I completely gutted and rebuilt my studio for the first time in 6 years and would you believe it– some valuable lessons were learned along the way!
🎙This week's mic:
•Rode NT1 Signature Series
https://geni.us/nt1signatureseries (Amazon)
•The NT1SS was running through the Rodecaster Duo on the NT1 preset.
•Send a voice, text, or video message to be included in a future episode!
tom@enthusiasmproject.com or use the audio submission button at himynameistom.com!
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
🎯Support the Show
https://patreon.com/tombuck
https://buymeacoffee.com/tombuck
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
📲 Connect!
•All My Podcasts: https://himynameistom.com/podcasts
•YouTube: www.youtube.com/tombuck
S12E4 | Series Episode 168
Affiliate links mean I earn a commission from qualifying purchases. This helps support the show at no additional cost to you.
Podcast Artwork by Kevin Ramirez
Original theme music written by Patrick Boberg and performed by Mike Alvarez
I completely gutted and rebuilt my studio for the first time in 6 years and would you believe it– some valuable lessons were learned along the way!
🎙This week's mic:
•Rode NT1 Signature Series
https://geni.us/nt1signatureseries (Amazon)
•The NT1SS was running through the Rodecaster Duo on the NT1 preset.
•Send a voice, text, or video message to be included in a future episode!
tom@enthusiasmproject.com or use the audio submission button at himynameistom.com!
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
🎯Support the Show
https://patreon.com/tombuck
https://buymeacoffee.com/tombuck
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
📲 Connect!
•All My Podcasts: https://himynameistom.com/podcasts
•YouTube: www.youtube.com/tombuck
S12E4 | Series Episode 168
Affiliate links mean I earn a commission from qualifying purchases. This helps support the show at no additional cost to you.
Podcast Artwork by Kevin Ramirez
Original theme music written by Patrick Boberg and performed by Mike Alvarez
Thank you, hello and welcome. My name is Tom. This is the Enthusiasm Project, season 12, episode 4. And it is four days late if you're listening to this, pretty much when it came out is four days late if you're listening to this, pretty much when it came out, and that's a thing we're gonna be talking about. Why? Because, basically, my whole studio slash office has been torn apart for a long time and it was hard to record during that time. But everything's back now, and so this is this episode, but it ties into what I want to talk about anyway.
Speaker 1:Initially, I wanted to focus on, kind of the concept of cheap versus expensive gear, which is something we've talked about a little bit, but, you know, maybe with a little bit different insight, and then revamping my studio for the first time in six years definitely taught me a lot. So, figured, those are. Those are cool, interesting things to talk about, and that's going to be the main focus of today. Before we do that, though, we do have some gear to talk about and a message, a listener message, to go through as well, so let's dive into those things. Gear rundown, for today I am talking about this.
Speaker 1:I have a little different setup, I mean in terms of equipment it's sort of similar, but I am physically in a different area, as I have taken my main desk, my main workspace for so many years, which has been where I do a lot of work and make videos, and I have taken those two things work and videos and I have separated them, so it's not the same space for both things anymore, which is huge. So I have a little a nice, like actual work desk setup that does not need to function as a primary shooting space either, and that is incredibly helpful. So what I'm on right now is the Rode NT1 Signature Series microphone, the beautiful blue version of the Signature Series, which I it's quite blutiful, I like it a lot and I'm using this is sort of funny. I'm using a newer low profile mic arm that also has a pneumatic thing. I'm working on a video that's comparing different low-profile mic arms, which is where my cheap versus expensive gear idea came from, and this was one of them. It's about $72, and it's kind of nifty.
Speaker 1:You'll sort of see in the video which should come out next week. You'll see sort of me discovering how kind of cool this arm is. So I've been using it right now because I like it quite a bit and this microphone is running into the Rodecaster Duo on the NT1 preset. So that's what we are recording with. I'm still getting used to having the Duo. I put the Duo on my VESA arm on my desk. I still have my desk with the arm which had the Rodecaster Pro 2 on it and now it has the Duo, which at first looked hilariously tiny compared to the Rodecaster Pro, and now I'm a little more used to it. And even though the Duo and the Pro are very similar, there's still a few things like just now I was in the mic settings to look up some of the things and I forgot.
Speaker 1:One of my big complaints with the Duo is unless you're on the home screen you can't tell if it's recording. So right now I'm on the home screen because there's no physical record button Like on the Pro. I press record and the big button glows bright red. On this one it's all on the screen. I can see the red record button, but as soon as I go into a menu like right now I'm in some settings menus I can't see that it's recording, which always gives me like a little bit of a panic attack. Really wish there was a way around that somehow. But anyway, let me turn the mic so I'm a little more on axis there. There we go, we'll get there.
Speaker 1:The Duo is cool and the reason I want to make that switch which is something we'll kind of, you know, touch on more a little bit later is when I'm at my desk I really never need more than two XLR inputs. You know for the most part, and so the Duo is fine. But when I make videos, especially mic comparisons, I often need four because I'm switching, sometimes even more than four because I'm switching between microphones all the time. So it's like, okay, if this is desk workspace, for me the Duo is more than enough, and then the Pro can be talk about this later in a different area for bigger videos and things like that. So that is, that's what you're listening to me on today. That's what I'm running through and still, you know, this is the first thing I've really really recorded in a slightly new setup, so hopefully, hopefully, it's still listenable.
Speaker 1:That being said, let's jump into listener messages. I have one. This is from Homesick Mac. So if you've listened to the podcast, you know Mac has been around a lot. He has his own channel which has a lot of like blues, guitar instrumentation, musician focused stuff. He's been in live streams. Couples he's been around. He's like a pillar of the community for both Heather and I and our combined things. Mac sent me a message and said he tried his absolute. Actually maybe I could even read it. He said he tried his absolute best to get it. Oh, I don't have that page up anymore. Apologies To get it as short as possible, but he really couldn't keep it under three minutes. So we're going to listen to Mac explain stuff. Fortunately he's an awesome explainer, so I get to sit back and listen and you get to sit back and listen to Mac. So let's see what he has to say.
