 Hey guys, today we're taking a behind the scenes look at the DIY video podcast studio that I've built in the attic of my 150 year old house using some pretty unconventional things here and there. And I think you'll like it and maybe you'll get some ideas for your studio at your house or if you're a fan of the podcast, you can kind of see behind the scenes of how I make it all happen. So let's check it out. All right. So if you're a fan of the podcast and the YouTube channel, then this is the angle that you're probably more used to seeing, which is exactly what I planned where this is all you see everything beyond it, which I will show you in just a moment. None of that matters because over there is just piles of junk and Christmas stuff. And I mean, this is my attic and I have kids and it's just craziness. So really this corner behind me is the most important thing. So I turned on that light to green, which is kind of the podcast color and pop of color back there. And really I think I got it looking pretty good where the first takeaway that I'd probably say for all of this is the most important thing is what's in your frame. Everything beyond that doesn't matter. I'm going to grab another camera that I have over here and then show you guys my desk and some of the really kind of unconventional things that I do to make this work. But again, all that matters is what you are seeing on this screen right here, which has a pretty good autofocus. This is a Sony ZV-1 camera. And then over here on the other one, which I'll grab handheld, I have a Canon XA40, which is more of a camcorder. And you're going to hear probably this lav I'm using, which is a Sony wired lav. And then I use the SM7B a lot. I will say also that any gear I talk about, I will put a link in the description with an affiliate link. So if you want to check it out and end up buying anything for yourself, it actually helps the show a little bit. So I record into Riverside.fm, which is the podcast platform for recording, which I highly recommend. Let me grab the camera, flip it around, and then we'll look around. And I'll tell you more about that stuff as we go. So here we go. All right, guys. So I'm going to give you kind of the walking up to the desk view here. I'm doing a handheld thing with the camera, so I hope it's OK. And don't mind the lights are kind of blowing the shot out a little bit. But so this is the desk where I record. As you can see, this is my attic. I mean, this is unfinished. There's just stuff everywhere. There's an Elysis electronic kit over there. But like, you know, I normally wouldn't show this, but this is literally just like piles of stuff. So what I did is I took this black kind of divider and that hides it. It's kind of hard to tell what that is. It's just kind of like a tri-fold or quarter-fold, actually, saying that hides everything that's back there. Because again, nothing matters if you don't see it on camera. Drums and stuff over there, which we'll get to that in more detail. Let me turn this light. These lights are really cool, but let me turn it to just white so we can see. So I guess for the sake of time here, I don't want this to be super long. But let's just have a look at the desk here where I record. I use a Tascam Mixcast 4. Sorry, it's kind of messy with the cables. But I mean, I'm trying to keep it kind of real to what it actually looks like. I love this recorder. This is a Tascam Mixcast 4, similar to a RODECAST Pro or whatever. The RODECAST version. I got this from Sweetwater when I did some ads and I absolutely love it. These are kind of a new acquisition. I use these Sennheiser 112 kind of earbud type things. They're not really in-ear monitors, but they're just mainly so I don't have to wear big. I used Sony OverEar kind of normal traditional headphones for years. So there's me as we're talking. Let me just tell you this real quick. So this is kind of a cool thing. The camera set up here, I have it mounted to the wall, which that I absolutely love. That is awesome because it's always there. I have vaulted ceilings here. And so that I'm trying to not make you sick here by moving the camera too much. I'm going to go around this mic. I have an SM7B here that's on a stand right there. So the camera mounted to the wall, always ready to go. Then basically on top of it, what I have is a receiver for a DJI mini lavalier mic, which clips on, which I use to record podcast ads and things like that. Or if you want to go and use a wireless lav, that is great. The ring on it, this is kind of interesting. It might be applicable to someone who's into this kind of thing. I use a, it's got a cover on it right now, but I use this. It's a teleprompter, which you can see inside. There's a little mirror and stuff. This teleprompter clips right onto the camera. And then there's a little space where you put your phone. And then that would be used to read a script for a podcast advertisement, which I do a fair amount of up here. So what I do is I record into that's my webcam, basically. It's kind of just an expensive webcam, the Sony ZV-1. I go into riverside.fm, which is our kind of podcast recording platform. Kind of weird that I'm filming myself through this looking at that screen. But then the audio source is the Tascam Mixcast 4, which I press record on this. I record on Riverside with the SM7 going through the Mixcast. And then over here, I have a, I have a third backup where I record into Pro Tools. And that is basically what ends up being the final audio. I use my audio from Pro Tools. And then I kind of split the screen up. This is kind of, you know, nerd specific stuff. Pro Tools on the