NEW STUDIO TOUR! - Undone Studio 2021 Edition
This moment, what you're seeing right now, is the last thing I'm going to record in this studio like this. Or, at all. I might do a little, like, BTS thing, or this might descend into some kind of vlog, if this ever even becomes a video.
But I'm moving in a couple days, and I finished all the videos I had to finish before the move, you might have already seen them by now. So, I'm ready to tear down the studio, and so, I thought, might as well, you know, capture the moment. So, this right here is the last shot of this angle, with the purple wall, whole Gerald Undone thing. This is it. And now I'm going to tear down the studio and set up a whole new one and face all those challenges, and maybe bring you guys along for the ride and we can see if there's anything to learn, share my experiences with that. But anyway, this is, uh, kind of a, I don't know, it's a significant moment for me.
The entire Gerald Undone channel, maybe except for, like, one or two videos at the very beginning were shot in, sort of, different angles in this space, constantly trying to improve and change it around. And, uh, it's going to be weird to move out of here. But I guess, uh, yeah. Let's get undone. [offbeat music] ♪ Gerald Undone ♪ ♪ He's crazy ♪ [gentle, reflective music] ♪ ♪ ♪ [slight echo] OK, so I am moved in, in the sense that all my stuff is here, but I'm trying to set it up now, and as you can see, it's a complete disaster.
But this is the space, so it's much bigger than my previous space. It's got this crazy ceiling that I'm working on attaching sound panels to right now, but you can hear, probably, how echoey... [snapping fingers] it is in here. So, the first step, I can't really put anything in place because I want to get the shot right, so busted out a tripod. So, yeah, I think the next step is I'm going to throw a camera on here-- and you can tell I don't vlog very often. I don't know where I'm looking.
I don't like this! What am I doing?! I'm going to throw a camera on here and see what the shot looks like, and then build around that, probably. So, already got the computer set up over here. I left the white balance the way that it is so that you can see how warm the lights are in here but obviously I'm going to be replacing those with my own light. Think I might use the 600d and the sound panels, and maybe, like, a big lantern and just kind of, like, space light this whole thing, like just turn the 600d way up and see what happens.
OK, so don't worry too much about this shot. I was just about to hang the sound panels but then I thought it would make more sense to get a before sound. So, this is what it's like now. I think this is pretty good as far as, like, where I'm going to be. The microphone is just out of the shot, just there.
I'm using the MKH 50 from Sennheiser. And I've got my Zoom F6 just out of frame right here as well, and I believe the levels and everything are the same as they used to be. Anyway, this is what it sounds like in here. Here's a little bit of just what the, sort of, noise of the place sounds like. [barely audible room noise] And then, this me, you know, talking, clapping.
[clapping] Echo. It is a bit wet in here, for sure. So, I'm going to put up the sound panels now and then, I guess, do the same recording again and see how much of a difference it made. [less echoey] Alright, I'm going to stop for the night 'cause I am exhausted. I got a lot done. I still haven't really figured out the shot behind me, I'm still working on that, but I've got tons of sound panels up and organized a lot of the space, So, does this sound any better. Hopefully, it does.
This is still, kind of, a big open space, so it still sounds a lot more... It's a lot more reverberant than my previous space was. And even if I treat it the same, it's still going to be more reverberant, but I want to add some extra things in here, like a sofa, and some area rugs, and stuff, and I think that should help with the sound as well, but if we're even... you know, half way, or 80-- I would like to be, like, 75% of the way there right now because then the rest of the way I can probably deal with some more stuff, but how does it sound now? Echo. Echo. [slight echoing clapping] Eh, I can still-- it's definitely not as dry as my last space.
Ah well. Alright, done for the night. Back at it tomorrow. [slight scrapping noise] OK, so I decided to go ahead and pick up from here and I think this is going to be... I'm going to give you my final tour now. It's not completely finished, but I just got word that the deliveries that I need for a couple rugs in here and a sofa and things, which should help for sound, it's going to take a couple more weeks, so we'll do this as, like, a first part. Show you the set, 'cause it's done, and then maybe I'll follow up and we can see how the audio improved. It's still a bit echoey in here.
There's a couple more sound panels I could hang, and a little bit of work I could do, but... I'm just going to have to deal with the fact that it's a bit more cavernous. Once I get the rugs and the sofa it might help a little bit, but maybe... I don't know, I'll play with it in post and see how it sounds. I don't think it sounds terrible, and, uh, I kind of like that maybe it's a bit more lively because it is a bigger space, but I also want the audio to sound good, obviously.
