How to Shoot an Interview/Tutorial (Under $1,000)

(upbeat music) – Hey, how's the going guys.

Parker Walbeck here withfulltimefilmmaker.

com and today we're gonna be showing you how to shoot an interview/tutorial with less than $1, 000worth of camera gear.

I Did a tutorial about a year ago showing you how to shoot a tutorial, but we used a ton of expensive gear, and a lot of you guys werecomplaining about that.

So I did some research, foundthe cheapest gear possible that I could find.

So we gonna be using only cheap gear.

I'm gonna be providing linkswhere you can buy all this, and we're actually shootingfor a client right now.

This is my good buddy, Dallin Cutler.

He's actually my financial adviser, and he is actually creating a course teaching people financial literacy, teaching people how to invest, how to save up for retirement, how to get out of debt, all that good stuff.

And so I'm helping himput together his course, simply by coming and shootinghis tutorials for him, or at least setting it up for him.

So in just five simple steps, we gonna be setting upall this cheap gear, and show you guys how youcan do it on your own.

So let's get started.

Alright, so the gearwe gonna be using today is the Canon M50 with a 15 to 45 kit lens.

Again, one of the cheapestcamera set ups that I recommend getting this they gonnagive you high quality video, without breaking the bank.

And here it's sitting on a Geekoto Tripod that I got for $80 on Amazon.

You can buy cheaper tripods than this, but if you go too cheap, they get flimsy, and it's not safe putting anice camera on a flimsy tripod.

So this is about as cheap as I'd go.

And then for lighting, I've talked about thislight before that I used in Tanner Townsend's studio makeover.

This is a $100 light fixture, and about $60 worth of lights inside.

And we're just gonnabe using one keylight, and then we'll be using thewindow as our backlight.

And then for audio, we have the Blue Yeti.

This is a condenser mic that you can get for about $120 on Amazon.

So with those four pieces of gear, those are the basics you need to film a high quality video, and all of that comesin at just under $1, 000.

And as you'll see in this video, you can still get comparable images to the image that you could get on a big, expensive set up.

Like the one you're seeing right now, this is my 1dxmii witha nice L-series lens, so that's like a $6, 000, $7, 000 set up, and we'll show you comparisonside by side at the end to show you that it'snot just about nice gear, it's about learning a few things and how to set up the lightingand the audio and all that.

Which we are going to do now.

So let's now talk aboutthe five simple steps on how to shoot a tutorialor an interview like this.

Our very first step isgoing to be Composition.

This is where we comein the room and decide, okay, where should we put the camera.

Which is the best angle of the face, where how are we gonnautilize the natural light.

And so when I first come in here, my initial thought is I want to use the window as a backlight.

You can use your windowlight as a keylight, but the problem with that iswhen the cloud coverage comes and the sun comes out, it's gonna change thelighting dramatically.

And if that's your keylight, and you're filming yourself and you don't have somebodychanging the settings on your camera back here, thenvery quickly your exposure can get blown out or too dark.

So I don't recommendusing natural window light as your keylight.

Instead, I recommend buyingat least a cheap keylight that you can use so youhave some consistent light throughout your whole interview, and then just your backlightwill change a little bit.

But that's not as bad as long as your face is exposed properly.

But let's now go into set up, decide where we want to set up the camera and get our composition all dialed in.

So Dallin has a desk set up here, pretty standard desk, he's up against the wall, he has some nice background stuff here.

When I'm looking forwhere to set things up, the first thing I'm lookingfor is to create some depth.

Anytime you can create depth, your image is gonna lookmuch more cinematic, it's gonna look more professional.

And so I tell people, never put yourself right up against a wall.

There is absolutely no depth here.

It's just flat, and so what I'm gonna do is come up against this wall here so that we can see the leading line, see the wall, see some ofthis depth of the room here.

And I'm gonna try and position Dallin as far away from theback wall as possible.

Now we could move his entireset up farther this way to create more depth betweenhim and the back wall, the more separation youcan get from your subject from the back wall, the more shallow depth the field you're gonna get.

