Speaker 1 (00:00): Hey guys, before we get into this episode, I have a favorite ask. If you've enjoyed the nine five podcasts so far, please head over to iTunes and leave a review of the podcast. I love reading your reviews and it really gets me motivated and excited each week. All right, now that you've done that last week on the podcast, we were talking with Amanda Horvath about what it takes to start creating video content and the steps you can take to get over your fears of being on camera this week. We're staying on the theme of video creation, but we're going to be talking with two guests today, Noah Heiss and Leif Jensen. And when Leif run a YouTube channel together called anything cameras, where they post videos twice a week, helping other creators break into the space. To this point, they have over a hundred videos on their channel. And in this episode, we'll be talking about their creation process from how they come up with topics to create videos about and planning them to recording. And we even get into a little bit of the post-production process as well. So let's not wait any longer, hit the beat.

Speaker 2 (01:02): This isn't the nine five podcast. And I'm your host, Nick Nell back where we get into the minds of entrepreneurs and people just like you. So you can start, build and grow your own online business.

Speaker 1 (01:20): Okay. Welcome to the nine five podcast. This is the podcast where we interview entrepreneurs and business owners. So we can help you grow your own business. Now, if you've been listening to the podcast, you know, that I like to bring on a new guest every episode. Well, today we're doing things a little bit differently. This is going to be the first time that we have two guests on the podcast. So it was kind of exciting. We experienced some technical difficulties getting started here, but we got her going. And today we are going to be talking all about YouTube and the YouTube creation process. And with me today, I have leaf Jensen and Noah Heise. So guys welcome to the nine five podcast. Thanks for having us. So now I'd like to kick off the episode to give the listeners a little bit an idea of who you are. So no, why don't we start with you? Why don't you share a little bit about yourself and what it is you actually do? So my name is Noah. I've been on YouTube. I was about nine or 10, and that was across a few different channels, mainly on twice weekly videos. We're beginning to expand that brand, the brand leaf Jensen 18 currently back from college. Cause you know, the whole online schooling thing, little crazy, but I started my filming endeavors when I was really young, like seven or so.

Speaker 3 (03:00): And my first YouTube channel, I was about 10 years old and I just started posting random little sort of short films onto YouTube. And then I started posting with Noah because he was getting into YouTube. And then, you know, from there anything cameras and we run a whole plethora of YouTube channels that are now extinct, you know, various names, various brands, but uh, currently anything cameras is the one that I've invested the most time into. And that I'm the most proud of.

Speaker 1 (03:32): That's awesome. 16 and 18. I never thought I would be the one saying, man, I feel old and you guys started early. That's awesome. So what, why YouTube? What was the interest there?

Speaker 3 (03:48): It's a free platform where I can put my art out onto, you know, I just love that. Yeah, it's free. It was a creative outlet for me. And uh, I watched other people on YouTube. I watched them make videos about Nerf guns or whatever else. And I thought I wanted to do that too. So as I asked my parents and I started doing it. Yeah. I, uh, I think one of the first videos I posted on YouTube, let's see, this would be probably just filmed us jumping on a trampoline and like edit together a trick compilation or something. I was big into. I think your first video was the one about recycling or the one about the fight. Oh yeah. Yeah. I'm big into woodworking and like building stuff. Um, especially when I was really young. And so probably some project videos that I did, that's really early on.

Speaker 3 (04:38): First video I posted was a random, I guess the closest word that I can think of to it is a blog, even though it was basically just me holding the camera, walking around my room, showing my earthly possessions collection. I had lots of Nerf gun. You know what, that's all I can think of right now. And then I started making more Nerf gun videos and it just kind of evolved from there. I kind of joined bleep on the woodworking slash like building, making stuff kind of videos. And now we're here making videos about videos and yeah,

Speaker 1 (05:19): That was very cool. You know, I think I remember back when I was younger, I don't think I ever posted anything on YouTube, but I did something very similar Noah who, me and my brother, we went to like, I don't know if it like Disney world or something like that. And we took around the camera all over the place. It was kind of like a vlog before I knew what blogging was, but then we'd set it in and edit it really cheesily, but

Speaker 3 (05:42): Good, good stuff. I don't think I even edited my first videos though.

Speaker 1 (05:48): And by editing, I mean basically like just clipping the pieces. There was nothing extravagant about it.

Speaker 3 (05:53): Data step up and the whole editing game when I was younger because I got Adobe premiere pro for free. So I've always had access to get the whole creative cloud for free. Thank you for working at Cornell mom.

Speaker 1 (06:09): Now, before we get into the actual YouTube, you as his creation process, something I like to do with all of the guests that are bringing on the show, I like to ask them what their super power is. Now, if you guys have not heard the episode before, if we have any new listeners on the show by superpower, what I mean is what is the one thing that you are the man at? Either someone comes to you for this thing or you just, you feel like you got it nailed. So I'm going to start with leaf this time leave. What do you think your super power would be a strength?

Speaker 3 (06:43): What about in our niece? Oh, in my niche. Well, I mean my superpower in our niche, I'm going to say that's a hard one, a happy, it's an answer. If you want me to go give me a second here. I think the, I think the ability to just not care, keep it very relaxed. That's always my approach when filming and that's always what, uh, you know, why you've always been so comfortable on camera and on stage. Yeah. That's just my strong suit right there. Just keeping it relaxed.

Speaker 1 (07:15): Yeah. I love that. That's a really good one. How about you Noah?

