting,
I'm gonna come back to this
but I do want to quickly go over here
and show you one other thing that's kind of above my desk.
So, one thing that I've tried to do
with my video production
is use better lighting techniques.
One of those techniques is to use what's called,
a hair light.
So, we have a light that's kind of above my desk
so whenever I'm sitting
and doing a regular video
I kind of have some nice lighting
on the back of me.
But, this thing is easily able to,
and if you wanna step back you can show this,
swing over
and now we can light B-roll
that's going top-down on the table
really, really easily.
So again, it's all about versatility.
So now, let's go over to the shelves here.
These are theme of the video,
IKEA shelves
but they work really well.
Here we've just collected a lot of the film gear
that we need quick access to.
So, all of our lenses
and we've collected quite a few lenses.
We're now using a Canon C200.
Most of the A-roll that we shoot
which is pretty great
the quality on it is amazing.
We have some audio gear up here.
These are the camcorders that we actually used to use
for the podcast,
but now that we have the C200
which can film for more than thirty minutes
we don't really need these for much anymore,
so maybe I should sell them.
Another thing,
another one of these little Joby GorillaPods
on a tripod attachment.
So any tripod that doesn't have
a GorillaPod head already on it,
we can just throw this attachment on there
and we're good to go.
Same with our little sliders.
So, if we want cool slider shots
I've got a GorillaPod attachment on there.
We're good to go with that.
And then over here,
we have a pegboard
also from IKEA
but I do wanna give a shout out to Matt D'Avella
for giving me the idea for this guy.
This is where we keep the gimbal, usually
if we're not using it,
which we are right now.
We keep SwitchPod
which my friends Pat and Caleb actually invented
and I Kickstarted.
Actually love this thing.
And I actually don't know how this little
Ooga Ooga got here.
I think you did that, didn't you?
(laughs)
Actually, I like it.
It's dope.
We have these little drawers, too.
So, we've got some little attachment screws, bolts
stuff like that can go in here.
And right beneath it we have a drawer unit
which also doubles as the charging station.
So, for batteries.
I want to get a label maker
so I can have a dead
and a live thing.
Right now, I've just been putting dead ones up here
and fully charged ones down here.
So, I'll just throw them in there
when I'm not using them.
They'll charge up.
And then this one is batteries for the C200.
I've got a IOS cord for iPads
and stuff like that.
And then within these drawers we have
a kind of rough organizational method
that makes sense to me.
So, tools and stuff go in here.
This drawer is gonna be for just random film things
like filters.
This is a random cord drawer
so HDMI cables, DisplayPort cables,
and then this is the audio drawer
which is mainly just XLR cables for microphones
and this is the microphone that we actually shoot
most of our videos on.
Down here, we've got extra extension cords,
extra plug strips,
and finally just some random stuff
that goes to the C200.
Try to keep that grouped.
That brings us to the last part of the studio
that I'll show you
which is the overhead setup
So, sometimes we will setup for overhead
with a C-stand in the B-roll area,
but this is just for quick
and dirty overhead shots.
I can go in here
instantly turn these lights on
and then if I have a book that I'm gonna show off,
I can slide the camera into here
again, we have a Joby GorillaPod head on this arm
which I believe is from Manfrotto.
And we can just do really, really quick overhead shots.
And then I had this monitor laying around
so I thought,
well I can flip the screen out on the camera
and see what I'm doing.
But, if I wanna have a better view of what I'm doing
I can actually plug this little HDMI,
mini HDMI cord,
into the camera
and then see what I'm doing on the monitor.
And the monitor is on an arm
so it can easily be adjusted
for position.
And if you can come in close here,
the one thing I do want to mention,
I have these little sticky table holders.
These are super cheap
and you can get em at Home Depot, actually.
So, if I don't want this cable just falling back here,
I can just easily shove it in there when I'm not using it.
And these actually work really well
for phone chargers,
any kind of cable that you want on your desk
but that you want out of the way.
It's a really nice, little handy thing.
So, like I said earlier
one of the reason I set the studio up this way
was to reduce the friction involved
in creating things
as much as possible.
And when I'm actually sitting down at the computer,
one of the other tools I use that really reduces
the friction in my life
is dashlane.
Dashlane is a tool
that gives me a ton of shortcuts
for what I need to do online.
It automatically logs me into websites,
and even autofills long forms.
And it works on every single platform that I use.
Works on my PC,
works on my Mac,
works on every single one of my IOS devices
when I'm on the go.
And if I were an Android user,
it would work there as well.
Dashlane essentially gives me a convenient
and secure place to store
and access my passwords,
my form data,
and even payment information
so I don't have to go hunting for my credit card
or build some sort of memory palace
every time I want to buy something.
And that helps me spend more time doing the work
that I want to do.
So, if you want to give Dashlane a try
for yourself
go over to
dashlane.com/collegeinfogeek
and sign up to get a free thirty day trial
of dashlane premium
where you could try all the features out for yourself.
And if you do like it
you can also use the code
college info geek
once you upgrade to a paid subscription
to get ten percent off
and to support my channel.
Big thanks, as always, to Dashlane
for sponsoring this episode
and thank you for watching as well.
Hopefully, you got something useful
out of episode
and I will see you in the next video.
You can get subscribed right there
if you haven't done so already,
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