So where possible, Itry and get my subject as far away as possible.

Now his desk is already setup here and it looks nice.

I don't wanna ruin that too much, so we're not gonna do that, not absolutely necessary.

I'm just gonna have himcheat up a little bit and just get as close to thisside of the desk as possible.

So he's gonna pop on the camera so you can see what I'm seeing .

Keep in mind, this is the first time I've ever used this camera.

I bought it just for this tutorial, so I'm learning it right now just to show you that it'snot that hard to learn.

So I'm rolling my camera soyou can see what I'm seeing.

This is our current set up, first thing you notice whenyou're looking at this, the lighting is just awful, it's terrible, garbage lighting.

There's no frontal light, there's quite a bit of backlight.

But here's a look at thelights up here, starkly.

But there's just not a lotof light going towards him, it's all coming from above.

And so you can see the shadows here, what's being lit up, his nose, his eyebrows, and the top of his ears, and the top of his head.

That's pretty unflatteringlight right there.

So we want a better direction of light that's going to make that look better.

So talk about that in a second.

But as far as composition goes, let's take a look atwhat we see in the frame.

Talk about this a lot, butwhen composing an image, it's not just about what's in the frame, it's also about what's not in the frame.

We got a lamp, a plant, a computer, and another plant over here.

His office already looks pristine, that's not always the case, as you guys found out withTanner Townsend's office.

So not until we have to dowith arranging anything, but as far as where wegonna be positioning him, he's going to be doingtutorials at his desk, he's going to be going through softwares that he's gonna be using.

So he's gonna want access to his computer, so that's why I also wanthim sitting at his computer versus having his chair out here and then filming this way or something.

Because now he has theoption to go back and forth between his computer andlooking at the camera.

But let's talk aboutframing for a second here.

There's basically twoways that I would frame somebody talking into a camera.

You can either center them up in the very center of the frame, or you can put them on a third and kinda face them one directiongiving them looking room, where you have one third behind their head and two thirds in front of their head.

So in this situation, I want to have the computer in the frame because the computer isgoing to be a subject in some of these videos.

And so we gonna framethat in on the left third, and then we gonna put Dallinon the right third here.

And then I'm positioning his eyes approximately on the top third.

So you don't wanna havetoo much head room up here, and you also don't wannacut off his head at the top.

I may see a lot ofpeople framing like that, where they put the faceright in the middle.

There's just too much space up here, dead space that is unnecessary.

Unless you specifically have trophies or something up there that you wanna show.

I'm just gonna scoot up thecamera just a little bit here, get a little bit closer.

Alright, so framing islooking pretty solid to me, I'm liking what I'm seeing.

There's only one otherthing that I'm noticing, is in the very right frame, you see that there's a little crack where you can see the second window.

So I'm gonna try and pullthat in just a little bit.

Another thing to noticeis we're about eye level.

Usually you don't wannabe above the person's eyes or below the person's eyes.

I'll typically for mytutorials actually go a little bit below, but that's usually when I'm trying to show desk space where I'm doing unboxingvideos and whatnot.

So if you need to show somethingin the foreground here, like products that you're showing, but the main focus here is just his face.

So we just gonna keep it eye level, keep it natural looking.

So there you have it, that's our framing.

Looks good, good composition, that's step number one.

Step number two is going to be lighting.

So let's fix these horrendous nose shadows and make him look better looking than he currently looks.

He is a good looking guy, butyou can make anyone look nasty if you just light up their nose.

I highly recommend gettinga soft light as a keylight.

The bigger the lightsource in relationship to the distance to your subject, the softer the shadows are gonna be, and the more flatteringit's going to look.

So typically when lighting up a subject, you want a big, soft light, versus a teeny light that'sgonna show all the wrinkles and details of their skin.

Usually not as flattering, so highly recommend a big keylight.

And position wise, let's talk about where we should position this.

I wouldn't call this a mistake, but I see a lot of peoplejust putting one light, boom, front center, orputting one light here and one light here, boom.

Lighting up everything evenly.