OK, so let me just give you a little bit of a tour around what I got set up so far. Actually, we'll start with the lighting of the main shot here. So, I've got a camera rolling over here too so you can see it a bit wider. I did this on social already, so some of you might have already seen this and if not, make sure you follow me on Instagram and/or Twitter, @GeraldUndone, so that you can see these things, sort of, as I do them all the time. Alright, so let me... Oh, I don't even have that light on. Shows what I know.
There's the, uh, there's the completed shot. OK, so let me turn all that stuff back off again. So, uh, when I post this, a lot of you are, like, "You should just leave it like that, just the back lights." Yeah, that's fun, but then if I want to show a product, I mean you're not going to be able to make it out. Anyway-- what was that? I'm also expecting a delivery today, so that's why I have my phone there. Another one of those wheeled stands.
These newer wheeled stands you can get on Amazon, they're kind of, like, you know, tri wheel based C-stands. They're really great so far and quite affordable, so... A little bit early, I don't want to give them, like, a full review but so far, for the money, they seem like a pretty good, pretty good option.
So, behind me is, uh, that's the VL150 behind a Light Dome Mini. It's the same setup that-- Light Dome Mini II. The same setup that I had in the other place, only difference is now it's out of the shot. Some of you are asking, "I thought that was deliberate?" It was sort of deliberate to have the hair light in the shot, but I also had lower ceilings, so, it was, kind of, like, "Do you want just a little bit of it in the shot, or do you want, just put the whole thing in the shot and kind of, lean into it?" So, that's what I did.
But here I can get it completely out so, that's good. Got a key light here, this is the 300x. I was using the 300d II before, but I'm using the 300x now, so I can change the temperature on it to match... to get all of these to, sort of, even out, because there's a bit more... when you just buy daylight lights sometimes they're not exactly like 5600K, some are warmer, some are cooler, so I got out the Sekonic and I was measuring the different lights-- here, let me turn this one on-- and I was measuring the different lights and once I dialed in the temperatures of each I was able to get a 5575K with 0.0 green/magenta shift, so...
all blended together, we have a really neutral light. So, this is-- those are those lights there. And I might tweak the intensities of them as I go.
And then, lastly, I have the Aputure 600d Pro with the Lantern 90 on top, and this is just, kind of, like a space light, because, uh... you might be able to see from that camera angle, especially over there, different corners are quite dark in here, so this is also going to be sort of a general purpose just, kind of, light up the whole space, and I can do whatever combinations of these that I want, I have a few different lighting options, especially if I want to shoot some product, so I could turn off just the key light, but leave the space light on. I could turn them both off So, that's good, it's working well. But this is, sort of, the brighter shot. And you may remember me saying that I wanted to have, sort of, a brighter shot.
I had that dark, moody purple background, which was fun, but it was harder for showing products. I had to have a whole bunch of different lights to balance it out, and then I got really flat lighting out of it, which then required me to really boost the contrast in post in order to offset that. And then when you boost the contrast too much in post, you get harsher things, like, on your skin, and then harsher highlights and stuff like that.
So, now I don't have to do that at all, the contrast is quite low and this is all done with lighting which is nice, and you can still make out products really well, and I don't have any lights in here now. So, it's actually fewer lights and it lights better, so that's great. And then as far as YouTube goes, the background here-- I haven't seen it yet as an upload, but we're looking at it right now, at the same time, I think we should see far less banding, a lot fewer issues than what I had with the purple background and that's for two reasons. One, this background
is busier now, so that will break up the compression that, sort of, you know, when it causes that banding, and also there's no gradient that would lead to banding, and darker-- there's fewer dark corners. So, dark gradients are just obliterated by YouTube. So, now we have a brighter non-gradient, so, should be great. Oh, and I have two lights in the corner.
They're out of the shot 'cause I don't think I'm huge on tube lights in the shot, I think it might be... [stammering] I've seen it a lot, so I'm just not trying to, I'm trying to do something slightly different, but also the same... I don't know, anyways, so they're out of the shot, but they're still doing that tube lighting thing. And what's great is that if I want to do, like, you know, product stuff, if I turn off these other lights and I put, um...
