(00:00):
Welcome to my new set. This is a set that I've specifically designed for one purpose, and that is for LUMIX videos. This set is all about the LUMIX camera. It is going to be used for announcements of new features, new firmwares, new cameras, and eventually I want to use this to deep dive into individual specific features of the camera. In those videos, I want to release both widescreen and vertical. The idea is that they'll be short enough that they will fit into both formats. I guess we'll see how that really goes, but that is the intention. Later in the video, we'll talk more about the specifics of how it's being shot, but it is being shot Open Gate, which means I can drop both a wide shot and a vertical shot out of this. Now, at first glance, it might seem like, well, what's the point of that tall shot?
(00:44):
Because all you've got is empty space above and below the meat of the image. But that of course is because on social media, Instagram, TikTok, whatever, the top and the bottom of the screen has a bunch of stuff on it. So I actually have this little mask that I overlay when I'm editing the vertical one. You see that on screen right now, and that allows me to ensure that everything I need is in frame without having to just have some blank stuff on the top and bottom. And in fact, if you want that mask, I built it custom to mask out the areas of Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube shorts that are covered by stuff on the screen. I'll put that up for download in my Discord server. So if you're not a member of the Discord server, the way you get there is to become a member of the channel; that grants you access to the Discord server.
(01:23):
So again, the purpose of the set is to have a permanent fixed set that is both landscape and vertical and just basically covers all the needs that I'd have for these LUMIX videos. So that said, let me take you on a tour of everything in here. Here's a chapter list of what we're going to talk about. We'll go into set design, the cameras and lenses, including all the recording formats and timecode and monitoring and all that stuff, the audio and acoustic treatments, the lighting, which of course is a really big part of this, the rigging, including the teleprompter and all that stuff. And then we'll wrap it all up at the end. So with that said, let's get started with set design. And the first thing you'll notice is the background has changed. I changed the color from the previous chapter, and I'm actually going to continue to change the color through every chapter of this video because I haven't quite figured out what the right color is.
(02:06):
I… I don't… I am struggling with this and I want your help. So after you've watched all of the chapters of this video, let me know in the comments which background you liked the best. Tell me the color or tell me the chapter number or tell me if you have some other idea. I'm obviously struggling with this, but let's start with the layout of the space that I'm in. This is actually a really small space. I have a big studio, but this is a small space, and I did this on purpose. I wanted to have something that was kind of neat and tidy, but also to work within the constraints of a smaller space because usually I have a lot of space to spread out in. I thought it'd be a fun challenge to do this. So the space I'm working in is about three by three meters.
(02:43):
It's under 10 by 10 feet. So this is a pretty confined space, certainly something you could do in any normal bedroom in any regular house. Now, the design, the overall look that I wanted to go for was… I'd like to say I started off with the idea of something kind of homey and warm and comfy, but I didn't even know where that idea came from or where it went to. But this is where I ended up. This is a solid wall. This brick is wallpaper. I needed something on here other than just solid paint. I wanted to do something different and I chose this kind-of brick wallpaper look. Was that a good idea or not? I don't know, but it's what I went with. Now, I did choose this kind of white wallpaper, this white brick, which I will say maybe not the best option.
(03:22):
I like that I can change the color with the lighting. Maybe I should have gone with something a little bit more gray, neutral gray; that tends to absorb color LED lights better, but this is what it is. But here's one bit of warning. If you are going to wallpaper your set, make sure when you're buying the wallpaper that not only do you ensure that it has the exact same lot number so that the colors don't change, but even if it does compare 'em in the store, I have two different lot numbers, but it turns out that even from the same lot number, I have two different colors, which is really, really annoying, but it is what it is. Basic wall behind me and then some shelves on the wall. So these are just regular shelves you buy at any store. And then some props. I got some film books, some old Minolta film camera on here, some little plant things.
