1 STEP THAT MAKES EVERY VIDEO BETTER, BEFORE RECORDING
Howdy, howdy everyone. Nate here. So I keep getting questions. You keep asking me for my best pointers in the comments and on my Community tab for my best pointers on how to set up a recording space. Now, you've already seen my space a lot of times, but I thought, you know what, I know a guy that's really good at this. So I thought, let me give him a call and see what happens hello hey hey what's up, dude? How's it going? I wasn't sure if you're gonna pick up there. Yeah, dude, I'm always here. How's it going, man? It's going great. I know them watching. They had some questions for you specifically about how you set up, because I know I said this.
You're probably the best that I know for recording setups. I was wondering if you'd be willing to just show us around your area, like give us your best tips for beginners or people have been doing it for a while absolutely let's do it sweet all right, man. So I got my camera on for you. What questions do you have? Lighting i know that people want to know what? What is your best tips for lighting? Yeah, man, that's a great question. So when it comes to lighting, the very first thing that people have to understand is you don't have to go, you know, with all the pro lights and things.
Like that, I'm going to, you know, talk about those. But you don't have to do that. At the end of the day, the thing that you really got to make sure that you're focusing on is making sure that people can clearly see the subject. If that subject you the thing that you're reviewing or whatever, you just want to make sure that you have enough light for it. But here, let me show you what a pro setup looks like. So when it comes to lighting especially, you know, professional looking lighting, the very first thing that you want to make sure that you're thinking about is setting up your light in a way that's going to make you look flattering.
For that, most content creators will use what's called 3 point lighting. Now with three-point lighting, that means that. You have a key light over here and in this case you can see it's just a really big soft Dome light. But if you look behind this, what you're going to see is you're going to actually see this small device here that I added this big soft box to. And then that is what is called a key light and that is my main light. Now in addition to that I have a fill light over here and the job of that fill light is simply to fill the shadows on the other side of my face because the light over here on the right hand side, this is where a majority of the lights coming from but it still leaves a lot.
Shadows over on the other side. So because of that, I use this light over here in order to compensate for those shadows, just kind of fill in those dark areas. And then on the third one, I use this backlight right here. The purpose of that is to add a little bit of light around my edges. And the reason for that is because I shoot in a really dark background. And I need to make sure that if I'm wearing darker clothing or something like that I can clearly stand out from the background and that there's a clear separation between me and all of this darkness that's happening in the background. But you still want to use a backlight, even if.
You're recording in a white room, but the idea is just to help create a little bit of separation between you and the background. Now if we take this whole thing and we level it up a little bit, you can also see that I go beyond the three-point lighting. And the reason I go beyond the three-point lighting is because, again, I'm trying to separate myself from the background. And in addition to separating myself from the background, I also want to make my set look cool. So because of that, one of the things that I do, you'll see right back here I actually have a blue light.
And that blue light comes up behind me. So when I'm sitting here, and this is the actual shot, but you can see with this light when I'm sitting in my scene, that blue light also creates separation behind me. And then I also have these light bars on the side. Those are more just to make it interesting, but they also serve a purpose. And that purpose is to fill in some of the darker areas over on the left hand side to where just kind of goes into this black abyss of sorts.
Ok, so question for you, why the blue light instead of orange or red, etc? Because you know, I mean, my viewers know I use blue light also. But I'm curious for you, why the blue light? That's a great question, Nate. The reason that I use the blue light is because it's contrasting to my skin tone. So when I use that blue light, it just kind of helps my skin pop. That's the main reason that I use the blue light. Now if I were to use a yellow light or red light and orange light, then I have those tones within my skin and since I have those tones within my skin, it makes it really easy for.
Me to not pop from the background because there's no real. There is separation, but it just gets kind of muddy and I kind of blend in a little bit more with the background. Is that the same reason you use it? I just use it because it looks cool and there's that. There's that too. It also looks cool and look. If you don't have any money to spend, or you just don't want to spend any money and you're thinking yourself like, you know what, I'm doing this Youtube thing, but I'm not sure how serious I am yet.
No sweat, because sunlight is the best light source. It's 100 % free as well. But what you want to do is you want to make sure that you get yourself as close as you can to your window, because that is going to be your natural light source. And you also want to make sure that you position your camera in a way to where you get enough light coming in because you don't want to have the light coming directly straight onto you want to make sure that the light is coming at a little bit of an angle. So because of that, what you don't want to do is you don't want to position your camera directly in front of the window and then shoot directly, you know, in front of the window yourself because that'll make everything look a little bit flat.
It'll still look better than shooting in the dark, but it'll look a little bit flat. So because of that, you just want to make sure that you're off to a little bit of an angle and the camera itself is off to a little bit of an angle as well. Think about 45 degrees, just like we do with the with the professional lighting kits when we're setting those up. Ok, awesome. So we've got the lighting down.
Big part for a lot of people. I know the next thing. On people's mind, at least this on my mind here is audio. What do you do about audio for your videos? So when it comes to audio, it's really important to know that audio is half of the video experience. And the reason that's important is because as a content career, if somebody comes into your video and the video quality itself is top notch, but the audio sucks, people are going to leave and they're going to leave fast.
However, if they come into your video and the video quality itself is, you know, it's OK, it could be better. It's not, you know, great. It's not horrible, but it's OK. But your audio sounds awesome. You immediately raise the perceived value of your content by having good audio. So you want to make sure that you are spending time learning audio, and that you are making sure that your audio is as good as you can get it for whatever it is that you're working with right now. At this point in time, when it comes to recording audio, you just want to make sure that you get your microphone as close to you as you possibly can.