Then my product shots are still going to get that, like, purple and orange rim on it, which I like. Um... But without needing to tweak the lighting as much. So, that's cool. Easy is better if you want to make content,
you just want to jump in and shoot it. So, those are the Nanlite PavoTubes-- PavoTubes? The-- those are the Nanlite, the long ones. And I think that's it for lighting. Last thing I should mention because some of you have been following the channel for a long time have noticed this. So, this is, kind of, a fusion set now. So, this last year, uh, 2020, I started thinking, like, December 2019, I was using that purple backdrop set, that's when I started working on that, but prior to that you might remember that I has, sort of, a tight shot with these shelves behind me, and less purple, but there was, like, shelves, and there was Edison bulbs, and a blue light, and stuff like that, so now it's kind of, like, the two ideas are mixed. Since then I've developed my branding more with the purple and the orange, and so now it's like the shelves from old days with stuff on them, but no more Edison bulbs, now it's more purple and orange, and so, it's, kind of, like a hybrid of the last two sets.
Hopefully tying it all together and we'll see how this works for different types of backdrops. So, for the old fans, this is a bit of a throwback. And to the new ones, well...
hopefully this still feels Gerald Undone-y for you. That's a weird sounding way to say that. And one thing I want to mention too, while I'm on it, is that regarding that whole 2020 period, I've been working with ONEXTRA, I've mentioned this before, they're a captioning service, and they've recently just finished-- they're going through my back catalogue and adding captions to all of my videos.
There were already some automated captions, but I know for... sometimes, for certain videos, you can't control when YouTube will generate captions or not, and sometimes, I know I have some viewers that really rely on the captions, either because of hearing impaired or because it's easier for you to follow along, and this video isn't sponsored by ONEXTRA, this isn't a paid sponsor message, but I just wanted to share that I've been really happy with their service, and they've been doing all my new videos, so probably by the time this video is up, this will have ONEXTRA captions on it which are fantastic, by the way. The reason why I'm using them is they're so good and they've been working on building a glossary with me, it's pretty much done at this point, of all the technical terms that I talk about, so that I know that the quality of the captions are good for also all the, like, nitty gritty details which obviously are important to you guys because you're all camera nerds, right? Anyway, so ONEXTRA is fantastic, thanks so much to them, for captioning my videos.
I'll put a link in the description. If you're, you know, doing something like me, are a YouTuber or whatever you want to-- you want, like, a quality service that's, you know, manually checked and reviewed by actual people and not just bots and that do a really good job with technical stuff, ONEXTRA is the way to go. OK, let me show you, I guess, like what we've got going back here. It's not that different, but, well, we'll take a look at it. This is weird to kind of shoot, I've got a tripod setup here, and I'm just trying to move around the-- it's so much easier when you have somebody following you around with a gimbal... [laughing] this isn't getting much of a Studios Undone-- Anyway, OK, so we've got this shelf here.
Up top, these are empty boxes for things that I'm currently using. I'm not a box hoarder in general, but things that I think might have value to keep the boxes to I do keep them. This shelf is for test shots. You guys have probably seen it in a lot of my videos and stuff.
You know, focus charts, ColorChecker, some detail objects which are, you know, kind of nice. I'm shooting this, by the way, on the RØDE VideoMic NTG on top of the Ninja V, so... see how the audio sounds. Might not be as good as when I was using the Sennheiser over there. This next shelf down, this is the charging station.
So, here we've got some dual charger plates that I can use for Sony L-Series, Sony FZ100, Canon LP-E6. This is a USB charger that I use to charge my phone, other power delivery things. V-Mount charger from Bebob, this thing's great. And then this is the Aputure, uh, MC 4-Light Kit. And fun fact, I took the lid off of that briefcase thing and so now it's just open, and I can just, like, grab a charger-- er, grab a light and stick it in the charger.
Don't have to have a lid coming up there. V-Mount batteries, Sony L-Series batteries, other batteries in the back, and then, you know, power banks and stuff-- this one's great, this is that Zendure one that I talked about before. Down here, I'm putting Aputure boxes for the lights that I'm using, but also, just kind of, like, showing off Aputure because I think I'm...
[stammering] This is such a bad video! I think I'm looking at the, uh... the Atomos the whole time, so I know what I'm pointing at. I don't vlog, guys! I don't vlog at all, ever! OK, this is, this is not my thing. Um, this is also just, kind of, like, repping Aputure for them because they've provided me with a lot of these lights so, it's like, there's your, sort of... I've got, like, a little billboard for them in the video on both sides. Lighting is going-- I'm getting to see all the different lighting as I move around, so that's kind of interesting too.
Uh, OK, so, we've got the pegboard here. You know, this has been in other shots before. I use all these tools, have them laid out in a way that I like. Purple pegboard. I think it looks great. Fun fact, this used to be screwed into the walls.