Speaker 2:And I wrote the script myself. I am, however, reading from it to save time, and I'm also practicing until my Elgato prompter arrives later during the spring. So anyway, ai is just starting. No matter what we see today, it will be a children's game compared to what it's going to be in a year or two. I also see a bigger risk, without trying to put out some conspiracy theory here, but whatever we're seeing within AI could have been triggered from above, and I don't mean God.
Speaker 2:I've read discussions claiming that they are letting us play with the good parts of AI while they are running the game with whatever that same AI technology can do for them. Well, okay, back to what I can comprehend. You mentioned some AI Photoshop stuff, and I've been using Luminar Neo before. It was Neo Graphic Editor and they were the first, to my knowledge, to include AI. Then Exposure Software followed and some other editors. But just following the development of Luminar's tools was Carrier Times. Their noiseless plugin is amazing, cleaning up high ISO images. Their skin AI tools, face AI. The masking is so much easier compared to Lightroom or Photoshop, and it's much easier.
Speaker 2:So when it comes to YouTube, I see a development. When it comes to AI, or however we can call that development or not. I see creators openly making AI assembled video, maybe even marking the video on a thumbnail made with AI, for the sake of being efficient in the whole process. Whole process Like here's some stuff that's of value to you as a viewer, but I let the AI assemble it to save time and then I can invest more of my time and effort to create videos that are 100% me, and then the thumbnail could also indicate that, maybe About the order on the desk and a neat working space, as Gil was commenting as well. So I don't need the order necessarily to be creative, but it's important for me that I'm not distracted by other stuff on the table while I'm doing something. So in that regard, it's great to have order.
Speaker 2:I can get some great ideas about something while in the middle of creating a totally different project, and then I always have a notebook on a dedicated place on the desk, no matter how messy it can get sometimes, but it's always there so I can write down something. So let's say, I'm playing guitar. I pull out one instrument after another it's a mess in about 20 minutes, and then I'm doing that you know several songs at the same time or whatever, and then I get in this idea. So the notebook is my savior there. Right well, this is what it could be an ideal world. I'm suspectedly ADHD, so it happens very often that I mess up the clean space and do five or six things at the same time, but then I try to get back on the wagon and do only one thing at the time, which is always the best, of course. Tom, thank you for a great podcast, and I love everything else you do. Of course you know that, so cheers.
Speaker 1:Alrighty, thanks, mac, for that message and apologies that I cut off the beginning of it because I had the USB channel muted on the Duo. Oops, in the beginning he just said that he was not using an AI voice, which was in reference to Bailey's AI generated message from the last episode, which was pretty fun. So there's kind of two things here to talk about. This message. We're talking about you know stuff with AI that we talked about last episode, and also Gil had a message about you know creativity and his teacher, miss Orlando, from Florida, which I still think is hilarious. And talking about creativity like needing order to you know, not coming from chaos in some cases, and so let's kind of break down my thoughts on both of those. I appreciate you sharing those, mac, and I do just want to plug Mac's channel because he's recently celebrated his 100th live stream. If you just go to YouTube and search up Homesick Mac, you'll find it there. Awesome channel, awesome channel in general, but especially if you're a musician and into guitar or into the blues, then you really, really will enjoy it.
Speaker 1:Talking about ai, though, I think you're I think you're you're totally correct like it is just child's play compared to where things will be in the not too distant future, probably for better and worse sort of we talked about last episode. These things can be used Anytime a new technology is available. If it can be used for bad it will be, but that doesn't mean it's inherently bad. And with AI it is very scary in a lot of ways because it's so new and so different. But it is like we talked about one of those things like the genie's not going to go back in the lamp, the toothpaste isn't going back in the tube. So finding ways to understand it, embrace it, figure out how to incorporate it, I think is very important, and I did notice recently YouTube did add when you upload a video now, similarly to how you have to check a box if you have sponsored content or you receive something for free in the video, there's now a box to check whether or not you are using AI altered content. So I forget exactly what their description is, but it's essentially if you're using AI material or making something look like something happened that didn't happen, or making it look like someone said something they didn't say or whatever it might be happen, or making it look like someone said something they didn't say or whatever it might be, which I was kind of wondering. Does that dip into like special effects in a certain way? You know, like if you're watching the old film right YouTube channel, they're making it look like someone teleported, when the person probably did not teleport, even though that was not done with artificial intelligence. I don't know. I feel like it's YouTube's first step in trying to. I feel like it's YouTube's first step in trying to regulate how people are sharing AI content. I don't know what it looks like, though, actually, if you click the box and I don't know what message pops up for the viewer, but that could be. That's an interesting thing.
Speaker 1:I guess it's definitely an interesting thing, and the creativity coming from order and all that kind of stuff, I think is definitely a little bit tricky, because so much of it really does depend on the individual. Like you know, some of us, some people, need perfect, like blank slate in order to work, and other people kind of work in chaos, kind of work in chaos. But a thing that I was thinking as I was listening to the message was I remember when I was teaching and I was in my classroom and it really, if you just kind of walked in, it would. There's so much going on. You know, like there's not only the space is sort of big and varied. There's a broadcast studio, there's a computer lab, there's a production studio, there's students coming in and out with all kinds of equipment, there's an equipment locker, there's a podcast studio and there's stuff happening in all these places that it could seem absolutely insane. I, as the teacher, knew what was happening in all the things, not just because that's like some superpower, but because that was what was built. You know it started.
