Here’s the transcript or summary. Of course, I didn’t say half of this, but I wanted to. I said most of it. When I get the link to the video, I can post it. In the meantime, read away.

So you want to be a content creator?

My background is in video production. I started playing around with multimedia equipment when I was in a band in High School. I started my first multimedia company while I was a freshman in college in order to earn money. I talked my way into a loan and never looked back. I’ve since worked in some of the biggest cities on the East Coast shooting all variety of media for pretty much every industry there is, education, retail, commercial and medical, to working on commercials, documentaries, animations, to live streaming at NY Fashion week and the Meadowlands. Along the way I also got my degree in marketing, and frequently use those topics to enhance my videos, techniques and strategies in production. I also write for Videomaker magazine and The Creator’s Handbook, and now I’m working at Northeastern University at the Institute for Experiential Artificial Intelligence while advising several companies and clients. I’m also producing a documentary about a mythical lost Les Paul guitar that could be a million-dollar diamond in the rough. We interview Paul McCartney in a month or two.

So you want to be a content creator:

I’m sure your parents are THRILLED that you want to broadcast your life online.

But let’s just start with the basics first. And throughout all the equipment, editing, lighting, concepts and more, there’s 2 important things that you truly need to start with. It’s at the core concept of just about everything that we do, but when you address video, it’s just as important.

One is organization. And two is ease. Let’s talk about number one. When you create multimedia, many times, people get so excited to think about the concept of multimedia that they don’t quite drill down into the single refined point of what they’re doing. For instance, let’s be honest-many people want fame and so therefore they feel that they need to broadcast their life online because they saw someone else doing it and they think they can do it too. If you see how easy it is to watch Ninja broadcast his games, why can’t you do it too? Or maybe you have better ideas than Mr.Beast and can give away money better?

That’s great and all, but that’s really no reason for me to watch YOU make a video when I can watch THEM do it, or even do it myself. If you turn a camera on, who will watch it? Why will they watch it? And who, specifically will you WANT to watch it. Because besides the need for an audience-you’re also going to want to think about the future, which is monetization and the ability to merchandise-which are key parts to making a career doing things in the media space. If you think about the why-you typically can support making MORE, which is ties into the aspect of the video. You can have a great video, a great episode, a great stream, but if you can’t think any more about your niche and your topic, or anything else that gets you excited-you’re not going to last. There are around 2.4 million podcasts out there, with close to 66 million episodes between them. The TOP 1 percent of podcasters produce more than 20 episodes. The rest have already given up by then. It takes a lot of work to produce media and content-and then continue to produce it while you grow your audience and make some inroads into work.

Which brings me to my second point-ease. I like the term Keep It Simple-it’s catchy. But if you’re like most people, you get super excited about an idea, and when it proves to be more work than you bargained for-you’ll tend to put it off or push it to the backburner or anything else except give yourself more work for a project that’s not paying you. One of the most important things I advise is the ability to streamline what you do-almost no matter what you do, in order to make it easy to accomplish and get it done. If you podcast-that means having equipment out and ready, so when you get all that work done of topic finding and research, you can simply roll in and record. Having to take everything out, setup and then go can put a real crunch in your creative space. Likewise-having too much footage and having to edit, color, add music, add effects and do more with a video is really time consuming. If you haven’t edited before, there’s a ton of topics that you need to get a feel for in order to produce some quality content. Keep it simple-and find that workflow that works for you and what you do in order to get it done. In the end-that’s what your audience sees-the final product, and that’s what they want. If you want to build a career, you’ll need to get it done.

For the next part, I’m going to briefly touch on these aspects. Each one can go into excruciating depth and detail and lots of people like to argue online about them, but I favor the “Roosevelt” quote-which is, “Do the best you can, with what you have, where you are”. If you’ve got $500 bucks and your parent’s basement, that’s sometimes where the best magic can happen. Use your imagination.

Cameras:

