How I Film YouTube Videos (PLUS All My YouTube Equipment!)

I just wrapped up shooting four YouTube videos this morning. It's actually a Saturday morning. I had planned to film on a Wednesday, which are my filming days, but there happened to be construction work right outside this window, so I had to shift my schedule around. Now that I've shot four YouTube videos today, I am done with my content for the month. But maybe you're wondering, Trina, what does your setup look like? How do you do it? How do you get those videos done? That's what I'm going to share with you right now. So one of the first things that you've got to do before you even have a filming day is have a plan. Before I even sat down to film, I had a video titled I had a thumbnail idea and I had my video game plan already written out. Whether you want to call it a script or not, I had my talking points that I wanted to do today. If you wait to do this, today's not going to go well. It's going to be a long time of scripting your content before you even film. So I know when I want to sit down here and film. That's all I want to focus on. So I want to make sure this is all done first. So let me show you real quick what a finished content plan looks like. Before I can sit down and record. You can see I have this all broken down into the content that I want to film inside of here. I have a checklist ready to go right here. I already did SEO research. I created a new Google Drive. You see the link is right there. I had decided on the opt in the title, the thumbnail text, and I wrote a script or the game plan, which you can see I have right up here. Now this week I did get a little bit more detail because I was running on longer videos. But I highly recommend just having your intro planned out and then having key points you want to cover to make it go a lot smoother then what I do. Here in my Google Drive folder is where I will upload my video content. This is where I will send it to my video editor and she'll splice it all up. When we are done, we have it all loaded in. So we have the YouTube version, Pinterest pin version, Instagram TV, Instagram stories, a reel and a Facebook. Now I wouldn't have these done if I didn't have in here in my plan, when I record, shoot, Facebook ending, shoot Instagram story clips, Instagram TV episode, and a thumbnail picture. So having this all in place allows me to get More done today. Also having that checklist make sure I get everything that I need because I don't look like this on a normal day. In fact, I never look like this on a Saturday unless I have to shoot. So understand that is the very first step. And I did that on Wednesday. I tweaked it a bit because I couldn't film on Wednesday. So I focused on my content a little bit more and had that done on Wednesday so today I could sit down and get this all done in three hours. So once you have that done, what does a filming day look like? So cats out of the bag. I am only filming from here up. So this looks professional. And I literally have sweatpants on down at the bottom. Also the truth on what goes on behind the scenes. Because guess what? I'm not that neat of a person. I'm a planner. I'm an organizer in my business. But when it comes to my personal space, I just got to get crap done when I have the time to do it. So you'll see that I have my water, I have coffee over here, a watering can for my plants, little post it notes. Literally it's a total mess. But you don't see that piece of it in the video because you're only seeing what's in frame. There's really no need to stress out on making sure everything looks perfect around you because as you can see, a little bit of a mess. All right, let's talk about camera setup because right now I'm literally using my cell phone for this entire video. So you can see that you can get great videos with just your phone. But for my YouTube videos, right back here, I have the Canon EOS and I have a rode mic on top. And I will link to all of these in the description box below. If you've got a question. I also behind that, have a ring light. It's a diva ring light that I've had for years. Now let me take you around to the other side so I can show you why I use the lights that I do so to get rid of the shadows that I would normally have. So we are out of the light now and I sit normally right there on that chair. Now these are two soft box lights. I'm trying to get the best angle for you. This one's a bit higher. That shoots down on my head when I am filming my YouTube videos. And then that one shoots towards the back, towards those plants because there gets a shadow back there. There's a shadow behind those plants. I can't get myself Far away enough from the wall to eliminate those shadows, because we're just in this small room. And so I have to have a light back there to try to eliminate as much of that shadow possible. Again, you can see that I'm sitting in this chair right here. The camera is right in front of me. I have the ring light in front of me as well. And I do have this window, which can be a blessing or a curse. So if it's really bright out, I have to close these windows. The blinds were supposed to be blackout blinds. They aren't. But it does help get rid of some of that light so it doesn't blast on that one side of my face, especially in the afternoon. There's no way I can film in the afternoon over here because the sun literally comes in from that window. So those are some of the things that I've done to negate and help make my lighting as consistent as possible. Let's talk about audio, because I know that can be a huge issue for a lot of people. So what I had to do in this particular office, as you can see, it's kind of hardwood tile. I had to one, get a rug right here to help soak up some of the echoing. Before that, I literally had blankets. You can see a blanket right here, and pillows that I laid down on the floor to help my audio. That's one of the easiest ways that you can fix it. You can grab blankets and pillows to help that problem. For me, I use the shotgun mic on my camera. You see right here? It's a rode shotgun mic. And again, I. I will link everything that I use down below in the description box. I have tested and tried a lot of