Speaker 1:You got the first day of school, first day of the program. Nobody's touching anything or doing anything, and slowly you're building in these systems and you're building in these skills. And then by you know, february or March, the middle of the school year, it looks if a stranger walks in, it's just going to look insane, but everything's actually running smoothly. And I think when it comes to like a creative space, that can also be the case, and I think that's kind of the case for my space is that it looks. It can look chaotic and and wild, but when you're the one who has built it up and it kind of suits you perfectly, it makes perfect sense to you and then you're able to be creative.
Speaker 1:But if another person, like I know, if heather has to come into my studio and try to make something, it's nothing but like pain point after pain point after pain point, because it's like where, where is this button? Where is this? How does this thing work? It's just a nightmare. And it's not too dissimilar for me if I have to go into her studio to do something. She has it set up to be a little more user friendly in general, though, but it's still like you know, pain point after pain point after pain point, and but when we're each in our own spaces, it's. You know, we can get things up and running in no time and figure out what we're doing in no time, and so it is really hard to like. You know, you hear all these different things, there's all these different approaches, but so much of it does come down to specifically what works best for you and what you need. And then the next oh sorry, that was organized chaos. Then we talked about AI, unrelated to the message. So thank you again for this message. I always appreciate it, mac.
Speaker 1:Before we dive in, I forgot, I do have some exciting news NAB, the National Association of Broadcasters Convention in Las Vegas, is coming up in April and I've always wanted to go to this for I don't know since like 2010 or something was kind of the first time I wanted to go. I've never been able to go. Heather and I are both able to go, which is very cool. B&h is helping to cover our travel expenses, which is fantastic, because that was kind of a barrier. But also NAB was really awesome and they gave us promo code. So if you are thinking of going to NAB, it can get very expensive to sign up for different things.
Speaker 1:If you want to just sort of experience like the core of the event, that would be the exhibition hall, the exhibition pass where it's a Las Vegas convention center, pass where it's a Las Vegas convention center, and you have like every broadcasting audio video company. Nab is really geared more towards industry broadcast and that kind of thing. It's never really been like a content creator or an online creator event until this year. They're starting to fold in a lot more of that. So I think that's interesting and exciting, but I am. So I think that's interesting and exciting, but I am even as an online content is $169. But if you use promo code TOM24, it is $0. You get totally free exhibition pass, which is awesome, and then you can go. It is I forget the exact date, it's April 13th through 17th 2024 in Las Vegas. Go to nabshowcom and you can find all the info and sign up. This is just the exhibit pass you can add on. If you want to go to workshops, if you want to go to other special events, you can kind of add those on to your ticket. But if you just want to get into the exhibit hall and you don't want to have to pay the $160, $170 price to do that, you can use promo code TOM24 and it will be totally free, which is a really great price. So definitely, definitely, do that.
Speaker 1:All right, let's jump into. Let's start, simple, right. Okay, so gear, cheap versus expensive gear.
Speaker 1:A couple seasons ago I did an episode called like it's Just for YouTube, where I talked about using equipment. One criticism I will often get and I've seen other people often get is like why do you need that camera? Why do you need that microphone? Why do you need that? Whatever? It's just for YouTube. And to me that's just such a I think Heather would call it a self-owned. It's just such a like an ignorant comment that the person said. It proves that you don't know what you're talking about, just by saying it. And you know, I tried to justify all the different reasons why, even though something is quote unquote just for YouTube, it might make sense to invest in higher end stuff or more professional things. And then I also made sure to end that episode by saying also, if you're able to do so without, you know, causing financial harm to yourself, you're able to be financially responsible and you want to buy good gear. You don't need any other justification. You have a one subscriber channel, doesn't matter. Like you know, live your life, it's your life.
Speaker 1:But there is always that balance of cheap versus expensive gear, and you know it can be. It's funny because sometimes the expensive gear ends up being more of a pain. You know, like if you think, okay, I want to get a new camera, I could get something like the Sony ZV-E10, which is a cool little 4K mirrorless camera, or say you have crazy budget, you get something like the Sony Burano, which is like their new cinema camera. You know, amazing, I don't know if it's 8K, it's like Sony's top of the line cinema camera that just came out. I think the base price is like $25,000 or something. Okay, that's going to be a better camera, but in a lot of cases it'd probably be a way bigger nightmare to work with. Like the infrastructure you need to work with, that camera is very different than the $700, $800 CVE-10.
Speaker 1:And you know there's those kinds of balances that you're sort of always finding. More expensive, more professional isn't necessarily always better, especially if you're a solo or an independent creator. But at the same time, you know, if you're spending $3,800 on a Sony FX3 and you buy this awesome camera but then you put it on a $20 plastic tripod that is unreliable, now not only are you going to have a hard time getting smooth pans and tilts and nice shots, but also your camera could just tip over and break. So, like, maybe it's worth investing a little more in a nice tripod. And it's sort of this interesting thing where, like there is no, there is no clear answer. Usually, depending on your workflow and your needs, there is no clear answer. Usually, depending on your workflow and your needs, there are certain things where you can use the cheap piece of gear and it's going to be totally fine and other things where you need to invest in the good thing. But those situations are not the same for everybody. For example, the cheap tripod I know Heather is using like a relatively affordable, like an Amazon Basics tripod that she's been using for years and years and years and it's fine because it literally got taken out of the box, set up and it's kind of just stayed in one place for like three or four years now. So it doesn't. She doesn't need smooth panning and tilting, it's not getting open and closed constantly over and over, which is where some of those less expensive, less premium parts would start to wear out. So it's not really getting any wear and tear, it's just existing and it's totally fine for that. Whereas for me, anytime I've used those tripods in the past, because I move them and use them and I need smooth pans and tilts a lot and I break things down and set them up over and over again that kind of stuff just wears out so quickly that it doesn't make sense to use it. But those are just two different people and two different workflows.
