This is it #3 - Optimize & Listen
Hey, 👋🏻 awesome people of the Interweb! The past 2 weeks have been all about optimization. If you’ve read my previous newsletter you’ll know my 2021 resolution of ramping up video production and hopefully reaching 100k by the end of the year is in full motion. Well, the first steps of all that have been about optimization. Here’s what I mean.
In order to produce 2 quality videos per week, we will have to eliminate all meaningless loss of time. Usually, most of the time we lose is between changing gear position, making corrections to camera settings, sets, etc. We made 3 big steps in that department.
Step 1: buying a 3rd camera. I didn’t want to do that in the first place, but having two cameras turns out was insufficient. As you’ve probably guessed, I am not alone anymore and I am getting huge help from a very close friend of mine. Turns out, when we have 2 sets of hands we need more than 2 cameras in order to be productive. So, I purchased a 3-rd Sony.
Step 2: I fixed the new Sony camera as a permanent top-down shooter. This will eliminate the need to constantly attach the camera to the top-down set, make the necessary settings while also eliminating any burns as it has happened before. On top of it, we added a 27” monitor which for the first time gives us a clear picture of what the camera is seeing, oh and also a shotgun mic to add to the necessary environment ambient sound we all like. Before, we had to manually add the primary shotgun mic if we wanted to catch some wrapping sound goodness.
Step 3: Is a little monstrosity that I call big B.E.R.T.H.A.
➡ Bring
➡ Every
➡ Ready for use
➡ Tech
➡ Hanging
➡ AroundThis is basically a rolling combination of a camera, teleprompter, recorder, shotgun mic, monitor, and light. Everything is DIY and from up close it looks very, very messy…but boy does it speed things up. The idea behind this thing we took from one of our favorite creators Caleb Pike and we pretty much used whatever we had laying around the studio…which explains the unprofessional mess. The project was successful however for two reasons. First, all I have to do to record an a-roll now is flip a switch and it’s go time. Second, with proper settings, I can pretty much rotate B.E.R.T.H.A in any direction and the a-roll will look decently good. Add a bit of color in the background and we are good to go. Of course, this version of the rig I call v.1.3 so you can expect improvements over time. If you want to see most of the items that go into building B.E.R.T.H.A, check out my updated Kit profile here: https://kit.co/thisisetv
Latest videos
You could say that the week has been about sound since we released the first AirPods Max video. Based on that same video I was sent the latest pair of the all famous Sony XM4’s which lead to today’s review. Just to spice things up there’s the M1 introductory video which will lead to a lot more M1 content.
My favorite thing so far
We hit 22k subscribers and I couldn't be happier. Also, the icon packs are selling like hotcakes, which is just bonkers. We have at least 4 more sets of custom-made iOS icons that should drop before the release of the next newsletter and I can’t wait to show them to you. BTW, we are also preparing a very cool minimal set of wallpapers…so stay tuned.
Favorite BTS moment
Here’s B.E.R.T.H.A ☺️
Tweet of the day
Items that I am currently shopping for:
Geekria UltraShell Smart Case for AirPod Max
(Will Make Headphones Into Sleep Mode Immediately)Airpods Max Earcup protectors
(No more hitting earcups sound upon removal of the case)
I’m Iskren and most people call me E, a designer and YouTube technology storyteller from Varna, Bulgaria. Twice a month I write an email newsletter sharing behind the scenes moments, experiments, tech realizations, and interesting experiment discoveries throughout the tech channel’s journey.