(04:03):
It's just props, right? And over here, because this is a LUMIX set, this is meant to be a LUMIX branding. I'm still waiting to get a nice LUMIX cap so that I can have a good LUMIX branding on there, but that's effectively that part of the design. The table itself is from IKEA. It is, I think they call it a bar table. And one of the fun things about this was figuring out how to put the camera on here. If you've seen some of my videos before where I've talked about a specific camera and I wanted to have it mounted in front of me, I have built multiple different little tiny platforms with a ball head on it. The problem is they move and in this setup, even with a platform in the little ball head, every time I touch the camera, the camera would move a little bit and I've got another camera angle over the shoulder that would pick up that movement every time I touched it.
(04:47):
So in an endeavor to find a way to make this thing rock solid as part of this permanent set, this is bolted to the table. I literally drilled a hole through the table, bolted it from underneath. So this is going nowhere. Also on this set, I have over here a little prop area. It's kind of like a little mini cyc, if you will. It has different backgrounds that I can swap out, and then I can put a little prop here, and this is just that I have something to point the camera at when I'm doing demos, whatever, through here. Obviously I can change that out to make it appropriate for whatever I'm doing with the camera. But that whole concept was I'm here with this locked set. I've got the camera mounted securely and pointing at an area that is a dedicated area for the camera to be pointing at, which is kind of fun.
(05:27):
Other than that, I don't think there's much to say for set design. So let's move on to the next section. This section is a biggie. This one's all about the cameras, the monitoring, the formats, timecode, everything else. So to start off, we're shooting with two cameras, just two. That's part of the ease of this setup here. I've got a LUMIX GH7 as my primary camera here, and then a LUMIX GH6 as the overhead up there. Both of them are shooting an Open Gate of course, so that I can crop things however I need. Lenses; I've got the 10 to 25 f/1.7 on the GH7 set to about 25mm, and it's at f/2. f/1.7 gives me just ever so slightly shallower depth of field, make the background a little bit softer, but at that point this camera becomes just a little bit too soft.
(06:06):
I find it f/2, I get the right balance; this is sharp enough that it's not distracting. The background is blurry enough that it's a little bit of separation. So I think that works out well. The lens on the GH6 up there is a 50 to 200mm that is at f/7.1 or f/8. So it's really stopped down to give me a lot of depth of field to ensure that everything I do on the camera here is in focus. I didn't want to have a scenario where part of the camera's in focus and part of it isn't. So that's a big difference there. Which also means that I've got an ND on the camera here. We'll talk about that when we get into rigging. So those are the two cameras. I do also need to be able to record the output of this camera.
(06:43):
So that's what this cable is. It's running into a Ninja V recorder, and that is recording just at 16:9 in 4K. So I don't get the Open Gate on that, but that also includes the menus, if I need to capture the menus, or just in general exactly what the camera sees in here. These two cameras are running into ATOMOS Shinobi IIs, which are mounted on my desk here. That allows me to see exactly what the cameras see, and most importantly, start and stop recording directly on the monitor here. So this means that I don't have to run back and forth to check focus, check composition, and most importantly to start and stop recording. Now, unfortunately, the Shinobi IIs do not yet support touch to focus on either of these cameras. Now, I don't need it on this camera because this one is on auto focus, which seems to be working quite well.
(07:27):
However, for the overhead camera, I don't want auto focus. I want to be able to touch-to-focus on the precise part of the camera. Again, depth of field, it should all be in focus, but just to make sure, and unfortunately we don't have that yet. Hopefully that'll come probably to the GH7, at which point that'll definitely have to get swapped out. All the cameras are running with timecode. I have what I call my house timecode. I've got an ATOMOS Ultra Sync in the back that is broadcasting house timecode at 25 frames per second. It's basically time of day timecode, but all cameras get tapped into that. So this camera has timecode, that one has timecode, and of course the audio recorder has timecode as well. And then the Ninja V when I'm recording out of this, gets its own timecode too.
