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Maximising space – A tour of our new not-huge studio

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We moved to our new studio a few months ago and we have been gradually building things as we go. This will be the first of several videos in this series where we will try and give a look at what we tried to accomplish with our studio.

Our new studio isn’t big, it is actually about the size of a mid size room (close to 40 square meters which is just over 400 square feet). It has quite low ceilings which isn’t ideal for photography in many respects but we tried to get the best out of it and it does have some advantages for what we have been doing as you will see later on.

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YouTube finally appears to be helping small content creators with new “Explore” feature

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Getting started on YouTube these days is a struggle for most people. There are so many new YouTubers putting out a lot of really great content that just never gets seen by any significant amount of people. And it’s not really their fault. YouTube doesn’t make it easy for new YouTubers to figure out how to get their content seen, and its algorithm typically favours those who already have a huge audience.

But that looks like it might be about to change as YouTube starts to roll out the “Explore” feature. It was originally released as a test to just 1% of iOS users last July, but now TechCrunch reports that it’s being pushed out to more users across iOS and Android device, and even to the desktop.

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How to build your own DIY teleprompter for less than $10

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I’ve been following The King of Random on YouTube for a few years now. Most of the stuff they do on there is, as the name would suggest, kinda random and often a little bit weird. Every now and again, though, they post something quite useful for photographers and filmmakers – even if it’s just how to do something that would make a cool practical effect.

This video, though, is definitely useful for anybody who has to sit and speak in front of a camera. Here we see how to make a DIY teleprompter using just a sheet of acrylic and a few pieces of black foamcore. The total cost is probably less than $10 – not including your phone.

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Dear YouTubers, B-Roll isn’t content

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I’ve been watching more and more of the Camera Conspiracies channel lately. And while a lot of the things are slightly ludicrous (in a good, amusing way), they do say that there’s “many a true word spoken in jest”. And, oh boy, does this one ring true. B-Roll is not content.

B-Roll seems to have taken over the lives of many YouTubers, to the point where they’re basically an intro, some b-roll, and an ending. For the occasional showcase video, it’s impressive eye candy. But when it becomes the norm for all your videos, and more of your video is b-roll than actual content, it just gets boring. Please stop.

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All YouTube videos look the same, but here’s how you can be different

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After today’s earlier post on here about Instagram posts all looking the same, I found the timing of this video quite amusing. But I don’t think this video from Zach Ramelan is entirely wrong. I’ve seen it myself. Everybody wants to be like Casey Neistat, Peter McKinnon, or one of the other top performing YouTubers.

They copy their styles, techniques, colour grades and even their mannerisms. I’ve seen it over and over, and it gets really boring, really quickly. Their message and true personality get lost because all viewers see is “Oh, they’re trying to be like [insert famous YouTuber here]”. But there is something you can do about it.

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Filmstro releases over 1,000 tracks of free music to use in your YouTube videos

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Filmstro is something of a unique service when it comes to music. With plugins for both Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro, you can pick your music and then use sliders to adjust the momentum, depth and power of that music throughout your clip. You can adjust any tune to match the mood of your scene as it changes from shot to shot.

But they have static versions of all their Royalty Free music, too, and they’ve just released them to the world for free for use on YouTube. Even if your video is monetised.

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Adobe’s Project Rush lets you seamlessly move and edit between multiple devices

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One of the biggest challenges for people regularly posting to social media is editing videos. Either you shoot while you’re out and then edit when you’re back at home, or you have to carry around a laptop with you the whole time. Project Rush, squarely aimed at YouTubers, Vloggers, and other social video posters, plans to fix that.

It’s sort of an extension to Premiere Pro, but also sort of not. It’s its own application which appears to primarily use Premiere Pro as its “engine”, with a little After Effects thrown in. The app allows you to easily transport footage and projects between Android, iOS, Windows and Mac platforms, all synced up in the cloud, with apps for each to give you simplified on-the-go video editing.

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This 2-light LED video lighting kit costs less than $100

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I remember when LED lights first started to become a real thing for video a little over a decade ago. They weren’t even close to full spectrum, would introduce all sorts of colour casts, were huge, dim and had price tags starting in the thousands.

Since then, though, LED technology has come a long way and the prices have dropped dramatically. How dramatically? Well, in this video from Caleb Pike, we see a 2-light LED lighting kit for video, including a softbox, that costs less than $100.

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