Speaker 1:And a thing that was interesting to me was a couple of years ago I made a video about microphone boom arms and it was cheap versus expensive boom arms and I was talking about tall like traditional scissor style microphone arms and in that video it's like I was trying to compare the Rode PSA1, which was $100. And people a lot of times in comments will say oh, that's way too expensive for a boom arm which I get if you've never even bought a microphone and the idea of spending $50 to $100 on a microphone seems a little absurd. Because you're new to the world of audio production, spending $100 on just the arm, the stand for the microphone, maybe it's hard to understand why that's something you would want to do. So in the video I, you know, I had sort of like different tier levels of stands, one of them being the newer, like the $17, you know, super cheap option, which literally I'm not gonna lie just ended up in the garbage afterwards because it didn't even last enough to like really survive a review, like it was already. The springs were popping off and it was like not working well and it's not something that's even worth fixing. So I felt bad because it's just like this is just garbage, literally. I know not everyone who has those arms has had that experience. If you're using an inexpensive arm and it's working for you, that's great.
Speaker 1:In this case, this one was just so low quality, and I thought that was kind of interesting though, because it really showed if I had spent the 20 bucks on the cheap boom arm and $100 on the more expensive one and there was no difference between them. That would be interesting, but to me this really showed why it was worth investing the extra money in the better gear. And so recently I wanted to do the same thing with low profile arms because I've been. You know, I did like a re review of the Elgato low profile because they've modified it. It's not like a version two or anything, they've just been updating it and sort of fixing it over the years based on customer feedback and it's. There's a lot of changes from the original one that I had several years ago and I really liked that arm. And in the comments of that re-review video a lot of people were telling me about different you know, cheaper arms.
Speaker 1:So, I got a Fafine arm, the newer arm, an InnoGear arm Delgado I think, maybe those were it and I was trying to go like here's a whole bunch of $100 and under low profile boom arms. I know you can go up to like the $300, $400 price range, but that's not who this video is geared towards. It's sort of like the same audience as the other video I worked on, but the results were totally different. Pretty much every boom arm that I tried was great in its own way, and I was so surprised by this. The cheapest one was $30. It was this InnoGear arm. You'll see the video next week, so I don't need to spoil the whole thing. It was, you know, inexpensive, lightweight, and it was, you know. But if you're not trying to, you know, get the biggest longest boom arm in the world and you're not trying to put the heaviest microphones on it, totally, totally like a usable boom arm, there's a Fafine one that's in the middle. That was like really a close duplicate of the Elgato. That was also totally Fafine, but that was kind of the one that I didn't like as much. It just had some frustrating pain points to use, but it's also, in terms of quality, not bad at all really. And then there's the one I'm using right now, the newer one, which was $70, but does some weird stuff. It really isn't trying to be the Elgato arm. It seems like it's taking cues more from the higher end ones, which I thought was interesting, because last time I did this cheap arm comparison, the newer one literally ended up in the garbage and this time I was like, oh, let's keep using this one for a while because it's so cool. So you know, to me that's interesting.
Speaker 1:And the thing that had been popping up was, as I've been remodeling my studio, which I'm finally, like you could say, I'm finished there's still some stuff that needs to be fine tuned, figuring out what kind of gear to to include to move around. Fortunately, I actually was able to do this without spending very much money. I bought a new desk and I bought a new. I think I had to buy like a new camera. I think I had to buy like a new camera AC adapter. So pretty minimal expenses, because fortunately it sort of had like this gear collection, which was kind of part of the problem.
Speaker 1:A thing that I was realizing was as wonderful as my studio space is, as fortunate as I am to have it. I noticed I was not coming in here at all. I would come in here, film a video, do what I need to do and leave. It's not a place I would hang out, it's not a place I would work. I just like didn't like being in here and I was trying to figure out why. And I was realizing as soon as I walked in I kind of was feeling I don't know if stressed out is the right word, but maybe pressure there was just it felt like overwhelming. There was a lot of stuff. It was feeling very cramped. It also just felt like, you know, I just sort of felt buried by work, buried by things I don't know.
Speaker 1:There's a video Gerald Undone did several years ago where he was giving like kind of a tour of his old studio or talking about YouTube a little bit, and he sort of showed one area. His old studio, I think was an apartment like. It was a separate apartment that, not where he was living or anything, but it was just used as a studio and in one corner of it he had all of the like a pile of boxes that were just all brand new gear like high end wonderful camera gear, photo gear, all that kind of stuff and it was just like you could tell photo gear, all that kind of stuff, and it was just like you could tell in the video it was causing him stress because each one of those things in his case I think a lot of them were like sponsorship things and obligations and commitments, but each thing you know represented like a very time consuming and exhausting obligation and there was just literally a mountain of them. I didn't quite have that feeling, especially because I don't have like the obligation, sponsorship, commitment part, but I definitely had the thing of like, oh, there's like there's so much that I want to change in here because it's not working, but I'll never have time to do it because there's so much other stuff I need to work on. And eventually I don't really know what the catalyst was that made me do it. Oh no, I do know what the catalyst was.
Speaker 1:I'm going to blame Peter Lindgren, my buddy Peter from Sweden. If you follow Peter on Instagram, which is just at Peter Lindgren1, he has been. He and his family are building a new house. So they've he's been working for like years now. They've been in a. They've been in like a tiny apartment in Sweden. Last year he finally hit the point where they were able to buy a house and it's a newly constructed house and it's almost finished.
Speaker 1:Right now, part of the house includes a garage, like a detached garage, which is really cool, and he's gonna use that not for cars, but solely as his new YouTube studio. So he has, he has like a his own at home YouTube studio. He won't have to go 30 or 45 minutes away from home anymore. You know, 30 or 45 feet away from home at this point and it's a big one, I don't know. You know he's in Europe they use meters and I can't tell the difference. But basically the the garage is garage is almost the same size as their current apartment is. So it's a really nice, good size garage and he's just building it out of their YouTube studio and he's been sharing it on Instagram and it's kind of sending me pictures and stuff too, and it's so cool to see it build from scratch and it's like the thing that that pointed out to me was not only like he has a wonderful working studio that's amazing and it's huge, like it's current. It's multi rooms and multi areas, but he still wants to make something that suits him even better, but also, he's not cutting any corners when it comes to making it work for him. You know a lot of stuff. He's getting high quality things, but you know when possible he's not cutting any corners when it comes to making it work for him. You know a lot of stuff. He's getting high quality things, but you know when possible he's using an Ikea cabinet or you know something that you can just get from the local store Like it doesn't all have to be the most premium stuff in the world, but he's not cutting any corners.