There's nothing wrong with that, I would just say it looks alittle bit less cinematic, a little bit less professional looking.

Because what it does is when you have just frontal light or two lights coming in at the same brightness here, it's gonna make it sothat there's no shadows, so there's no depth.

And again, remember that creating depth helps our image look more cinematic, it looks more professional.

And so to create depth, we're gonna create shadows.

So I usually have mylight about 45 degrees from the camera and a little bit above, so that we get a little bit ofa drop shadow under the chin, which is also going tomake your subject look a little bit skinnier, gives some jaw outline detail, Versus if you put it down low, you gonna light up their chin and if they have a double chin, it's gonna make them look fat.

All right, so let's turn this on.

We have two brightness levels here.

That's brightness one, and that's brightness two.

As you can see, brightnesstwo is well overexposed, so we just gonna turn itdown just to that one.

And I think we're looking pretty, a lot better than we just were just by bringing in that one keylight.

But we are still overexposed, so I'm gonna bring down my ISO.

We'll talk about settingsin just a minute.

But we gonna bring thisdown just a tad, very nice.

So now, our subject islooking more exposed, so if you look at his face currently, you can see that there's alittle shadow right here, this is called loop lighting.

And then under here, it's nice and shadowed.

And then the whole side ofthe face here is shadowed.

So that gives it depth, makes it look a lot more flattering, and then the backlighthere is outlining him from our windowlight, sothat looks nice, as well.

And I'm just gonna show you real quick what it would look likeif we did frontal light versus this side light.

Our side light, and nowlet's go directly in front.

And as you can see, there's just, there's no shadows, there's not depth.

Again, there's nothing wrong with it.

It's even lighting, he's lit well.

But I think it looks a little bit better just to bring that light just a little bit over to the side here, casta little side shadow there.

I like that, I'm feelinggood about the lighting here.

Now the only other thing Iwould do with the lighting is we still have these lights on up here.

Be aware of color temperature.

So the outside light is typically gonna be about 5, 600 Kelvin, that'sdaylight color temperature.

This light here, I believe, is around 5, 600 Kelvin.

This is also daylight temperature.

So this color is going tomatch that color of light.

But if you look up here, thiscolor of light looks orange.

So it's a different color of light.

This is about 3, 200 Kelvin.

And typically when you try and mix color temperatures like that, it's gonna look a littleyucky in my opinion.

So I'm gonna turn off these lights and you'll see what a differenceit makes there very nice, I'm feeling a lot better about how our image is looking right now, compared to the first image.

I'll put side by side so youcan see the difference there.

And so that's step number two, lighting.

I think we're all set with lighting.

Let's now talk about step number three, and that is our Camera Settings.

So currently our settings are ISO 125, aperture is at 3.

5, and ourshutter speed is at 1/50th.

And we're shooting at 24frames per second in 1080p.

This camera does shoot in 4k, but for tutorials, it's reallynot necessary to shoot in 4k.

So to save on card space, we're just doing 1080p at 24 frames per second.

And as you can see here, we have on Face Tracking.

This is the one I recommendwhen shooting interviews.

That's going to allowyou to keep our subject in focus at all times.

Dallin, move closer to the camera here, and you see how he stays in focus.

Now move further away, and that tracks him and keeps him in focusno matter where he goes.

So that's why I recommend Canon because they make their auto focus so nice with the dual pixel, evenin their low-end cameras it works amazing, so highlyrecommend using that.

As far as shutter speed goes, you want the shutter speedto be twice your frame rate.

We're filming at 24 frames, so we want the shutter to be at 1/50th.

As for the aperture, this lenscan only go down to a 3.

5.

Ideally we'd bump that down even further to give even more shallowdepth of the field, but it's not necessary.

And a 3.

5 is gonna do just fine.

And ISO, I just adjustedto the amount of light, making sure there's nothing over exposed, and that seems to be at about 125.

As for white balance, we arecurrently at 5, 200 Kelvin.

You can see, though, if you go too high here we're at 7, 000 Kelvin, you can see that looks way too warm.