[stammering] I'm going to talk about the sound panels in a minute, because the way I put those up is, I think, fascinating. OK, well, I'll tell you right now. So, these sound panels... So, I posted a story about this, but the ceiling is, like, steel, and I didn't want to drill into it because you'd have to drill in through there, and then there's, like, concrete above it, it's a whole big mess, it would have taken forever to drill as many holes for these sound panels.
But because it's steel, it's magnetic. So, I've got these magnets that are supposed to, you know, hold 75lb. I wouldn't say they're good for 75lb, maybe like 15, 20lb. But I have four of them on each panel, and the panels are only, like, 15lb, which is, what, 8kg? Um, and they're so strong! Like, here, let me pan you over here. So... [loud clacking] They're like crazy... [clattering] See what I mean? Like, it's insane.
Anyway, so I was able to hang these four-- four per panel in the ceiling, and then just hang the sound panels from that so I don't have to drill anything. Now, I know some of you are going to be, like, "Oh, what about earthquakes, or..." Well, we don't get any earthquakes here in Southern Ontario, so... I mean, historically there's been a couple, but I think that'll be fine.
Another question many of you asked was, "Don't magnets lose their power over time?" And the answer is, "Not really." They do, but it's, like, 1 to 2%, nothing that's really going to be noticeable. The main thing you gotta watch out for with magnets is, like, heating them up. That can have an effect,
but this is a climate controlled environment, so I should be fine, and the residual loss of magnetism over time will take years, and I still wont even notice the impact of it. So, it seems like a viable solution. However, I am not advising you to hang things from your ceiling with magnets, because I don't know where you live or what the situation is there, what your place is like, and I wouldn't want things to fall and be, like, "Gerald told me to hang it with magnets." But speaking of magnets and one of the reasons why I brought it up, is I was also able to hang this pegboard with magnets to the side of the shelves and then hook them in, and now the pegboard is actually just kind of floating on magnets between the two shelves, which is great, because I didn't really want to drill as many holes in this place, like, into the wall and that kind of thing, and I used to use... I used to drill the shelves into the wall-- or, like, anchor the shelves to the wall too. I don't have to do that anymore, because of the base and everything, so really this is all just, kind of, floating there, but it all, sort of, supports itself and I'm pretty happy about that.
So, cut mat on top. This is a Husky tool chest, which is, you know, good if I want to work on it. Top drawer-- can you guys see in there a little? Yeah. So, I don't have somebody following me around so this is going to be harder, but I'm going to do my best. Over here, just kind of, like, plates and mini-tripods, and that kind of thing. Lens caps. Especially If I'm, like this is for the 20mm right there.
I put my lens caps in here so I always know where they are. Cleaning supplies up front. You know, rags, Rocket Blower, swabs, that kind of thing. This is all filters and step-up rings. Mostly PolarPro stuff. Uh, what else do we got? In these two drawers, this one's all, like, measuring tools. So, you know, for checking sound levels. This is the Sekonic, uh, spectrometer.
This is for USB, you know, voltages. Colour charts, that kind of thing, that all goes in here. This next drawer is power rigging. So, you know,
you want to put a V-Mount plate on something. I've got a whole bunch of different V-Mount plates. This next drawer down is mostly the video version of that.
So, wireless transmitters, SDI to HDMI, HDMI cables. All, sort of, like, video... video transmission to one effect or another. Over here it's USB. So, all my different USB cables
kind of separated out based on, you know, knowing what's where. "That's Micro B, that's USB Type-C." That kind of thing. Rods, clamps, cage parts. PC stuff. So, you know, CPUs, motherboards, drives.
Uh, audio. So, microphones, XLR cables. Uh, lavs, you know, all kinds of stuff in here. This is all audio. That's my audio drawer. OK, completely different lighting again. So, know we're on, uh, this side.
This is where the purple PavoTube is. Up here, these are boxes that actually have things in them. I was, like, "Don't throw these out, 'cause there's things inside of them!" Then, down here I've got cameras and lenses that I use most often. So, a lot of Sony stuff right now, obviously.
I've got the 90mm, the 100-400mm-- Can you even see that through the shelf? Let me pull you around a little bit. Like I was saying, 90mm, 100-400mm. Sigma 24-70mm, love that lens.
Got a couple camera bodies. That's the a7 III, the a7R IV. I'm shooting this on an a7S III. And this a7S III is still running as well. Little camera rigging components, you know. Obviously, there's just, like, regular screws and stuff in here, but also just little adapters and that kind of thing, they're all in here and organized.
