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Making the Podcast: Planning out the "Set"


Chapters

0:0 Introduction
0:28 Equipment and software
1:41 The ongoing battle with lighting
2:19 What's the deal with the hat?
3:27 Blue Yeti microphone is life

Whisper Transcript | Transcript Only Page

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | All right, it's day three.
00:00:09.340 | I've been doing a lot of tests with video and audio
00:00:13.420 | to figure out like what's the best way to do this
00:00:16.240 | and how do I do it as cheaply as possible
00:00:20.080 | 'cause again, I'm still unemployed.
00:00:21.960 | And so I did a few things.
00:00:24.800 | For recording the video, I'm using a MacBook Pro.
00:00:26.960 | This is just my personal machine.
00:00:29.240 | I'm using Zoom and I tested QuickTime.
00:00:32.520 | Zoom is cool.
00:00:33.880 | If you have the ability to record to your desktop,
00:00:36.160 | it's great.
00:00:37.000 | You get an audio and video file.
00:00:39.560 | I haven't done video edits yet,
00:00:40.960 | but I assume it'll be helpful
00:00:42.240 | once I get to that part of the process.
00:00:44.960 | And then I use QuickTime.
00:00:47.400 | QuickTime seems to be great.
00:00:49.000 | So I think for my solo videos, I'm gonna do QuickTime.
00:00:53.320 | And then when I do my interviews, I'm gonna use Zoom.
00:00:56.960 | And that was the first part of it.
00:00:59.640 | I did some video tests
00:01:01.360 | and then it came down to equipment and lighting.
00:01:05.280 | Again, I wear glasses,
00:01:07.960 | so I can't do big green lights everywhere
00:01:10.600 | 'cause you'll see it on my glasses.
00:01:12.680 | And my house is not very well decorated.
00:01:15.000 | I don't have these really cool, interesting backgrounds
00:01:16.840 | like most YouTubers have.
00:01:18.800 | I'll probably need to figure that out
00:01:20.280 | and stage something or maybe get a green screen
00:01:23.180 | or a backdrop.
00:01:25.480 | So this, again, I'm gonna be in this room
00:01:27.360 | until I figure something better.
00:01:28.960 | And I'm not sure if the doors and the walls are too busy,
00:01:33.640 | so I might shoot some video
00:01:35.320 | with just maybe a solid background.
00:01:37.120 | Like maybe when I'm interviewing people,
00:01:38.400 | so it's less distracting.
00:01:39.360 | I don't know.
00:01:40.200 | Still trying to figure that out.
00:01:41.320 | I did realize also lighting was important
00:01:44.280 | 'cause the natural light,
00:01:46.240 | obviously it differs by time of day.
00:01:49.360 | I'm finding that 10 to 11 a.m. is really, really good
00:01:53.520 | 'cause the sun's not super hot or bright
00:01:56.440 | and seems to be the most consistent.
00:01:58.320 | So that's what I'm gonna do.
00:01:59.440 | I think that's gonna be my window.
00:02:00.520 | So every day I'm gonna prepare as much as I can.
00:02:02.520 | The next day I know that this 10 to 12 slot
00:02:06.160 | is like my video shooting window.
00:02:08.040 | I have canned lights in the ceiling,
00:02:11.840 | like the recessed lights,
00:02:12.680 | and it's right above me.
00:02:15.120 | And so it casts a crazy shadow.
00:02:17.360 | And so I'm trying to figure that out.
00:02:19.000 | You might be wondering,
00:02:19.840 | "Whoa, why not just take off your hat?"
00:02:22.200 | Funny story, I don't know how I never noticed before,
00:02:27.120 | I can't keep my hairstyle consistent.
00:02:29.720 | There's some days I wake up,
00:02:31.280 | I've got a cowlick and I can't get it down,
00:02:33.520 | doesn't matter how much product.
00:02:35.080 | There's some days where my hair looks amazing.
00:02:37.520 | It's like, "Oh my God,
00:02:38.360 | "if I can shoot all the videos at once, that'd be great."
00:02:40.560 | 'Cause it's just perfectly coiffed.
00:02:42.280 | It's doing its thing.
00:02:43.160 | It's like, right?
00:02:44.840 | And then the most normal days,
00:02:47.520 | like it doesn't look like that.
00:02:48.520 | It's like, it's all inconsistent.
00:02:51.040 | So I might default to this hat situation.
00:02:53.920 | Maybe eventually I have a brand cap or something like that,
00:02:55.920 | but then this is just one less thing for me to worry about.
00:02:59.080 | I'm aware of things like shadow.
00:03:02.560 | And so again, someone who's more of a video purist,
00:03:06.000 | like they might critique me on that.
00:03:08.280 | I did notice because my lights above me are really,
00:03:10.240 | really hot, my forehead shines.
00:03:12.840 | And so maybe I need to use like some powder
00:03:16.440 | from my wife or something.
00:03:17.760 | I did put a piece of paper over the can light
00:03:20.080 | to kind of soften it a little bit.
00:03:21.840 | The first major purchase I made though was this.
00:03:27.120 | This is a Blue Yeti mic.
00:03:28.960 | I got this off of Amazon.
00:03:31.400 | Again, I looked at all my options available.
00:03:32.920 | My budget, quite frankly, I was like,
00:03:34.160 | "Dude, I need to spend something that's $120 or less."
00:03:38.440 | And I'm at home, so I've always got people running around.
00:03:42.680 | Anyways, that's life, right?
00:03:44.680 | So basically, this Blue Yeti mic,
00:03:48.760 | it's about 120 on Amazon.
00:03:53.400 | But then there's a sale right now for like $99.
00:03:56.960 | And then Best Buy price matched it.
00:03:59.760 | And so I got this one at Best Buy
00:04:01.080 | 'cause if I wanna return to the store, maybe it's easier.
00:04:04.480 | It does allow me to change the gain and has different modes.
00:04:08.440 | So if I were to ever sit across from a guest,
00:04:11.040 | we would use the same one.
00:04:12.160 | It's just easy to do and has a mute button
00:04:16.960 | because I don't know, maybe sometimes I wanna scratch my nose
00:04:18.920 | or whatever it is, I bump something
00:04:20.240 | and I just need to mute it.
00:04:21.400 | Or I have kids walking around my room
00:04:22.760 | like they do right now.
00:04:24.280 | So that's my first major purchase.
00:04:25.960 | So far, I'm pretty happy with it.
00:04:27.240 | The quality of it seems pretty good.
00:04:29.200 | I probably need to get a foam thing
00:04:31.120 | so it does my P pronunciations,
00:04:33.920 | don't shock the microphone.
00:04:36.640 | But this is where I'm at.
00:04:38.320 | This is my first purchase, guys.
00:04:39.920 | [NO SPEECH]