And then we'll show youthis now at 4, 000 Kelvin, and you can see that's way too cool.

So your goal with white balance is to make your whites look white.

You don't want your imageto be too cool or too warm.

So that's 5, 200 Kelvin.

So you can see that it's really important to make sure you set that white balance.

And I often get askedabout my color profile.

On these cheaper Canon DSLRs, a lot of what I do is Icome into Picture Style, I use standard, the S here is standard.

Go to info, I bring the sharpeningall the way down to zero, I bring my contrast allthe way down to zero, cause typically these cameras don't have as good of dynamic range, so bringing that contrast down is gonna help preserve some ofthat dynamic range in camera.

And then I just leave mysaturation and color tone at zero.

So that's pretty much it for color profile on some of these cheaper Canon cameras.

And I think that's it forall of our camera settings.

Moving on now to stepnumber four is Audio.

I always tell peopleaudio is equally important to the video.

One thing I noticed rightwhen I walked in here is this room has a tonof reverb, a lot of echo.

It's a small, boxy roomand that's pretty typical for a small, boxy room is your voice is just gonna reflect backand forth all over the walls.

Which isn't very good for audio.

So the recommendation I'd make to Dallin is to bring some blankets in here and just pad the walls the best you can.

Put anything in the room.

The more objects you have in the room to keep the voices from reflecting is going to help the echo and reverb.

But he also uses thisspace to meet with people, and so I don't want itto look really weird with all these blanketsdraped all over the place, so what you can do toreduce as much as possible the reverb and the echo in a room is to use a nice microphone, anice condenser mic like this.

Basically the closer you getto one of the microphones, the better it's gonna cutout all the ambient noise.

And so what I'm gonna recommend to him is just put this nice and close, typically I say six to 14 inches is about the distance youwanna be from the microphone.

If you start getting too far away, we gonna have to bring up the volume because you're too far away, which is then gonna capture the volume of all the echo sound.

There is different patternshere that you can use that are going to pick upsound in a different way.

Some of these are gonna pick up sound from both the front and back.

We're choosing one that'sonly picking up sound from the front, and I see a lot of people pointing this microphone likethis towards their mouth.

It's picking up sound fromwhere the blue logo is, directly in front, not on top.

So talk into this front part.

And this is a USB mic, which means it's just gonnaplug right in to your computer.

So Dallin, go ahead and plugthat into your computer.

Dallin has a PC, which is troublesome.

No, it's not that bad.

I'm just an Apple guy, and so I use GarageBand to record this audio, but PCusers don't get GarageBand.

So I had him download Audacity, which is a free software thatyou can use to record audio.

So here we have Audacity.

Pretty much all you're doingwhen you get into the software, come up here to this drop down menu and make sure your Blue Yetistereo microphone is selected.

And then you're just gonna hit record, and it'll start recording audio.

So Dallin, go ahead andstep up to that mic.

Okay, go ahead and giveme some test audio.

– Testing, testing, one, two, three.

– If you look up here, yousee the audio being metered.

This is decibels, it ismeasuring how loud that audio is.

And it typically want it to be sitting between negative 18 and negative six.

Make sure you check that beforeyou record a whole tutorial and then find out laterthat it was all picking at zero the whole timeand it sounds distorted.

And the way that you gonna change that is in the back here with the gain level.

So I'm gonna just show you an example.

We're gonna turn thegain way too far up here, have Dallin do another take.

– Testing, testing, one, two, three.

– Oh look at all that redand orange that's showing up.

That's telling you that's too loud.

But we found that it'spretty much the bottom here in the gain, you don't haveto go very much further from the bottom to get acorrect gain level there.

Now one thing, if you'renot gonna be specifically at a desk like this whereyou have the ability to set the microphone on the table, another option is a $25 microphone.

This one's called PowerDeWise.

Now this is gonna allow youto actually walk around too.

So let's say you've got a whiteboard or something and you're drawing and then looking at the camera and then coming back here.

This is gonna allow you to walk around and not have to be in justone specific position.

It's not wireless like theone I'm currently wearing.

This is a $600 microphone.