Tools. Uh, and then another Aputure bag for branding. This normally wouldn't be here. This is my next video, probably, that's the Rotolight-- Oh, jeez, that's heavy. That's the Rotolight Titan X1 that I'm working on next. But another Aputure thing, and then down here is just cardboard boxes from either packages that I'm... have to work on, or ones that have to go back.
This is, kind of, just, like, you know, up and coming video section. Guitar. Put some sound panels up. Piano. This is nice to be able to actually, like, play and not be under something else. I have it in the corner. There's a much better sound stage in here than there was in the other place, which is nice. Spinning you around a little bit more.
This is a... just a curtain. If I wanted daylight, I could use that, but obviously I black it out. Computer desk over here. This is the sit stand desk I talked about before from Autonomous. Computer set up, obviously. I got, like, my NAS down there. I've gone over all of this before, I've got other videos on it. And then another curtain there. Now, this is the corner that's not done, and hopefully will help with the sound.
So, I was thinking two rugs. One I'm going to put here in this area, and then one I'd probably put, uh... Maybe down over here where I shoot, like in this area, to help with the sound. But I'm also going to make this, kind of, like a little hang out den thing. So, I'll put that TV... I'll get, like, a little media unit,
put the TV on there, on that wall, and then maybe put, like, a sofa. OK, so this is from behind. Obviously, there is the Sony. The 20mm lens makes everything--
like, that looks really far away, even though I'm touching it. Look at that. That's so weird, right? Anyway, Sony a7S III, got the Ninja V set up there. This is the light from behind. I think it looks cool from this angle, it's... kind of, like... I dunno, looks neat.
Over here, kitchen. I don't know if I'd leave these lights on normally, but I left them on because of being able to see... as far as this, like, BTS video. And let me just go show you where I've got all my stuff stashed over here. OK, so you are now in the foyer with me.
Apologize for the gross overhead light. Um, but this is where I'm keeping everything. It's nice to have this storage, because before I didn't and it's quite deep as well, so, you know, I've got all the bags for the other lights that I'm using, and tripods, stands, and bags, everything for all that. Up here, down here. So, it's just nice to have the storage now. And I can... close it on up when I want to.
Uh, this is the screen I'm using. I've told you about this before, this is that BenQ display But I never actually showed you how I monitored myself. So, I just have this, like, screen right below my camera there, and that's what allows me to see myself.
And I just busted out the DSC Labs chart here to, kind of, point it at myself, and I just dialed in the white balance and, you know, fixed a little bit of colour correction stuff and I just made, sort of, a colour grade that I can just apply on all my clips moving forward. OK, so, I feel like that's the end of the video. I don't really have anything else to talk about. I prefer doing this kind of stuff on social, because you can just record, like, a 15 second segment, versus... what is this video even going to be?
25 minutes of me rambling on? But, uh, this is kind of what I've been doing and this is where I'm at right now. And I feel like... Aside from the audio not being perfectly dialed in to the way that I would like it, obviously if you've been watching my channel you're used to getting so...
the audio was, like, not trying to brag, but the audio was-- the space was so well treated the audio almost seemed like eerily well-controlled. And I don't have that now, so it's bugging me a little bit, but I feel like the setup right now is good enough to get onto making videos, like the Rotolight and that kind of thing, and working on making some content without... being too... it always takes time. You can do as much as you can in the first stages to try and, you know, do the best you can based on everything you've learned up to that point, but it's always going to take a little bit of tweaking and finessing. So, if I were to leave you with a piece of advice, I guess it would be something like that.
Is do your best to set up the shot, your studio, your home space, whatever it is. Set it up as best you can, and then work in it a bit to be able to figure out what you need, what you want to improve, what you don't like. You can never get it all right the first try without even shooting a video. I'm going to have to shoot, probably, three, four, five. It took me... took me probably six months
of the previous year to get it to exactly where I wanted it. So... I mean, you can probably do it faster the next time around, but I think I'm still going to have to do a few videos before I...
[distant noise] Before I'm perfectly content with what's going on. I also-- this is great too, I want to know how much this mic is picking up of what's happening on the other side of that door. Anyway, little things like that. You learn as you go. OK. That's enough talk. But that's gonna be it for me.
I hope you found this video entertaining or at least helpful. And if you did, make sure you leave it the old thumbs up and consider subscribing if you haven't already. But if you did not find this video helpful or entertaining, try setting the playback speed to 75%. Alright... I'm done.
2021-01-27 16:01