things, and I really like to keep all of my tech on filming day as simple as possible. So I did use this little guy for a very long time. It's a Canon G7X, super easy, no fancy settings. And it got me through five years of content. Additionally, with microphones, I've used this, my blue Yeti mic, and had an external audio source. I then had to sync that external audio source with my video when I was editing. But this also gets very great audio, and I use it for podcast recording when I teach online webinars masterclass. And I've also used this rode lavalier mic as well for cell phones. I was thinking maybe I should use it for this video. But the clip that I have on a tripod, a handheld tripod I'm using right now covers the input. So I am just using the camera mic to see how well it does as a case study for all of you. Now I want to show you how I record the videos to my camera right here. So you can see my camera lens is right here and my computer is off to the side. I will pull up my video game plan. I will blow up the zoom on it so I can see the letters and the words a lot easier. And I'll have it here on my computer while I'm looking directly into my camera. So then what I will do is I will just deliver a couple lines at a time. We take this particular video that I talked about a couple weeks ago. This is actually last week's video. If you didn't watch the video on my social media plan for this year, I will link it above because this is the video for that. But I look at my first line and then look at my camera and I deliver that first line that I have written. So that is YouTube is just a sliver of my social media plan. All right, I delivered that. I'm going to look back here. Okay, that's my next line. All right. I think I can pull two lines together. I don't like how that one ended, so I'm going to try to pull two together here real quick. YouTube is just a sliver of my social media plan after the last six years of growing my business. And now we are going to take our social media strategy up a notch. You see how I got that intro done? Just by looking at the script. Then I take a pause, I look back over here. Okay, the next line, and spoiler alert, it doesn't include Clubhouse. Then we just have one large clip that my editor will go in and edit and she can go into the sound waves and cut out all those places where I'm not talking. And that speeds up her process. Let's talk about something you're also wondering about. How do you change your look on these videos? When I first started batching, I literally would go to the bathroom, wipe off all of my makeup, and reapply it in a different way just to make it seem like I wasn't shooting the same day. You don't need to do that. All I do now is I do my hair and makeup and I grab three to four shirts. In fact, if you watch last week's video, I'm wearing the same shirt because I just wanted to grab my phone here and really share with you an off authentic way of what it's like to film. And I figured it would just be easy to flow right into that video to this particular video without even making any wardrobe change. And honestly, people aren't going to notice. Yes, if you do every single video in the same outfit, it may be noticeable, but I mean, Steve Jobs were the same black turtleneck, Mark Zuckerberg wears the same hoodie. Right. It's becoming more and more that people don't even care what you're wearing. Like when you had to worry about repeating outfits. So not True here on YouTube. Here's one more critical step to think about when you are filming. So this is the filming day. This is one more thing that I would think about, making sure you get your thumbnails. So I will turn my camera, which is right here on self timer and just take multiple poses that I can use on my thumbnail on Instagram however I need to. And I will also shoot my Instagram stories today as well. So as soon as I'm done recording this video, I'm going to grab my phone, pull up stories, I'm going to talk about why people should watch this particular video, and I'm going to save those stories until this video is live. So if you want to see what those stories look like, head on over to my Instagram trinalittle and you can see what I meant by also filming your Instagram stories. I love batching Instagram stories because that means when this video goes live on a Wednesday, I don't even have to worry about being done up to be on stories because I've already shot them and I know we can get wrapped up in making sure everything looks perfect and the background is perfect and it's quiet. I'll tell you right now, my kids are downstairs. I had to film today. Today's the only day I need a video for next week. So my challenge for you is to just let go of all the excuses that you're having and just use the space that you have. I'm already noticing in this particular angle there is a handle to my water and a weird angle of that light. But I wanted this video to be as raw and authentic as possible to show you what it's really like behind the scenes of filming. Because it's not all glamorous, it's not all perfect. I just do what I need to do. I clean up the space I need to clean up to get these videos shot, to get them to you, to help you out, to help you achieve your goals. Now I challenge you right now. If you want to Hear my exact YouTube strategy for 2021, hit subscribe because that video is dropping next week. Some of the videos that I'm filming here today. And I'm going to share with you everything that I'm doing this year to grow my YouTube channel and the same things that I do to grow my clients channels as well. Yeah, you're going to get the secrets to the strategies we use with our high level agency clients. You're not going to want to miss it. So again, make sure you hit that subscribe button right now because it's coming out next week. And until then, make sure you watch one of these videos that are on your screen right now here on my channel. I'm Talking mostly about YouTube and creating YouTube videos that help you grow your business. These videos on your screen right now will definitely help you get on your way to implementing video and YouTube video into your content strategy. Until I release next week's video. See you then.