A Look at Our Video Setup, Equipment, and Software Used for the ReelWeb [Creators Tip #45]

On this week’s Creator’s Tip, I’m going to be answering a bunch of your questions that you guys have been asking relating to our whole set up right here for how we do these videos, like my camera, the lighting, the software, the audio, everything that goes into behind the scenes, so that’s all coming up this week on the Creator’s Tip video.

Hi guys, my name is Tim Schmoyer and welcome to another week of Creator’s Tip where every week we just help you guys the best way we can, just knowing how to make awesome content, market it well and make that stuff work awesomely on the web. This week, I’m going to answer some questions you guys have been asking me lately. I recently moved from Minnesota to Cincinnati and when I was in Minnesota I used to give you guys a little behind the scenes look at my setup and what I do and how it all works and some of you guys are like, what about now in Cincinnati. What does that look like?

But before we do that, let me answer a couple of other questions that you guys have asked first. Starting with, how did you guys make that crazy cool logo stinger thing that you guys use where the Reel SEO kind of bounces in and out. Honestly, we actually pulled some connections that we have and the same guy who made the Revision Three logo intro actually made the Reel SEO one for us as well. But, if you don’t have access to someone like that, where do you go? There are a lot of really cheap ways you can do this actually. If you have Adobe After Effects, there are tons of template sites out there that you can go to and pay anywhere from like five bucks to twenty five bucks and download a template that someone else has already created and you don’t really need to know After Effects too much to know how to do it. You need to know some basic things. Basically, you just drop in your own logo, type in some of your own text and replace their text, render it out, maybe add an audio to it and then, viola; you have a fancy looking intro.

I will link up some of them below if you want to go check them out and see what kind of sites there are out there where you can download these templates and modify them for your stuff and make your own cool looking intro. If you don’t have after effects, you can also do something very similar and also buy some templates that will use Apple Motion which is only fifty bucks, way cheaper than After Effects. Or if you don’t have that, I would just like to remind you that some of the top YouTubers aren’t using an intro at all. We use one here at Reel SEO just as kind of like a little spacer between the intro and the whole body party of the video, but there is nothing that says you need to have one. If you really want one, you can just make something simple with the skills that you do have. It doesn’t really need to be anything too fancy.

Another question that a lot of you guys asked is what editing software do I use? Actually, I used to use Final Cut Express. I used that for the longest time, even when I started doing these Reel SEO videos actually. I knew Final Cut Pro X was coming and when it did I bought it like instantly and quickly realized it was like a downgrade from Final Cut Express and asked for a refund almost immediately and then a couple of months later I switched over to Adobe Production Suite and I edit these videos and most of my stuff now using Adobe Premiere Pro. The second part of that question is why do I use the editing software I use? Well, I actually started off with Windows Movie Maker like back in 2006 and I’ve just been progressing from that to iMovie to Final Cut Express, and then I wanted to go to Pro. I just kind of kept moving up the ladder until now, the Professional Suite Level, which I like to use, and honestly it’s mostly because I like to keep pushing myself to learning. Even though each new jump to editing software is really a huge step for me, because I feel like I’ve got to learn everything all over again, but I just force myself to do it, even though it takes me like six times longer to make a video at first then it did in like the old software I was using. But just forcing myself to take that step actually has done really a lot to help me move and grow and not only in these videos, but in other content I’m doing in YouTube. Now I can make stuff way quicker and make it look way slicker than I could have before but, the initial jump, I know guys, it hurts. And if you ever get stuck, you just do what I do, you go to YouTube and search for a tutorial on whatever you’re trying to do and some 12-year-old out there will be happy to teach you how to do it.

As for the third question about camera and set up and everything I use, let’s switch to vlog style here and I will show you guys exactly what it looks like around here. Here’s my camera. I’m just using the Cannon 60D and I basically just stand right here and I talk to you guys. I’ve got one key light right here and back there you can see I just got two soft boxes and a light at the bottom there. It’s illuminating a white sheet that’s hanging up. It’s actually not that big of a deal. It’s not really complicated. What I do is over here I just set the iso high enough, I have this set to 320, I don’t know if you can see that or not. I have the shutter speed set at 100 and I have the depth of field or the F stop set to 2.8. So I back up and I zoom all the way in so that I get a shallow depth of field on the white background behind me and that way, like there’s actually a lot of wrinkles and stuff in there, as you can see, but using a shallow depth for the field on the lens actually blurs most of that out, making it look pretty white. It actually looks pretty good.

For the microphone I am using, just a standard lapel mic. There’s a sensitizer right there and, maybe you can see it better right there. There’s the mic. I’m actually recording directly into the camera now. I just started doing this for like the past two or three videos because – see, right here – as you can see I’m using a customer firmware called Magic Lantern that actually has audio meters on it and it disables the automatic game control that is a problem on most DSLR’s that boost the audio and it’s too quiet and makes like a terrible hissing buzzing like noise in the background. So, using Magic Lantern Firmware disables that and gives you tons of other cool features that you can use for DSLR video cameras that will come standard on a high quality professional video camera. But, that doesn’t on a DSLR because they are made mostly for pictures, so I loaded that firmware on here and now I’m recording directly into the camera. This cord right here goes down to a switch and because I’ve got to back up far away from the camera, I can’t adjust he focus on it because I can’t obviously reach it. So I have the lens set up on auto focus and basically what I do is stand in the front here and I’ll pull this, this is my shutter button actually, it’s a remote for the camera. So I hold it half way and it focuses on me and then I just drop it, because then I’m in focus from this far away, so, that’s how I do that.

And I edit over here on my computer. I sit here on my five year old iMac that hates me and it complains every time I try to edit this 1080 tube photage. I’m rendering something else right now. But, that’s it. It’s just basically in my basement at my house that I moved into. So, not a whole lot goes into it, as you guys can see. That’s where I have my notes for the Reel Web, which I usually record right before this.

So, get back in place and move back to that camera and thanks for hanging out guys. I hope this was helpful. If you have any other questions and you’d like me to answer in an upcoming video sometime, or if it’s just one I can answer in the comments, comment below and let me know. That would be awesome. I love to help you guys out however I can. We really do appreciate you guys hanging out with us. If this is your first time here, make sure to subscribe. Click that subscribe button above this video. We would love to have you guys join us for these videos and other stuff.

We will see you guys again next week for another look at the Reel Web and then for another Creator’s Tip video next Thursday.

Hope this was helpful guys. Thanks. Bye.