Speaker 1:And what I was feeling like was, with my studio being set up, how it was for so long, I felt almost like it was six years of like I don't know if corners being cut is the right word, but of like you know, patches and fixes. It's like a software application that just was patched and bug fixed so many times that now it's like now it's just Adobe Premiere. Sorry, that's a bit of a dig, but it was kind of like that thing versus like let's just blow it up and rewrite the code from scratch is kind of like. Okay, that's something I want to do. When am I going to have the time to do this? Because my feeling was I have videos, I need to make podcasts, I need to do client stuff, I need to do video calls. Like I need this space, I need to work in this space, this is where I work. I can't just take it offline for undetermined amount of time. Maybe you felt that way too.
Speaker 1:If you, you know, when do you have the time to stop doing something or change up your workflow, and that also talking about gear and expensive gear. There's a reason why sometimes you will find professionals in any industry who aren't using the latest and greatest because they don't have the time to, you know, learn the new equipment, the new software, the new workflow, then all that kind of stuff. Like they just need to stick with what works for them, even learning to play hockey. Over the past year, I've seen that a lot of pro hockey players who have access to the best equipment they don't have to pay for anything. They have all you know, all the resources and accessibility that they have. They still use, like you know, old, rusty, beat up skates, because those are the skates that work and are comfortable and they don't have the time and aren't willing to adapt to something new because they, like, essentially, can't suffer the performance hit that it would bring and that's kind of how I felt in my studio is like, yeah, I could tear everything down, but then like what am I going to do? How am I going to get stuff done? And that's very, very stressful. Obviously, there's the answer of like well, you could create even more stuff ahead of time and schedule things out, but that just puts more, that's just creating more work.
Speaker 1:Finally, I had the realization it was really a bit of like self-confidence that I needed to have boosted In my mind. I felt like this is a thing that I have to start and then finish Like I will start tearing stuff down. I kind of knew some of the stuff I wanted to work on and like the main pain points I wanted to fix, and then I will do that until it is done. That is what was keeping me from doing it, because I don't know how long that was going to take. There's like a bunch of different problems to solve and I didn't really know. You know, I didn't really know how long it would take, and so I never did it.
Speaker 1:Finally, I realized this was the self-confidence part was, guess what? I have an okay skill set when it comes to audio and video production and I have enough equipment. I have lights and cameras and microphones, even if my studio is like quote unquote, torn apart. But I needed to make something. I could probably do, set up something that looks fine it doesn't have to be perfect and exactly. You know everything where, in its exact right place, from one video to the next. I could set up a temporary set, I could figure something out temporarily and continue to make stuff, and that was sort of a relief. And I know that sounds obvious, but I've never approached it that way. I've always this has to be perfect, not temporary. And so once I realized, okay, I can do that. That means I can take as much time as I need to rebuild stuff, because who cares if it's a work in process, that made me feel just so much better.
Speaker 1:And it turns out that wasn't that hard to do, like you know, do a couple little seamless things where you can't even tell that anything is happening, even though it's all in disarray. And it was nice because then, working on something, it wasn't like I was trying to do this in one day or two days. It was like I would do as much as I could do. You know, if there was a morning that I didn't have anything scheduled, I could spend that morning working on stuff and then stop and go work on other things. You know, if it got to the end of the day, I could just stop for the day, everything in shambles, if you're. I was posting some Instagram stories where it's like it looks like something exploded in here. It was like crazy, and just leave it like that till the next day or even the day after, until I could, like, work through it at a more reasonable pace, which made it so much more manageable to me and also, I think, helped the result to be better, because I got to make better decisions. I wasn't trying to rush anything and like, oh, this is fine for now, or, you know, like, I'll fix that later, which turns out to be never, and it's like here's the thing I really need to figure out and solve. Okay, I can spend the whole day trying to figure out that solution. Cool, next time we'll move on to the next thing, to the next thing, to the next thing. Or if you need to order something, then wait a couple days for it to come. You know all that kind of stuff that happens. So ultimately it ended up in a good result. But it was me realizing I could tear everything down without shutting down my ability to make and create stuff and I know, you know I didn't do a podcast in that time, but that was also a lot of. That was also just exhaustion, because even though computer and a microphone aren't that hard to set up, it was just sort of exhausting and chaos. And you know, it was kind of like well, instead of taking a couple of hours out of the day to like totally shift my gears into this, let me just focus on this thing over here. I'll get back to the podcast once everything is set up and nice and ready to go. So I did post a video about this on Patreon. I'm trying not to repeat myself too much for Patreon and YouTube channel supporters.
Speaker 1:As soon as I finished everything, I kind of like I was just so excited I did this like manic video, showing everything and trying all the different camera angles and stuff, which is pretty cool. I'll do my best to describe that in this audio only format that we're dealing with right now, because a thing for me was I got so much inspiration from you know, like Peter's office was a big one, but even like Gil who sends in a lot of stuff to the podcast. Gil always shares his studio stuff and he's been so good at figuring out how to be so efficient with a smaller space or even with portable setups that like there's just really good advice there. And I've just been watching other people's studio tours and podcast studio tours and you know kind of cherry picking stuff that I thought would be cool and then trying to incorporate that stuff that would work for me into my setup. So I'm going to share that with you. I will do a studio tour video, probably in a couple of months, once things are really dialed in, so that way it's not just like that way everything doesn't change. As soon as I make the studio tour video I'll do my best to paint a picture for you verbally. That makes sense, because there's a lot of lessons I learned which I think could be helpful.