Let’s go into equipment, which is one of both my favorite and most irritating parts. “Choose the right tool for the job” is a good headline for this, but again-when you think about your content, what are you creating? Are you spending time capturing footage of action? Are you filming long and gorgeous scenes? Drone shots of landscape? Whatever your plan is, you’ll need a camera. Most people have an excellent camera right in their pocket. But that’s also maybe not the right tool for the job. In today’s world-and this is changing, you can have basically a few types of cameras. These are Cine and mirrorless cameras-as in Cinema and digital cameras, Action Cameras, like a GoPro, and Camcorders, like the old-fashioned ones your parents used to use, and Webcams. You can usually make one camera fit into different categories-but it’s not always going to be the best tool for the job. For instance-you’re not taking a large CINE camera and putting it on a jet ski. And it’s probably best to not film you playing games with a GoPro. A camcorder is inherently better at action from a distance and battery life, but the picture is NOT going to be as good as the CINE. So again, thinking about a few of the things that you do and options is important for you to be efficient at what you’re shooting. You can even get away with a webcam if you’re sitting at a desk, although you may want higher definition for something funny. You’ll need more than one camera for a multicamera shoot-and if you want that shoot live, you’ll need a video mixer in order to cut between cameras and camera angles, and you’ll want a recorder, so you don’t have to edit it afterwards all over again. It can get expensive and confusing fast. So, think about what you’re doing, and then think about how you can accomplish this-streaming games needs a video splitter from your computer or console or uses software to superimpose your image in the feed. A basic camera to start with, especially for streaming is a webcam. They make several varieties, and all have different strengths and weaknesses, so you again need to assess. You will be bound to a computer, however, so you need to consider the ability to move around or change scenes and angles if you’re doing so, and also-the quality won’t be as good as any other cameras. It will pass for online streaming, however. You can also start with a mirrorless camera-which is a camera with a lens on it. These will produce a great picture, but often they’re not a powered zoom-meaning you have to adjust the lens to zoom in and out and they can be finicky. Most are now over the 30-minute recording time limit that they used to be capped at, but some are still capped, and you’ll have to deal with batteries and sensors overheating if you record for a long time. You’re basically taking a photo camera sensor and adjusting that for video. It looks good, but you must live with the limitations you find. If you choose a camcorder, you can get some decent picture out of modern camcorders. They will be bigger but have longer battery life suited to longer recording. A camcorder sensor is not as good as the mirrorless camera sensor, so you will most likely have good video but it’s not as good as it can be-but we can help solve that.  

What’s the difference between CINE/Mirrorless and Camcorders/Webcams

The biggest difference between cameras is typically what’s know as the sensor. The larger the sensor-the more detailed the image and the “megapixels”. A larger sensor can produce a deeper and richer image, but one thing that it also produces well is the focusing depth of field, also known as the iris, the “f-stop” or the effect, which is called “bokeh”. This depends on the lens as much as the sensor-so a “fast” lens has a low f-stop or focusing value, like say a 1.2 or 1.8, and then can produce a shallow depth of field for those amazing movie shots where only one small part is in focus. Larger sensors with fast lenses produce those images well and if that’s the look you’re going for, then you’ll want to choose fast lenses. The f-stop is also great for low lighting-as in the lower the stop, the more open the iris is, and the darker you can shoot. Camcorders typically have smaller sensors-and the lens on camcorders is a fixed lens-meaning that you cannot change it. This gives you super-fast focusing and great control in some ways, but less ability to get those “film” and dreamy shots you see that make a big difference. Sometimes you don’t and won’t even use the ability, but having that tool when you need that magical shot is important, and the next thing that depends on that is?

Lighting:

Lighting and cameras have a love hate relationship. For photography-it’s lighting that makes the photo. For video, cameras have always had a hard time filming in low light. Not just that, but lighting makes a scene and will make or break your images-an ok camera can look amazing in good lighting, and a great camera will look terrible in bad lighting. This also depends on what you shoot and how you shoot, you can go super in-depth on lighting and change many different facets of your production with just a few key lights or fill lights or scrims or whatever else you might need. A good basic setup can involve just one light and a cheap board. We use one light as a key light, and then use a poster board as a reflector, which softens light and makes it fill in gentle layers. This will give depth to the shot and keep you in focus and looking good. If you want to get complicated, you can bring in more lights, change color temperatures to match focus and isos, and do all sorts of nifty things. This also depends on your space and your sense of design and look to your shot. This can be super important to your final shot and how you light things if you want a good effect. With lighting, not only do we focus on placement and reflection, but we also focus on intensity and the color scale. Intensity is obvious-how bright the light is-obviously the brighter it is, the more lit your scene/actor is and the better it looks. Light also has a color scale. The “bluer” the light-what we call “cold”, the higher the value of the scale. The more “warmer” the light, the more “yellow” it will be and higher in color temperature. Use this chart for reference. You can also “tune” your camera to these light scales so that it matches your camera and gives you a neutral starting palette. If you light something at 3200k-more neutral and warm according to the charts, you can set your camera “white balance” to 3200k and match the tone.