(08:04):
So everything syncs up nice and neat; love timecode! If you have never really experienced the benefits of timecode, I'm going to link to a playlist down below where I've done extensive videos about timecode. It's kind of, “once you go timecode, there's no going back”. It's pretty awesome. So I think that covers all of the camera rigging; two cameras plus the recording out of here, plus audio. We'll come to that in a moment. And yeah, that's the camera rigging. Now let's talk audio and yes, the background has changed very slightly. The previous one was a preset for ROSCO R93, which was a blue-green. This one was an R92, which is turquoise. So very slight difference. Let's see what you think. Okay, audio. I am recording audio on a separate dedicated recorder. This is a Zoom F6 I'm recording in 32-bit float and it is recording on my Sennheiser MKE 600 mic.
(08:52):
I really like this mic. It's obviously not the best mic in the world. It works. It does its job and I like the sound of it. So the recording again to 32-bit float. I know that seems like it might be overkill for a controlled environment like this, but it has come in useful more times than not. So just 32-bit float it is! Also, again, timecode running into that as well. Anyway, this audio setup is on a rolling stand. It's the same audio recorder that I use for my main set or pretty much any set if I'm not using a lavalier. So this is a great configuration. I actually took the inspiration from this from Caleb Pike. He's done multiple videos on these rolling audio stands, and this is my variation of that. It works out really, really well for me. As far as acoustic treatment goes, I have sound blankets on either side of me here.
(09:34):
There is a large window to my right which has the blinds closed, but I do get occasional road noise from there. But most importantly from this position, I didn't want to get any reflection off of the window here. And then having something on this side just to kind-of deaden the sound there helps out quite a bit. I don't have anything behind the camera; behind the camera it's just open space. So if I had something, it might make the sound even more kind-of enclosed. But this works for what I'm doing here. The ceilings here are quite high. It is a drop ceiling, so there is that… just generic, office foam things in the ceiling, but that definitely helps the sound absorption as well. Other than that, there's nothing special going on in here. Just the two sound blankets, the ceiling is what it is,
(10:13):
and that microphone that I've got. Pretty straightforward. Now we get to one of the more fun sections of this; lighting! And lighting, as you might imagine was a really big deal on this. How am I going to light it? What are the lights? Where are they coming from? On and on. So here's how this started. When I first started building this out, I just used the lighting that I already had in the studio. I cannibalized other sets, pulled lighting from various places to figure out how I was going to actually design this. Where am I going to position the lighting? What type of lighting do I want? But ultimately what I really wanted to do is find a lighting sponsor for this set. And fortunately I did, it took a while. I talked to a few different companies, A lot of companies just didn't have exactly what I wanted, but I finally settled on working with NEEWER.
(10:53):
Now NEEWER has been absolutely fantastic in this, and this is actually the first time I've used their lights. I've used a ton of their other gear, so I was really happy to be able to partner with them now. And all the lights in here, (minus the practicals; we'll come to that), are from NEEWER. Let's start by just turning everything off. So that's everything off except for the practicals. The practicals are just generic home LED lights. NEEWER does have lights for this. I'll turn these back on for a moment. NEEWER does have lights for this, but they didn't have 'em available when I was building out this set, so I don't have theirs in there, but they're the only thing that isn't NEEWER. So let's start this build out with the background light. The background light is a TL60 Bar light. It's here. You can see that it's kind of mounted vertically.
(11:37):
And because I'm not moving around the set, that's a fine position for it. And this is the one of course where I've been talking about trying to figure out the right color for this. There's tons of different colors available. Obviously you can choose from all these different gels in here, but you can also go into a picker and literally point this at something else. Let's take this and I'll point it at the orange of this table here. Pick a color from that. I can go into a full RGB selector on here. I can do the HSI wheel and really choose any color that you want in here. It's a very cool setup, very, very nice and easy to control. If I do the CCT, then I can do the color temperature down from 2,500 all the way up to 10,000. And there's also a green magenta shift, so minus 50 points or plus 50 points either way.