But this one is cheap, $25, it'll still give you decent quality audio, but with the ability to do alittle bit of walking around.

Plug it into our audio jack, which is gonna be on theleft side of your camera.

If you're gonna be plugging into a camera, you wanna make sure to use this adapter.

You see this has three ringsand this has two rings.

And then you'd come clipthis guy onto your subject.

I'd have him actuallyweave it up under his shirt so it's not in the shot.

We're not gonna do it now cause we're not gonna be using this.

But then you weave it underand then just clip it there so it's as much aspossible out of the shot.

So that's just a way to get backup audio, or if you're gonna bewalking around a lot, to use that as your main audio.

And then within your settings here, you gonna come into yourmenu, go to sound recording.

Right now it's currently on auto.

You can use auto, butit is going to pick up more of the ambient noise around you.

So I recommend setting this to manual, and then same thing as before, we gonna adjust the gain untilwe're getting the volumes we like sitting betweennegative 18 and negative six.

So go ahead and give ussome more volume, Dal.

– Today I went to schoola and I ate my lunch.

– So currently, he'sclipping way too high, so let's turn that down, another one, Dal.

– Today I went to schooland I ate my lunch.

– Still a little bit too high, keep bringing it down, one more time.

– Today I went to schooland I ate my lunch.

– So audio levels aresitting pretty nice there between negative 18 and negative six.

I'm actually just gonnalower a sample for you.

So Dallin, go ahead and giveme a little sound byte there.

– Yeah, so today I went toschool and I rode my bike.

And as I was riding mybike, I hit a puddle and it got all over me.

– Okay, so we're notgonna use this for Dallin, but just wanted to show youguys that it is an option.

And just so you can compareto see how it sounds with no microphone comingstraight from camera.

Alright, Dallin give me some audio now just straight on camera.

– Today I was riding my bike, not going to schoolbecause I'm a grown man.

Yeah so today I went toschool and I rode my bike.

I went to school theday and I ate my lunch.

Today I was riding my bike.

– So listen back to thataudio and you can see how much echo and reverb picks up.

So it's so important tohave a nice microphone.

The biggest mistake I seepeople making with audio is the microphones just too far away.

Even when people are using this, 90% of the people that have a microphone, they're this far away.

That's like two or threefeet, it's still too far away.

What's the point ofhaving a nice microphone if it's still gonna bejust as far as your camera.

Point of a microphone is toget it closer to your subject so that it's picking up their voice and not everything elsewith it six to 14 inches.

I can't stress that enoughnot 24 to 30 inches, six to 14 inches stay niceand tight to that microphone.

Okay, so that's it forseven reported the last step is the actual interview process or the filming process.

I'm gonna give a few quick tips on how to make yourself presentable.

How to make this an easyprocess of filming a video.

Okay, so Dallin actually really natural, really good on camera.

So to have a ton of coaching for him, one thing I usually tell people is to use your hands when you talk makes a little more interesting, a little bit more engaging, some people will tend to keeptheir hands on their side and just look directly the camera and don't move their face or their head.

Facial expressions aregood when you're talking.

I'm actually not very good at that, I'm trying to get better.

Raise your eyebrows, moveyour mouth, move your head, move your hands, makes it more engaging and come more alivethan just sitting here.

Looking staring at thecamera, not moving your face and not moving your handsand not moving your body.

Be passionate about whatyou're talking about.

It makes a big difference for people and getting them engaged in the content you're talking about.

One of the recommendationsreasons why I recommend using this camera is becauseit has a flip screen.

So that's going to allowDallin to now look at himself while he's filming himself.

Now obviously you don'twant to look at that while you're filming becausethen it's gonna to look weird, like you're not looking at the lens.

We're looking just off the lensbut it's nice to reference.

So In between takesjust look at the image, make sure the lighting still looks good if the sun came out make suredidn't overexposed anything to make sure that it's still recording, so flip screen huge.

Now people ask me a lot of times when I'm filming a tutorial, do I mess up a lot.

Do I retake or redo things, the answer is absolutely yes.