This is important because if you’re editing later-you have a neutral scene to start from and can change the color or the “look” of the edit afterwards. Lighting is incredibly important for this aspect because it can change the whole tone and feel of a movie, a scene or a production. So being able to light by using a main key, a fill, reflectors, etc, properly for the look and shot you’re going for is important-even outside during daylight and other aspects we typically white balance and check our color temps so that the recordings are as neutral as possible to edit.

When I shot Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top last month for a Les Paul Documentary-we only used 2 key lights, one was on a high mount with a large soft box and grid, and the other was slightly offset but a nice fill light to brighten the room. This is an “interview” style lighting setup, but it gets complicated quickly if you want to do more, change things around, or get a different effect. This is something you’ll have to practice and attempt in the things that you do, so try it out as much as you can to get a feel for it.

Gang-Green

One thing to note is that IF you shoot green screen, we’re getting into some effects things that need to be addressed. To get the best from your green screen, you’ll want your entire screen to be…green. This means that you typically light the screen separately, because that keeps the green uniform and prevents the shadows and anything else coming through and separating the color out. Green is chosen because the frequency of this bright green doesn’t interact with a lot of clothing or skin colors. This is technically called “keying”, or a color key, which separates the green frequency from the other color frequencies that you see from the camera. Lots of software adjusts automatically these days and it’s getting better and better, but if I’m shooting something important, I’m always lighting the screen separately and then lighting my subject, which will ensure a clean color key to work with. Again-a better camera will have more color and therefore “key” better as well. If you stream and use a green screen, you’ll want the same concept to give a nice a clear background key. LEDs have come a long way and are cheaper and cheaper, so you can get a really good setup with smaller lights, and you typically don’t have to worry about the heat as much as you used to. You should invest into lights as well-as much as you can, in order to give yourself some separation for your video.   

Audio

Lighting is important but another aspect that separates production levels is the audio. Audio is what I started with, I played instruments and still record music and it’s easier than ever to get good sound. They make incredibly cheap and accessible lav mics and transmitters that can go just about anywhere. A Lav mic is one of those tiny mics that you can hang from talent and get a good sound. They’re essential because if you’re by yourself you don’t have a boom mic hanging around, and they make sure that your vocal audio and voice isn’t drowned out by the wind/background noise or anything else that can jeopardize your setup. Most on camera mics are terrible, and you can get setups that plug directly into your camera, into a mixer, into a separate recorder-however you want to do it, but just get a separate lav mic to record with. It will make a difference in how the audience hears you, and you’ll want it. You can spend a lot of money and get a good setup that records all by itself, or you can record into your camera line in, but again, just get one. I like to use an additional recorder like a Zoom H1 or H4n pro, Tascam also makes cool ones, -just because it gives me extra lines of audio in case ANYTHING can go wrong. I have filmed weddings and I might throw out 2 or 3 audio channels because they are terrible but it’s better to have that option than one channel that you just can’t fix with any plugin. If you record multiple channels, you’ll want a mixer, which takes all those channels and adjusts the levels so you can get a solid sound. Podcasters use audio mixers to have different mics or sources between guests and the hosts, and there’s plenty of mixers out there that will do the job for cheap. I use battery powered mixers or other combinations if I’m on the fly and most are reliable-the audio mixers have been in the game for a lot longer than video mixers or other technology so far, which we can discuss later.

Tripods, batteries, oh my…

If you shoot with a mirrorless camera, you’ll want a tripod. A good tripod is worth it’s weight in gold, but you can typically find decent tripods for relatively inexpensive prices. Make sure that you consider that if you buy cheap ones, they might not support the camera weight you’re looking for. You’ll also want extra accessories for what you do-backup batteries, and any cables that are necessary. Like the organization and ease before-have a backup or at least a backup plan is incredibly important. When you do live events, you can have the whole thing go down because of one simple cable or adaptor and it happens. That literally keeps me up at night on big productions, so I’m a duplicate and triplicate kind of guy. When you’re organized and you keep backups, you’ll be sure that you don’t have any issues or mistakes when you’re working live or even just being able to save a shoot if you needed a light trigger or a monitor cable, headphones, whatever. Most accessories are cheap nowadays, so you should consider getting backups of the trivial things. If you’re “A” camera goes down, that’s usually a big deal and you SHOULD have a “B” camera, but that’s more understandable. If you have a simple cable issue, that’s a head slapper. In that workflow example-I try to keep items that use the same battery or battery system, so that I can swap them easily and continue rolling if I have a battery go down for whatever reason. Another tip is to keep your batteries and systems charged. I like to charge mine right away-because it reminds me and then keeps me ready if I have a quick gig or even if I’m somewhat lazy and forget to double check. I’m typically covered because I’ve charged my batteries after the last gig, and I’ve got backups to keep the production going.

