BEHIND THE SCENES: How I record my YouTube videos, what equipment I use PLUS what makeup I wear!

I just finished wrapping up filming four YouTube videos. The most recent one was posted on my channel last week. But I figured why not just show you exactly what a filming day looks like here, what my tech looks like, how I do it, and also what my office looks like. So I'm bringing you behind the scenes and a different style video here, a totally vlog style video to see exactly how I do this even when kids are home. So the first thing that I gotta do is obviously my hair and makeup. And I'm not a professional. I watch just a lot of YouTube videos and practice. Here is basically what my makeup counter looks like a total disaster right now after I'm done shooting. So I just use some foundation. I have some under eye highlighter stuff and mascara. Nothing super fancy. And I use this curling wand to do my hair. The secret to waves is dirty hair. This is a Saturday. I last washed my hair on a Thursday and I filled it with dry shampoo. And that's what actually keeps my hair staying this way. Otherwise it wouldn't. And let's go over into the office and see how I set up. Right. So I do have a separate room for my office. And as you can see, it's a bit of a mess. I'm not a clean person. You may think I look organized and everything, but right now we have two desks over here. And I had to have my husband move all of his computer stuff because we're sharing this during quarantine. But one thing that I do first is I lay down these blankets because this floor is like a tile floor, like a hardwood floor, and it's very echoey. So just by throwing blankets down, it definitely ups your audio so much more. There's not that tingy sound, there's not that echo sound. I'll also have a couple shirts here that I used for filming today. So since I shot four to prepare for vacation, had them all laying here to grab. Since I haven't been able to have any time alone, I've been needing to keep my tech as simple as possible when I am filming because I usually only get like a morning to shoot videos. So I've just been using my ring light. You can see this is my background right here. There's nothing super fancy about it. This is just a letter board that I think I got from Amazon and then I just got some of these twinkle lights probably from Target, and just take them down to give a little bit of lighting behind me. And I just threaded it through this gold thing I think I got from Target. As well. So when I do shoot videos, I'm going to grab my phone and record this as well. So we can get two different angles here. But I'm going to sit down here at my desk. This is what a normal video looks like for you. And you can see I just have this camera on a stack of books. So I got this tripod. It is a joby tripod on a stack of books. I've got my coffee and my water there as well. And then I have my computer and my script right to the left here. And my script is right there. So I know exactly what I need to say, when I need to say it. I where without having to memorize everything. And then right behind this camera is my ring light. I've also recently upgraded my camera to this particular one. But I also got a boom mic to put on top because it's just easier for me again to keep the tech as simple as possible. I can just record my video and the audio already be attached. Prior to that, I will show you what I was doing. It wasn't that much more difficult, but again, I was just trying to simplify things. This is a great option if you have the money to upgrade to this equipment. But if you don't have the money, there's a much cheaper option here to upgrading my equipment. I was using this Canon G7X and the reason why was because I could have this flip up screen and see exactly what I was filming, making sure I was in focus. And I don't even recommend buying the Mark 3, the most updated one. If you go to the Mark 1 or the Mark 2, you're going to get a better price for that. And it's still a great camera. But the one problem that this camera did have was the audio. The mic on it wasn't that great. So that's why I use this external mic, this blue Yeti mic. I still use this for recording voiceovers or doing podcast episodes. And all I do, it has a USB plug and I plug it right into my computer. I used QuickTime, this right here and I'd come into QuickTime and I would go to file new audio recording and I would make sure that the mic that was chosen was the blue Yeti mic. So then I had this separate audio file. So then when I took the camera card out of here and put it in my editing software, which is Final Cut Pro, I now had a video file and an audio file. So the easiest way that I synced that was I just clapped before I got started and I Could take that spike in audio from the audio file on my computer and the video file and line them up so that the separate audio file from the microphone was matching up with my lips in the video file. And I mean, I'm doing the business mullet here where I got a nice shirt on and I'm just wearing leggings. As far as a quick office tour here, I can show you that. Here is my calendar. Basically I just have some specific dates that I am tracking. You'll see that pink are things I'm talking about on social media, whereas green are things for my video strategy academy students. I have a quick little reference guide here. So VSA tasks, due dates, pitch, webinar, those different types of things. And then down here in June are dates that we're going on vacation. As far as books that you see here, this is one of my first business books that I read that I love. I still recommend this. Pour your heart into it. It's the house Starbucks. Build a company one cup at a time. This is what I'm reading right now. Traction about building your business. This is a surprise read that. I just bought it for fun. But there were some really great lessons in here that you could take for showing up on social media. I also love Bravo. Vanderpump Rules is one of my favorite shows. So obviously I like that Back here you're getting a little behind the scenes of my studio. This is a picture from the Together conference back in 2019, I believe. Yeah, that's just some fun conference stuff. I do have a Eiffel Tower here because I love Paris. I've only got to visit once, but I have plans to back Sunday and that's what is there. These numbers here are all a launch breakdown and kind of special to me. So I don't necessarily want to go into detail over here, but it's all about planning my launch, how many sales I need, how many upsells down sales and all of that stuff for business. If that's something you want me to talk more in detail about in another video, let me know then. Over here, this definitely needs updated. Coronavirus definitely slowed me down on this, but I like to get a quarter at a time planned. I love to write things in here and figure out what I'm doing three months at a time. So I know what tasks to focus on. You can see nothing is here right now because since April we've just been trying to survive over here. This is on my plans this weekend to get this updated to June through August and get all My tasks figured out for the next couple of months. In here is a storage closet. There's like a bookshelf in there and some boxes that we've never unloaded from. Moving. This is kind of my business model breakdown. Again, something a little private to me. This is still my video strategy academy breakdown of all the modules and courses. I've left this up here because I'm going to do some updates to it before I take this all down. So I want to run through each of these, make sure all the video quality. If I can improve it, if I can improve in more detailed information, more printables. I'm always looking for ways to make my content better for my students. So that's why this is still up here. You can see we have a printer over here. My husband has been sitting on this side of the desk. I do move my Big Mac, my desktop Mac to the floor when I'm shooting my content just so that I have the space to shoot on this desk and I just have places to move around and do different angles in my video. And if you're asking this ring light is a diva ring light. I got it probably about three years ago. It's been great. I got it as a Christmas gift because they are around $200. So if you can ever get it as like a gift, it's a great gift option. Now if this has inspired you to get started on YouTube, watch the playlist that's on your screen right now. It's some of the best videos that I have to get you started on YouTube right now. I've really gone through all my content and picked the best ones. So click that, watch it and let me know below if you like these kind of vlog style videos, kind of behind the scene videos so I can add some more of this to my content strategy. Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you in that next video.