(12:20):
So you really do have a huge amount of control in here. I just haven't figured out exactly what the right color is for this. So I'll leave it here for now. That's the background light. Next up is the overhead lights. Another TL60, and that is a light bar that is just over the top of the desk here. That is just to illuminate the desk. And in fact, I have little baffles on it that had a grid in it. I actually ripped the grid out because it was causing little shadows the way I had it set up. But this light up here gives me a little bit of top-down illumination, and you can tell from this angle that while a little bit of it's spilling onto my face, most of it is not. There's really very little light from this hitting my face, but it does illuminate the desk down here nicely.
(12:59):
Of course, it's not the only light on here that's hitting the desk. A lot of it comes from the mains here, but that does help to fill things in. So let's bring up the main lights. I've got a PL60 on the right here, that's a PL60C; the color version for this. Obviously I don't need the color version, but this is what they had available. And so from here, if I wanted to, I could go in and change the colors of this as well. So if I go into this, I can make that anything that I want. But obviously for this setup, that doesn't really make sense. So for this, we'll go back to my standard lighting at 5,500 K. This one is at a hundred percent while on this side I've got another one, same light coming in at just 25%. That gives me a little bit of a balance.
(13:36):
So if I turn this one off, you can see I get a little bit of light from this side; toggle those… get a lot more light from this side, and then here balanced out, but with a little bit less over here. Now these both have a soft box slash grid on them, and these lights initially come with barn doors, which is fantastic. That allowed me to keep the light from hitting the background. And if you look at the very first video that I did from this set that I published from here, there were different light panels here. They were very broad and the background was completely illuminated by those lights making the background the same color light as me. So that didn't work. I needed something to constrain that. Starting with the barn doors, that was great, and that gave me the control of the light. However, the LED bulbs on that panel are quite harsh
(14:20):
if they're this close to you (I can reach out and touch these; they're very close to me), and it was a little bit too much on the eyes. So I wanted to have the soft panel and then the grid to help direct that light. Now I know it's not perfect. I need to fill in more over here. I got some more lighting work to do, but we're getting there. And then the last light is totally overkill, but it's so awesome. This is a CB300 with a Spot on it. Now this is here so that I can shape the light to a very specific position. Right now it is shining on my mini set right here, but this contraption allows me to shape and focus the light to anything. And one of the main purposes of it, other than sometimes lighting a set here is perhaps to light a very specific part of the camera.
(15:02):
So let's say I'm doing a video where I want to talk very intricately about the dial on here and the existing lighting just isn't quite enough. I can focus a beam of light right onto there. In fact, when I was first playing with this setup at a distance of about six meters, 20 feet or so, I had a setup where from this light, I was able to focus the light on the label on a bottle sitting on a desk 20 feet away. It's very, very awesome. I'm going to have a lot of fun doing videos with this light and just about this light. It is absolutely awesome. So there's the setup. So again, going through if I turn off the spot and then the left and the right and the overhead and the light behind me. So those are the different lights that I'm using in this setup, and they're definitely awesome.
(15:45):
Now we get to rigging, and this is a really fun one as well. So how is all the gear mounted and held into place? Well, remember one of the criteria that I set out for myself here was to make a small contained space here. Again, it's three meters by three meters, 10 by 10 feet space. So I wanted to keep everything within that. So let's start with how the lights are mounted. Now, normally you'd put lights onto light stands, but that of course means some big tripod-like thing on the floor that you're going to trip over, gets in the way. Didn't want to do that. So these are mounted on the table with jaw clamps. These are actually from NEEWER, which totally was unintentional. I had bought these long before I did a partnership with them. And you can see that these mount onto the corner of the desk, they grip really, really strong.