bottom, whatever information. Here's Tony Williams, Wikipedia. And then this is hands down. One of my most important things is I use this fan all the time. I cannot begin to stress how hot it is up here. It's like on a day where it's 95 degrees outside, it's probably 105 degrees up here. There's some videos where I'm profusely sweating, but this is a baby stroller fan. And the reason I use this one as opposed to I bought a Vornado fan that was said to be really quiet is when you're doing these podcasts recordings, you need it to be extremely quiet. And this fan is the quietest that I could find. And we used it for a baby stroller, but it is super quiet. So if anyone is in the position that I'm in, where you need to have a really quiet room, I highly recommend just one of these baby stroller fans. You charge it, it's USB or whatever. I've got these monitors up here, which are the KRK Rocket fives or whatever. Normally they're black and yellow. This was a Christmas version, like 10 or 15 years ago. And I don't really use them. I just use headphones pretty much. But so the lights here are the GVM, which is great video maker lights. These are incredible and a really good value. And these have the RGB thing where you can change to whatever color you want. Hopefully that's showing up on the camera. OK, so for different advertisements, I will do different stuff on that. But we'll go back to white, have this old Japanese drum set behind me here, just kind of as a something to look at on camera or I should say as like a backdrop. I normally I have a drum set downstairs where I play a lot more because it is so hot up here. It's unbelievable little kind of backlight. I use this this light that's a duck that I lost the shade broke a long time ago. So I put that on a snare and it lights up the brick wall pretty nicely. Here's all my camera cases and stuff that I use for work. I got this mono bag recently, which is really cool. Mono is awesome. I'll put that in the description as well. Always have my backpack right here. This is kind of an unnecessary detail. But this mono bag I've used for years and that just holds everything. It comes up and down over here. I keep extra tripod, green screen, kids drum set over there that got replaced by a bigger one. Again, kind of a whatever detail, but I love having a printer that works. I didn't have a printer for years and years and years. I finished this wall behind me, which even on this camera, I don't think you can see that the detail is not just kind of blurry there. The detail of how bad of a job I did in some spots doesn't really show up. But if you look over here, I realized that none of this was going to be on camera. So I just stopped. I realized that when I switched to doing more of the video podcasts that all that mattered was what was on this wall, which that's not a very exciting thing to look at. But so like I said, this is the this is where the magic happens. Little pillow on the chair because, you know, you sit for three hours at a time or something. But it works for me. Let's go ahead and switch around and I'll talk to you guys a little bit more. All right, so that's pretty much it. I hope you guys enjoyed having a look around. I guess the other thing is I use a second monitor, which a lot of this stuff I try my best to get like a deal on or to a trade like the Canon, the XA40, which I'm shooting on over here. I use that for years at work. My boss retired. I sold all the furniture that that he used. We kind of liquidated it. And for me doing that, he gave me the camera. I sold some of his projectors. And in exchange, he gave me all the microphones he used. So whenever possible, I try to do that. I bought these lights used for like 200 bucks. This mic was, I believe, like, like, oh, this was a trade. I traded a Ludwig old Rocker 2 drum set for it. These monitor, the screen, the monitor, that was free from a friend. And it's an old Apple monitor, which I love using. So but it has no power adapter. It's like hardwired to some box that then plugs in. So everything is very DIY. One thing I'll add real quick is that if the teleprompter, which I highly recommend that if you do any kind of like content creation stuff using a teleprompter has been a game changer, because then you get a consistent read three, two or three times, however many times you want to do it. And then you can edit it together and make it like perfect. I hold a remote, which you can't really see down here and press stop, start, rewind, and that has just been a really, really big help to reading ads or whatever you're doing. I also use a headphone extender, which it's kind of coiled up here. But the Sennheiser earbuds that I put on over my ears, go down my back and around and plug in was too short. So I use a little headphone extender there. Always have something to clean the teleprompter and the lens off. That's basically it. Just remember that all that matters is what's seen behind you. So you can make your studio at home. If you're interested in doing this kind of thing, just do it in a corner and just put all the junk over there. I mean, there's literally a hole in the wall over there. So that's pretty much it for now. I hope you guys enjoyed this walkthrough and maybe I'll do more deep dives. I want to do more podcast editing video kind of content on another channel. So I'll probably do more of that down the road. But for now, thank you for watching and I appreciate everyone enjoying the show and be sure to check the link in the description for all the affiliate stuff where you can check out this gear on your own. So thank you for watching and I'll see you on the next video.