Speaker 1:And the big one is that even just looking at my studio, I really like it. It's a cool looking place. It looks good on camera. I think you know people are nice enough and leave comments all the time that it felt silly to want to want to change anything. You know like, yeah, if this is working, why? Why change it? And also, you know that's kind of how things have been as my channel has grown, as I've been able to do this full time. I'm kind of scared to mess with that formula, because is that connected to the success of everything? You know like that's a little, a little scary to if something seems like it's working, even though it wasn't working for me on a day-to-day off-camera situation when it came to the stuff I was making, it was working really well. Very scared to mess with that, but it's just something that just had to be done, and so what I ended up doing.
Speaker 1:The big thing is that the physical space that I'm in this room used to just be a home office, like prior to YouTube, when I was teaching. It's just my home office, my music room. You know I had the blue wall painted. I had my desk up against the blue wall so that when I was working at the desk I could look at all the artwork and stuff. And then I started making some YouTube videos in here and I didn't have, you know, my first YouTube video light was the window, just window light, and it was sort of a thing where it was like, well, if I set a camera on my desk and film me, the background doesn't really look that good. But if I put the camera facing the desk then you get this blue wall. The blue wall looks kind of cool.
Speaker 1:And so I spent a couple months if you watch the first, you know, especially the first like chunk of vlogs on my channel, you'll kind of see how I'm like figuring out how to use this space that was not originally intended to be a video space as a video space. And eventually I sort of figured it out and what I did was pretty almost a year maybe into my channel. I remember coming in here one Saturday and I just took my camera and I just started setting my camera in every different area to try to figure out, like, what looks good on camera and I sort of found one corner that I really liked. If the camera is here facing this direction, there's a lot of depth, the background looks really cool. I think I want my camera to go there and the camera kind of got planted there for the most part, and a big thing that I had.
Speaker 1:I was doing a lot of videos where it was just me standing and talking or even just sitting, but it was just me a thing, and it's nice to be able to like set the thing on the table Very basic, right Like super simple. So it's like okay, I'm going to move my desk kind of in this front middle area so I can sit at the desk and talk to the camera. And a version of that has been how it's been since 2018, which was six years ago, and in that time the channel has grown, my focus has shifted, the projects I work on have changed. Also, in that time, there was a pandemic. Don't know if you heard about that or not. It was crazy. I ended up then working from home full time as a teacher, so it became not just my YouTube studio podcast studio workspace for YouTube, but also my actual workspace. Then I left my teaching job to do this full time.
Speaker 1:So it's like it was very it was trying to serve a lot of purposes which were very different from what it was originally set up for, and a big, a big thing was kind of what I said at the beginning of this episode was I sort of had my main area needed to be a workspace and a video production space. I mean, I literally mean my desk, like it needed to have my computer on it. I literally mean my desk, like it needed to have my computer on it so I could work on stuff. But it also needed to be clear enough and visible enough to use with a camera and ultimately that was causing so much friction because it's just it ends up literally with me just bumping into things, slamming into things, dropping stuff, breaking stuff, like there's not enough room for things, running cables everywhere is an absolute nightmare. And I forget whose video it was.
Speaker 1:There was somebody's studio tour video where they had like three desk setups in their space and it was like one of them was their filming desk setup, one of them was a streaming desk setup, one of them was an editing desk setup and I was like, oh my God, like that's, that's crazy. But then I was thinking kind of makes sense actually, like maybe I don't need three separate setups, but sort of breaking things apart based on purpose sort of made sense, and that was something I wanted to do is take my main desk and make it a work desk. That's where I'm sitting right now. It's like, okay, this doesn't need to be floating in the middle of the room, which then also makes it immobile because it's all wired in and you know, there's like there's no way I can physically move this, so it's just dominating everything.
Speaker 1:It can go where, like kind of in the old days how I just had a desk that was a workspace and it doesn't need to have every piece of gear on it because it's going to be used for every video and thing I just need. In my case I've seen a microphone, a monitor, an audio mixer, a little speaker, basic desk things, keyboard, mouse, you know, like all that kind of stuff and that works. Okay, cool. And also, which is kind of neat, because now it doesn't have to be a video thing my desk was always weirdly high high because it needed to be to sort of like frame stuff in the video in a certain way. So I was like I can actually lower it. It's not a nice fancy height adjustable desk. You have to like turn it upside down and crank all these screws and stuff. It's not an easy thing to raise and lower, but I can lower it to regular desk height where I can sit at it with my feet like flat on the ground for long periods of time and be comfortable. Wow, imagine that like an ergonomic workstation. Crazy, right, I could just do that if I wanted to do that and that was like once I realized that was working. And then it was crazy too, because this wasn't serving so many production purposes. The pile of AC adapters and USB cables and other cords that I like just took out was insane. Like the cable management was so much easier because there didn't need to be as much.
Speaker 1:It was really nice and so and then I had had two big, long desks, kind of in an L shape, and the thing that bothered me about the one that was on the side was that it was kind of useless. It sort of just had like my old camera collection. On some lights it looked cool in the background, but in a relatively small space that was a lot of unused space, you know, it's like kind of a waste. And one thing I was learning as I was trying to redo everything was there is kind of a like murder, your darling situation. One thing that was on that side table where I have amassed quite a collection of retro cameras, and three of my favorites were always there the XL1, the Sony broadcast TV camera that I have and the RED1 cinema camera. They're such cool cameras. They're really big and they're really heavy and they look cool on display, but it's like nothing else can be there. And so this was where I was like, okay, this is something. We're not going to get rid of those, of course, but I don't think there's a way I can just have them on display. So instead I found a nice place to safely store them in a closet, which makes me sad, because it makes me sad when gear lives in closets like that, but they're safe, they're stored, I don't have to have them anywhere. And then, as I'm making videos, if I'm making a video where it makes sense to talk about you know these old cameras or whatever, I'm making a video where it makes sense to talk about you know these old cameras or whatever I can, then, you know, dress the setup how I want. I can put cameras in the background or on a tripod as a prop or whatever it might be. They don't have to just be taking up space totally. And so I actually got rid of all that stuff, took that entire desk, put it in our garage and ended up like doubling the size of my workbench out there, which is awesome, because I didn't realize how inefficient that area was. So now the garage is like totally cool. Just a side benefit to this whole situation. And then I had more space in here and so I bought.