This will help reduce the reverb or the sound reflections bouncing around your room. In addition to that, if you do find that in the area that you're recording in, it just you just get all this reverb and all this echo happening in the room. One thing that you can do and this is going to sound crazy, but trust me on this one thing that you can do is you can go get a blanket off of your bed, throw it on the floor, and you can also go into somebody else's room and grab one of their blankets and then bring that into your studio and you want to drape that over something, drape it over doors, just drape it over the areas that are near you so that those soft.
Surfaces will cut down on some of those reflections around the room. Now if your room is completely bare, it's not going to fix it 100 %, but it's going to reduce the amount of sound echoing around the room. So make sure that you do that. And look, I know a lot of you are doing voiceovers. If you're doing a voiceover in your videos and you do have that echo problem, another thing that you can do, and this is another one, you just got to trust me on this one. But one other thing that you can do is you can take a blanket and you can literally talk in your microphone underneath your blanket.
And by doing that, what you're going to do is you're. Going to limit the distance that the waves are coming out of your mouth, so to speak. You're going to be caught in the blanket and you're not even going to have to worry about him hitting your walls. You're going to look ridiculous. You're going to feel ridiculous, but your audio is going to come out sounding awesome. Ok, so Nick, I know another part of Nick's not going to mention this, but I'll say this for everybody watching. Another big part of the audio is the music.
And Nick's not going to say this, but he is launching. Actually, when this video goes out, he is launching. Let me see if I can show you guys. If you check out the Creator mix Youtube channel, it's totally free music for creators. I've been listening to it. It's got some really good stuff. Anyway, I just wanted to share that with everybody. I know, Nick, you've been putting a lot of work into it, so I just wanted to mention that it's some really good music, so you guys can check that out after this.
Thanks, Nate. I appreciate that, man. And it's actually my brother that's put in the most work. Into that. But absolutely we're super excited to I'm bringing it to the community. So I'm super grateful that you that you mentioned that. Thank you, man. I appreciate it. Ok. The next thing, and I know this is perhaps one of the biggest pain points for a lot of people, at least my audience is, well, what the heck, how do you set up your recording area especially if you're recording yourself, what do you put behind you? Do you have any tips there? Absolutely so when it comes to set design is kind of like audio to where it can increase the perceived value of the content that you're putting out.
Now of course at the end of the day. The content itself is what matters. You don't need to put tons of effort into your set design if you don't want to. At the end of the day, it's just the content, the value that you're giving to people that really make things move. But if you're somebody that does want to make your set look cool, so that when people come in and they see it, that they're, you know, either impressed by it or they think it looks cool, or just so you feel awesome about it. In that case, you want to make sure that you put some thought into your set design, and here are some tips for that.
The very first thing to think about is the framing. So when it comes to your set design, you want to make sure that you are framed in a way to where when you're recording your videos that you are in the center of your shot. Or if you end up, you know, being off to a third. You want to make sure that there is a reason that you're off to a third. And what a third is if you hop on Google when you get the chance and you look for rule of thirds, the idea is that you divide your screen into 9 equal parts, and when you do that, there's going to be two horizontal lines, there's going to be two vertical lines going across the screen and when you're positioning.
Yourself in your shot, you want to make sure that you're either in the middle or that you're on one of the lines on the left hand side or on one of the lines in the right hand side. And the reason for that is because it just creates balance in the frame. If you're just a little bit off and you're kind of in that middle spot between the middle and off to the side, then it just kind of makes everything look just a little bit awkward or feel awkward. And the feeling side of videos is another really important part that you got to make sure that you're considering when it comes to things like this.
But when it comes to the rule of thirds, you also want to consider that when it comes to all aspects of your set design, for example, in my live stream I have multiple different cameras, you know, for my live stream and I have a grid that I lay over the screen for when I'm designing that particular set. And I literally will move the cameras around until things align properly with the rule of thirds, as well as leading people into the things that I want them to focus on when it switches to that particular camera.
So because of that, it's really important just to make sure that you're keeping the rule of thirds in mind. In addition to that, you want to make sure that when it comes to your set design. You don't have a bunch of distracting things going on in the background, so having personality items, things that you're into, things like that is perfectly fine. However, if you have like a TV back there that's distracting, or you have a mess in your background to where it would distract people from the value that you're giving them, then in that case, you know, spend a little bit of time cleaning it up because when it comes to set, design the idea.
Is that when you're making videos, you want people to come in and enjoy your content. You don't want them to be distracted by all of the stuff that's happening in the background. You want all of that stuff to complement you and what it is that you're going so that they'll focus on you. Even though they'll see the background, you want them to have that focus on you. So because of that, you want to make sure that you're removing anything that could distract them from you and the value that they're going to be receiving from you. So because of that, when you're putting your set together, you just want to make sure that you're keeping those things in mind and you're being intentional on how.
People are going to perceive what you're putting together. But remember, at the end of the day, out of all of the things that we've talked about South far, the thing that's going to be most important is the value that you're bringing to your viewers. So that was super fun, but what you might not have known, or you might have caught wind of is Nick asking some very interesting questions about YouTube thumbnails in his community tab.
Something along the lines of this. And what I'm excited to announce is that simultaneous with this video, we've launched that video where we go through a bunch of your thumbnails and analyze them, have some really cool conversation about each of them. And that is over on his channel. I'm going to put it for you to watch right here, next. So go watch that next and we'll see you there. Ok. There's one thing, it's tradition. Nick, I have to do this. Can you tell everybody to boop the like button?