I'm constantly doing retakes constantly.

I mess up a word and then I re-say it.

Sometimes I'll do like five or six takes on the same sentencebecause I can't enunciate it or I didn't say a word I like correctly.

So I'm constantly retaking, that's really normal guys don't feel like just because you can't, youknow, go a whole 10 minutes without saying every line perfectly the way you want to, that you're not good at it.

That's really normal.

Some guys are really good at it.

But most of us we gonnahave to do a lot of retakes, and that's okay, totally fine.

Now, one thing I do recommend, if you have a very specificsubject you're talking about, you know exactly whatcontent it needs to be, but it's kind of complex and explaining.

I do recommend scripting.

I script probably 70, 80% of my videos.

Basically get all of my thoughtsout of my head on paper, organize it, condense it, make it nice and concise that way can deliver your content in its most pure, perfect form.

So with scripts, what I recommend getting and this is an unnecessary step.

But I personally likedreading from scripts, this is going to be an additional, I think, $200 to get what'scalled the pad prompter, you can get cheaper versions, I own cheaper versionsthat are like 100 bucks, but they're not very good.

This is probably theone I get if I were you, it's called a Onetakeonly Pad Prompter.

And then we're just gonnapop this right in here in front of the lens, but this guy around the lens.

And now we can read a script.

Somebody putting his script into a app called Promptsmart Pro.

This is the app I useand currently recommend.

I've used a few apps there's pros and cons to different apps.

But the cool thing aboutthis app specifically is that it allows you to readand it automatically scrolls for you as it hears your voice and hears you finish a line and then just gonna slideyour phone right on in there.

And there you can see yourscript reflecting back to you.

So it looks like you'relooking into the camera but you're actually reading a script.

So down we gonna go and push play which means it's now going tobe listening for your voice and scrolling as necessary.

Alright, so this is now ourfirst take of filling downs very first tutorialThis is exciting stuff.

Okay, go ahead Dallin.

(upbeat music) – Okay, so we haven'ttalked in a lot of detail about InternationalStocks up to this point, but they can be vital, it makes a lot of sense toinclude them in your portfolio and I want to present someinformation as to why.

– Awesome, Dallin is a natural killing it.

Okay only thing I noticed was, this plant because it's dark it kind of blends in with his hair, kind of makes it like he hasplume feathers coming out here.

So we might want to move this, just so it doesn't blend in and kind of helps separate his hair from the background little better.

Pay attention to what's behind people and make sure there's not, you know, Bunny ears coming out this youknow, making them look funny, but Dallin performancewas killer on point, he is ready to shoot tutorial.

So you would do it takeit pop his card out, plug it into his computer, put it somewhere safe, export out his audio from audacity, pull all that into premiereor whatever you edit on, sync up the audio with the video, delete the in camera audio, use only the nice audio and then start choppingthrough and we have tutorials in course creator proand Full Time Filmmaker teaching you guys all the ins and outs and more tips on shootingprofessional tutorials and interviews just like that.

But that's the basics guys.

Hopefully those five stepsmake it super simple for you.

And hopefully, this givesyou some good recommendations on really cheap gear you can use that's going to make it look super nice without having to break the bank.

And in fact, we gonna putthe 1dxmii on right now and show you how it compares in quality.

So you can see side by side, on the left there you have the M50.

And on the right you have the 1dxmii as you can see, there isn'ta huge difference in quality that's a $7, 000 setup versus a $600 setup.

So do you need nice expensive gear, no.

If you're just shooting for the first time just getting started.

Buy whatever you can afford and you can upgrade later as needed.

Hopefully this helps youguys have some confidence that you could pick up some cheap gear do exactly what I just told you to do, and get some great resultsright off the that.

Also last thing Dallin, who is currently shootingtutorials for a course as coming out with afinancial insights course and he has a lot ofamazing things to teach to help you guys know how to invest money, how to save up for retirement, basically how to be financially literate.

So links are in the description to check out Dallin course as well.

And that's it if you guyshave any further questions, please let me know.

(upbeat music).