Speaker 1:I solved the problem by buying another desk. I bought a slightly smaller desk. I like these husky work benches from Home Depot, that's just what I've always used and I bought a slightly smaller one. Instead of a six foot one I bought a four foot one that's on wheels and is height adjustable. And I was going through this whole thing of like, oh, I can get one of those really cool sit stand desks and they're electric and you pre-program all the things. And then I was like, wait a minute, I could even take this a step further, because you can buy just the legs of a sit-stand desk and then you can go find like a really cool top, a piece of wood, a countertop, whatever, and you can do like this totally custom thing. But then I thought, wait a minute, it's an electric desk. You know what that needs Electricity and you know what I don't want Is a desk that needs an umbilical cord of power running to it all the time.
Speaker 1:So the Husky workbench not only was less expensive it's like 250 bucks but it just has a hand crank like an old car window, and that's what raises and lowers it, which is totally fine. It's pretty decent, like. Even when there's stuff on the desk. It's not hard to raise or lower it, it just takes a while. So even if you had like a full setup and it was kind of heavy, it wouldn't be that difficult.
Speaker 1:But in this case this is not a work desk, this is a video like presentation desk, a set desk, so for the most part there's nothing on it, which means it's very easy to raise and lower and it's on wheels so I can move it around and basically I tried to put everything on wheels. So I have my main desk that I'm sitting at right now. That's the only thing in this space that's not on wheels. My camera is on wheels on an impact, like rolling C-stand essentially, so it's actually very easy to raise and lower the camera. It's not like raising and lowering a tripod where you're trying to get all three legs even and stuff. It's just one center column. My light, my main key light, is on a C-stand. My fill lights and my like accent lights are off the floor. They're mounted either to the ceiling or on an auto pole that's running from floor to ceiling. That's kind of been that way for a while. Other, like you know, workbenches and chest of drawers and things are all on wheels.
Speaker 1:Basically, if I wanted to, I could take everything but my main desk out of this room in like a couple of minutes max and then it would just be a totally empty space. I don't need to do that. But that flexibility is crazy, like being able to. I've everything has been so set in stone for so many years and now I can do so much more with the space it's I have. You know, you've maybe seen how I've done like product B-roll, where I sort of had, like this, these colored paper backdrops and this like corner of my desk that I could kind of set things on and film stuff, and it looks really good, but it's an absolute pain to film it. Now I have a Florida ceiling colored backdrop and I can just easily move things in front of it and use film bigger things. I can even put myself in front of it if I want to.
Speaker 1:The cool part with this is a thing that I figured out, because I now have the sit stand desk with my normal camera on wheels, so that right there I can basically recreate the same shot that you've seen for a long time it hardly looks any different, and that's what I wanted, because I don't I didn't want to, you know, make it seem like I totally changed everything. So I can still go with what I like and what works and what's been there and it's great. But I can also just move things around so that, like I guess it would be like that main shot where my blue wall is the background I can get six distinctly different versions, because not only can I place the camera in you know there's two corners or dead on, so that's three right there but now everything can either be a sitting or a standing shot, which looks and feels totally different. I can even then wheel out the desk entirely and have nothing, have just me in frame, which I haven't been able to do before. So there's like every shot because of the sit-stand desk is now two shots or even three, if you consider the fact that there is no desk there, and that's just from, kind of where I've always filmed stuff. Now it's almost 360 degrees, like I can put the camera in any direction and film stuff.
Speaker 1:And even though my work desk that I'm at right now is not intended to be a filming setup, there is the fact that like sometimes I kind of need to be at my computer while I'm recording something or filming something or doing a video call. So I just have a little stand, a little iFootage well a very sturdy stand here where I can take I don't have to do anything other than literally like unclip the Manfrotto plate for my FX3 with the Elgato prompter on it and move it over here and snap it in here. It takes the same mount, I don't have to change anything. And now I can have my camera with the prompter right here, you know, next to my display, and I can use it for video calls or even videos, and it's like the Patreon video kind of shows this. It works great.
Speaker 1:I was doing that a lot while I was reconfiguring the studio, because everything still looked pretty cool behind me even though the rest was a total mess. And that's kind of cool because that's also that lets me not only do video calls or streaming easily, but also then I can even move the camera slightly further away where you can see the whole desk and you can see the RODECaster. And that's kind of cool if I'm doing like a, say, like a software processing tutorial or something where I kind of want the whole desk set up here. Basically a lot of versatility. What I added it up to was there's at least 12 visually distinct and unique shots that I can get in here now easily like and probably more that I just haven't discovered yet but at least 12 that look totally different. That's crazy In this space. That, like space didn't get any bigger. You know that that kind of versatility has just blown my. I've never had that freedom before.
Speaker 1:And the the other inspiration I had was a thing that I do miss in my classroom was I had two studio spaces. One of them was a broadcast studio that I had built a set in, so that was kind of like fixed, you know, like we. The set was a little bit modular and we can move things around, but for the most part it didn't really change. It was kind of always used for some version of a broadcast. The other space was the same size but had nothing set in it, and so we could build sets and build different kinds of setups and different shoots and things, and it was always really fun to walk in and just have that big open space and be like, okay, we need to put like three lights here, let's put a couch here. Let's build out this backdrop. Let's do this. You know, whatever you can just sort of set things up like in that space.
