Studio Tour 2020 | How I Make Videos with iPhones

After one year, 42 videos, 1,700 subscribers and 225,000 views, I’m thankful for this experience on YouTube. Some of you asked how I make my videos, so here’s a studio tour. With 42 videos under my belt, I’ve changed how I make them almost 42 times: the camera, the set, the lighting, the sound, my hair. This is what I use as of today, since tomorrow it could be completely different, including the hair. If you’re curious about the gear, drop questions in the comments.

Cameras

Main camera: an iPhone 11 (yes, I shoot with iPhones). I started the channel with just my iPhone XS but ended up buying another camera for troubleshooting my iPhone and accessories, so I got a Canon M50. (I tried using my iPad Pro before that to film the iPhone and accessories, but putting an iPad on a tripod or overhead was cumbersome.) The M50 was great but limited to 1080p without a massive crop and loss of autofocus, and for my current use it wasn’t any better than an iPhone. I plan to upgrade when I can afford a full-frame that doesn’t cost $5,000 (suggestions welcome). I got this yellow iPhone 11 for about $150 from a carrier and made it my primary camera. Its lens is brighter (about f/1.8) than the M50’s, so I can keep the ISO low with less noise; with the Canon I’d crank the ISO and get extra noise that made it no better than the iPhone.
B-roll camera: an iPhone SE, for B-roll, top-down shots and anything mobile or from a different angle.
DJI Osmo Mobile 3 gimbal, handy for panning shots, walking, or filming myself without bouncing, with better stabilization (it works in a basic mode without the app).

Camera software

I record with FiLMiC Pro (full manual control: frame rate, audio, ISO, shutter speed for motion blur, white balance, color profiles), and since I can’t see the screen from my chair, I use FiLMiC Remote to control and monitor it from an iPad. For this video I used FiLMiC DoubleTake to record the front and rear cameras at the same time (limited to 1080p).

Teleprompter

The iPhone 11 (in a blue Moment lens case) is mounted to an arm via a Teleprompter Pad adapter on a Parrot Padcaster teleprompter, which uses an iPhone 6 as the display running the Parrot app. Sometimes I write a full script, sometimes just bullets, sometimes nothing: I never stick to a script 100% because I think of something better, words don’t come out right, or I want to say something I didn’t write.

Power

An Anker PowerPort 5 (four USB-A ports and a USB-C) charges the iPhones, iPads, teleprompter and other gear.

Audio

I’ve gone through many mics (Rode, lavaliers, the iPhone itself) and settled on the Rode VideoMicro NTG, about 12 to 14 inches from my mouth, just out of frame, with options from high-pass to reducing the dB. I record audio with a Tascam DR-10L, a tiny portable voice recorder that gives better audio (less noise and hiss) than recording directly into a camera or iPhone. (It comes with a lavalier mic, which I used for this video since I’d be walking around.)

Mounts

A mount for a top-down iPhone sits next to the microphone. Both the iPhone mount and the mic are on InnoGear microphone arms (about $17 each), attached to a Wali monitor arm (a VESA mount). Thanks to Everyday Dad and DSLR Video Shooter, who found the Wali arm and whose setup I copied: you’d normally clamp it to a desk, and I bought a second arm on DSLR Shooter’s recommendation. One change: I originally attached it to the desk, but every time I moved the desk or put a product on it, the camera shook, so I built a sawhorse out of Woodstock sawhorse brackets from Amazon with a 2x6 or 2x8, sanded, rounded and stained gray, which gets the mount off the desk.

Lighting

ESDDI soft box lights: 5,500 K bulbs, the pair with stands in a bag for around $70 to $80. Cheap, and they work well.
Viltrox LED (a pair, about $180): remote-controlled color temperature and brightness. They had diffusion issues, so I no longer use them as key lights, but they’re great accents.
LIFX LED strips: any color, controlled by an app (starter kit with the controller and one strip), for accents, and I change colors for my mood or for work vs. shooting.

Other gear

Mini tripods (a Manfrotto), Moment cases and lenses or ND filters, a Samsung T7 SSD for moving large video files off the iPhones to my computer or iPad (AirDrop works for smaller ones), and a slider for B-roll shots.

Editing

I go back and forth between LumaFusion and Premiere Pro on my 2020 iMac (I’ve just started experimenting with Final Cut Pro and am not a big fan yet, but will keep at it). My beloved 2018 iPad Pro edits about half or more of my videos: for linear videos (an A-roll with some B-roll), I prefer the iPad with LumaFusion, the most enjoyable editing experience: sit down, use the Pencil, cut and add effects, super smooth and way faster than my iMac at reading video and rendering. For multicam (a main camera plus one or two others), I prefer the desktop: the clips sync, and I can hit 1, 2 or 3 on the keyboard to switch angles. I used to have my desk in front of this view, but I didn’t want to clean up the clutter every time.

For beginners

If you’re new, you don’t need all this: you can start with a phone, a tripod and a window (see my video on that). Thanks to everyone who’s subscribed and watched. What do you think of my setup?

Links

Some links in this post are affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I may receive a small commission. See my ethics statement.