Editing:

Editing is the act of cutting the video together. It’s a simple concept-you cut the video where you like the parts to stop/start and flow together, adjust the audio, color, effects/graphics, and then “kick” it out as a final mixed down video and product. The names and terminology are old school-from when they used to cut film together and began splicing movies together. They have editing tools that you can use on your phone which are rudimentary and simple-sometimes that’s all you need, and then you can get into a full editing setup-from imovie/final cut pro/premiere/avid, there’s a bunch out there. I prefer premiere-because it’s stays within adobe’s wheelhouse and software suites-I use photoshop and afte reffects pretty much daily, so staying within the same software eco system is nice. You can do it without Adobe-Apple has their own suite and there’s also freeware versions of editing-Blackmagic has DaVinci, and there’s also Lightworks which I’ve sampled in the past. But again-because I use after effects for effects and then photoshop for frame manipulation and designs, I stay with adobe because it’s easy to switch. You can go whatever way you wish; the most important thing is producing a full and final product.

In all honesty-this is where people have lots of problems. Many can have a vision of filming-and you should too, that process is called “storyboarding” and it’s important for large productions to get an idea of how they want the project to go. Once they do, they, they can create the plans for how to film, and then edit the project down a lot faster than having random footage to scroll through to get a good idea of the project. It’s a lot. It can be overwhelming. And the reason that it’s hard when you’re producing a project is just because a good thing can take a lot of effort to make. If you have a passion for it, you’ll need to dig in and get it done.

Live Video Mixing

This is one of the last things I’ll discuss because this is getting into complicated things here, but we can talk about live video mixing. Live video mixing is taking pretty much all the things we’ve talked about so far, and then combining them all into a complicated dance to produce a video-live or even recorded and then broadcasted live. It’s easier than ever to get into streaming but producing a show with all the bells and whistles gets difficulty fast. You’ll need cameras, lights, effects, and everything else cued and ready to go, and then expertly produce, mix and create the show on the fly. Many shows have dedicated people to certain positions, but a lot of twitch and other internet shows produce these barebones or even with 1 person. You can even live mix yourself, which is what I do for some of my shows-and even this broadcast, but you’ll have to practice, be prepared, and know how you’re going to switch, change, segment and basically the workflow of the entire show. Therefore, that organizational aspect we discussed first is so important because you’ll need to have these things ready to overlay or mix into your feed. It’s like the audio concept-mixing channels of audio, plus video, and then anything else like an intro video, a lower third-which is your name superimposed on your channel, and then any thing else you might need. It’s the grandaddy of all the video production and when you get into it for large events and productions-football games, tv shows, it’s crazy and hectic and fast paced and lots of fun.

There’s lots of software out there that also addresses this-twitch has a version of software that’s based on OBS-which is called Open Broadcaster Software-and it’s a free software switching controller. You can also get a physical video mixer from Blackmagic called Atem-which is super cheap and a great way to get into video mixing. You can even use them together to get more mixes or take the processing off your laptop, but it’s up to you how you do it and what you want to do, because there’s also more paid software-wirecast, vmix, and other interfaces like tricaster or yololive.

The concept of live producing a show is also interesting because as you record it-and if you’re happy with it-then you don’t need to edit it as much. Again, going back to the beginning-if you keep your workflow easy and simple, then you can create live shows that only take up that much of your time, and then get back to working on producing more content or other things. Having to go back and edit can create a bottleneck and when you have 4-5 streams to edit and fix and then do post work on, it can get cumbersome and hard to produce and you lose your appetite quickly. So again, think of the workflow and product you want, and try to make it as simple as possible to get and finish so that the audience can see that product and enjoy it. Remember that podcast example from the beginning? Think about producing 20 shows and you’re already ahead of the curve for just about anything.

Wrapping it up

So, it’s a lot-to think about, to organize and to wrap your brain around. One more phrase that comes to mind-for life and for anything is, “Luck is preparation meeting opportunity”. I interpret it this way-the preparation is you, practicing your skill and honing your craft. It doesn’t matter what it is, but when you’re ready, you’ll get that opportunity. And if you’re not prepared, that’s when you’ll feel that regret, because sometimes you only get so many opportunities to showcase what you do or what you want to do. So go and practice-go make mistakes, go learn as much as you can about the things that you enjoy, because when the chance comes, you’ll be ready to show them off and it might lead to a job, a gig, and opportunity that you never expected and then soon you’re doing something that you enjoy and is fulfilling. It’s not luck anymore-it’s simply what you’ve worked for, and what you’re ready to do.