(16:26):
They're not maybe as tall as I would like. These are the tallest models. You can see that I've rigged up a little extra extra to give it just a few more inches of boost. But that means that my lights are super solid in place and they're not going anywhere and I don't have to worry about tripping over anything on the floor. The camera is not on a tripod. It is actually mounted on an iFootage monopod with the round base. Now, I saw these advertised maybe a year or so ago, and I finally got around to getting a couple of them, and I think these are fantastic. I bought these myself. I ordered a pair of them, and they're super, super convenient. It is basically as stable as a tripod as long as no one's touching it. And since no one's operating this, the camera's just in position.
(17:04):
It does take a little while to stabilize once I touch the camera. But of course, once it settles down, it's not going anywhere and it means there's no tripod legs to get in the way. And changing the height on it is super easy. I don't have to adjust three different tripod legs, just one collar up and down and away it goes. The microphone you've already seen, it is on a rolling microphone stand so that I can position that anywhere in the studio that I need, 'cause that is the one thing that does move around. The overhead lighting is hanging from the ceiling using a special clamp that's designed for drop ceilings. And this is from Manfroto, I believe. And then there is just this long boom arm hanging off of that. I would actually not mind if this light was just a little bit lower, if that pole was a little bit longer, but I got high ceilings here and this just is what it is.
(17:43):
Finally, one of the coolest things in here is the rigging for the spotlight and for over-the-shoulder camera. These are both mounted on these big boom arms that are bolted to the wall. And these things are fantastic. They're super, super flexible. I can position it anywhere I want, extend this out to make it longer, raise it up and down, make it taller or shorter, and overall, position it wherever I want. These are awesome, and again, it keeps everything off the floor. They're not even that expensive. They're about a hundred bucks each on Amazon. So these have been super, super useful. I really, really appreciate these and I think I might have to find other uses for more of these in the studio. As far as the camera rigging itself, the camera that is on the long arm is just on a simple ball head, kind of a squeeze-release ball head,
(18:25):
so it's easy to position. But this camera's a bit more important. This one is in a SmallRig teleprompter setup. Sometimes I use a teleprompter, so I want to have that always in place and ready to go. And what I love about this teleprompter rig is that it has a drop-in for a four by five filter. And in that drop-in, I'm currently using one of my K&F Concept ND filters. Now K&F Concept is a new channel sponsor. Just about a week or two ago, I released a video detailing their ND filters, going through a bunch of tests that I did on 'em to show the quality of those filters and why I've decided to partner with them. And in that video, you'll also see a really fun durability test where I beat the snot out of their really durable UV filter and finally got it to break, but it took a lot.
(19:05):
You'll have to watch that video to see it. I'll link to that above and down below. The last part of this puzzle is editing. And I'm not actually going to show an editing demo right now of how I cut these pieces together, but if that's something you'd like to see, lemme know in the comments. And maybe I will do a video on that. I don't really do Resolve videos on this channel. I've done a couple of 'em, but I don't want to make that a focus of this channel. However, it is a unique workflow. And so if you'd like to see it, let me know. But I'll just tell you briefly that I am of course, starting with the Open Gate, the 6K, 4:3 aspect ratio shots. And from there, cutting the 16:9 and 9:16. And the whole workflow of how I do that I think is quite interesting, and it took me a little while to come up with the best way to handle it.
(19:44):
One of the great advantages of course, of shooting with such big footage is that when it comes to cropping in, I can crop in quite far. So for example, this is the widest shot at 16:9, and then this is the tightest shot that I can do in 4K without scaling up at all. And if you're talking about the vertical, well, here's a 9:16 at 1920x1080, that is now punched into a hundred percent. So you can see I really have a lot of room to push in there. So again, if you want a full tour of the editing, please let me know. Maybe I'll do that. But for now, we're leaving that out. So that's my set tour. What do you guys think of this set? What would you change? What would you do differently? What do you think I've done wrong? And most importantly, which color do you like the…? Oh, I forgot to change the color this time, but which color do you like the best? Figuring out the coloring on the background has probably been the hardest part of this. But I'd love to know what you think. And maybe I do need to change things, and I know that this part of it's not bright enough. I got to do something about that, but we're getting there. It's almost done. Is it ever really done.
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