Speaker 1:I can't recreate that amount of space in here, but that a version of that versatility, which I really, really miss, I have been able to recreate in here, which is crazy. I've never been able to do that before and it's just it really like I can't even tell you the weight that it feels like was lifted because of finally, like re-evaluating the space, because essentially, what happened was not only has it just been a number of years and it was like the software patches over and over again, but also the needs that I was trying to meet in 2018, when my channel had 700 subscribers and was just something I did on weekends. Those are very different needs that I'm trying to meet in 2024, when this has been my full time job for three years. Like it's just different and I don't want to do the thing where you scale up and get a big separate studio and hire a team and all that Like I don't want that. I want to work with what I've got, because I like being an independent solo creator. I genuinely love that. I don't really want to go beyond that, whether or not that sounds like it lacks ambition or anything, and I like having a home studio.
Speaker 1:A year or two ago, heather and I had talked about like well, what if we did get like you know, there's some industrial spaces nearby, get like a small warehouse kind of shop, you know big rolling door and kind of some cool. Like what if we did rent a space? Financially? It's like it just kind of felt like why add that expense to everything? And then the big thing for me was like the idea that when I want to work on something or get something or try something, I have to drive, even if it's close, even if it's five minutes away, 10 minutes away. That's a pretty big roadblock, you know, versus like just walk down the hallway and go, and I've noticed, I've seen, you know Peter's a good example.
Speaker 1:He has this beautiful studio but is willing to essentially give it all up to be able to worklee, who has a huge team and a huge studio and that's the workplace. But even smaller independent creators who do just buy, you know, maybe they live in a smaller house or apartment or they have kids or something and they need their studio space to be outside of that. So they rent a studio space. They build it up there. It looks amazing. I've seen so many of them then build a second small studio again at home because they're like I don't want to drive to the studio, I don't want to go work on stuff over there, like I want to be able to just do a thing from home, and so I. It's a thing that I don't really want to give up is the nice home studio, home office feel, and even though I would always love more space, I do feel like that.
Speaker 1:I said this in my Patreon video. You know this is an okay size bed. This bedroom that's what it is originally is way bigger than the bedroom I grew up in, spent most of my life in, where I had to like live. I had to sleep and exist as a person and smash all my hobbies and stuff in there. Like this doesn't need to have the living part. There doesn't need to be a bed. There doesn't need to have the. The living part there doesn't need to be a bed. There doesn't need to be a wardrobe or like clothes or anything. It can just be a workspace. That's pretty cool. Like that's a lot of space and though even though it could be bigger and I'd like more.
Speaker 1:I feel like the amount of space that I have to dedicate specifically to this is far more than most people on planet earth have to dedicate to something like this if they want to. And you know, I'd rather find ways to make this work than to to just be like oh, I got to go spend a whole bunch of money and get a whole new space or something. And I think you know, creatively, when we go back to like where creativity flows, I think you need some constraints for your creativity to shine its best, and sometimes your physical space can be one of your best constraints, because you have to figure out how to make that, how to make that work and how to make it do what you need to do. And so I'm super excited about this. I cannot wait to share more of it with you through videos and podcasts and all the cool things like to just read. It really feels like Christmas it's. I can't even tell you how excited I am.
Speaker 1:So I guess the moral of the story is you know we're talking about cheap and expensive gear. You really have to evaluate your needs and what works specifically for you, and sometimes you might be surprised the stuff that you don't need to spend a bunch of money on. But also it's important to acknowledge the needs and what works specifically for you. And sometimes you might be surprised the stuff that you don't need to spend a bunch of money on. But also it's important to acknowledge the areas where you do. And just because you look at someone else and see what they choose to spend money on and what they choose to get the cheap versions of, that doesn't mean those things will work for you. You know, someone might be okay with a cheap camera, but they need an expensive mic, and someone might need an expensive mic and it's or wait, that was the same thing a cheap mic and expensive camera. You know, whatever. Those are just sort of some examples there.
Speaker 1:And when it comes to your space, I guess the lesson is don't be afraid to try to to try to make things work, and you probably have the skills. If you have the skills to have created a video or audio production space in the first place, you probably have the skills to work in it while you're redoing it. So it doesn't mean you have to stop everything, do all this and then start everything. You can probably find a way to make it work while you're in that process of remodeling. And the thing that you set up, even if it's awesome, even if it seems amazing, if it's been a number of years, it might be worth reevaluating and reassessing. Is it meeting your needs or not, and are there some problems you can solve? Because, even though it seems intimidating or scary or whatever, I promise you, speaking from experience, it is absolutely worth it and it can make the biggest difference. So interested to know if anyone has any thoughts or even tips. You know, I know this, this is something that probably lends itself better to a video version, but right now that's not a thing I have. But if you have any thoughts or tips about studio redos, renovations, equipment, definitely feel free to send those. Tom at enthusiasmprojectcom.
Speaker 1:Next week's episode excuse me as I cough is going to be the season 12 Q&A episode, which I always love.
Speaker 1:I've already got a few questions get sent in, but if you want to send in a question for the Q&A episode again, you can do tom at enthusiasmprojectcom. Or you can go to hi, my name is tomcom and scroll down to the little thing that says leave a message, and you can leave a message right there on whatever device you happen to be using. It doesn't have to be perfect quality or anything, don't worry. And I'll also be posting a call for messages on youtube and instagram and all the social medias and stuff. And don't forget, if you want to go to n 2024, you can go to nabshowcom, sign up for the exhibition pass and if you use promo code Tom24, it'll be totally free. And that is. That's pretty darn cool. So, with all that in mind, thank you so much for listening. Hope everything worked and sounded good as I'm recording the first official thing in this new official setup, and I hope you have a safe, happy, healthy rest of your day and I'll see you next time.