Speaker 3 (07:18): So if this is necessarily my super power, but it seems like a lot of people come to me for camera recommendations and I just finding myself spending more time than it's practical for my schedule on finding them the right camera based on their needs. I will watch multiple 20 minute reviews on several cameras just to find the ones that I think suits them best. Now that isn't always the case in any, any scenario I get the best result or whoever I'm trying to help. Um, and so sometimes I go a little bit above and beyond what is practical for me and this isn't some kind of like egotistical, Oh, look at me. I'm so great. I love helping people. Is that even make sense? I don't realize it. You do recommend cameras. That's definitely one thing that I'm usually very confident answering as long as I get a chance to discuss with the person what they're doing. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:25): Well, I mean, I think to go along with that, I mean pride in the answers that you're giving. Like if someone's coming to you as the camera expert, you want to deliver them a quality answer. You don't want it to just kind of give them whatever, say, yeah, this will work for you. So I think taking pride and the willingness to want to help, that's really what I'm hearing out of this whole deal. That's I think that's really cool. So yeah, the ability to not care relaxed. And then we got know over here that he's the, he's the camera expert and likes going above and beyond for his people. I love it. Good stuff. All right. Now that's the hard stuff. Now. Now we get into the easy stuff, the camera stuff, the YouTube creation. So I guess first of all, now we kind of covered why YouTube, but how important do you think YouTube is as a whole, for any creator? I would say

Speaker 3 (09:15): Very important for creators nowadays. I would say it depends on the person. I think for some people is absolutely vital. I think for others, something like podcasting or blogging, not blogging, blogging as in typing on a keyboard, um, that excites them better. And I think that the platform, I think everyone has a different platform that it's vital to them. I think I, I put a lot of emphasis on YouTube because it's, I mean, it's cost of entry is so low and you can, it's so easy to get started on YouTube. I'm assuming most people that are listening to this have a smartphone, almost everyone has a smartphone now. And that is literally all you need to get into. You can record upload, edit all on your smartphone, which is insane. It's insane. And so that's why I put such like a, that's why I think YouTube super important in the creative space because cost of entry is so low and there's so much ability to just express yourself on there. Just to add to that a little shameless plug here, we're currently working on a mini series on our YouTube channel. So it'll be completely free about getting into YouTube or video making. And we don't require you to buy anything. You just a smartphone and we are pretty excited about this mini series and hopefully it'll turn out really well. Yeah, very

Speaker 1 (10:36): Cool. When does that go? When does that being released

Speaker 3 (10:38): To be determined, we have the first episode film, but we might even refilm it and you know, we've had two and then we've been going to Florida, New York and Florida. It'll probably be a couple of weeks, but before the beginning of 2021, the first episode, very cool.

Speaker 1 (10:58): Now, anybody listening, I put all of the links that we discuss in these episodes, in the show notes. Now with their series being a little bit delayed, I will come back and edit it. I'll just have to get that series link from you guys once you guys release it. But depending on when you're listening to this, you maybe you're listening to this in 2021 already. And the podcasts or the video series is released. So make sure you go check out their series and the link is in my show notes. So I think that's awesome. Um, that was going to be a question that I was going to ask you guys about the equipment side of things. So I think something that people, when they're getting into video, what kind of locks them up and freezes them is the fact that there's all this equipment, cameras, lighting, software, editing, all this stuff is going on and it's super overwhelming. But what you guys are saying right now, all you need is your phone. You need this little guy right here and you can do literally everything on it, which I think is awesome. Technology has come a long freaking way, but is that, do you think with people just getting started into the video creation process, do you think that is where they should start is just pulling up the phone and filming right on the phone? Or what, what would you guys recommend that

Speaker 3 (12:04): Definitely before investing in equipment, try out the art with just your smartphone and see if you like doing it, whether that's photo or video, your smartphone has a camera and can do either those. So just try it out a little bit. It doesn't matter if the final product is amazing or it's terrible. It probably won't be terrible just saying, um, and you can see what the process is. Like, you can get a feel for it before you make a several hundred dollar investment in equipment or even several thousand, how much you want to spend. You could spend, you could spend a lot. I like to say, you know, okay, you're you like you think, Oh, I'm going to try out painting. Well, you can spend a thousand dollars on a brush. Nobody would buy that first time. Like you get a piece of paper, you grab some old paint brushes that you've had, like hanging around the house, get some cheap paint, cheap paint brushes, and you just go from there.

Speaker 3 (13:01): Right. And so exactly the same of filming or photography, you have access to the smartphone that can do so much. And a lot of the time people underestimate it, feature films have been shot on smartphones, you know? And so the latest iPhone will record 4k raw video. Yeah. That's honestly, that is kind of ridiculous. So, I mean, you're, the smartphone definitely does have its limitations though. Um, well, yeah, and as you progress, you'll need to improve your some extra equipment, like, you know, tripods microphones, that sort of stuff. But in theory, you can keep your phone as your main camera for, you know, infinitely as long as you want. There's nothing holding you from doing that. I have a $250 Mark, the Motorola G seven power. It's a couple of years old now, but I think that I can make some pretty decent looking and sounding videos with only this and you just happen to have to know how to use it.

Speaker 3 (14:01): Um, and if you don't know how to use your smartphone as a camera, then how are you going to know how to use the camera as a camera? This is, uh, going, uh, so going to an analogy that, uh, Lisa and I used on the piers podcast, the camera, it's just a tool like a hammer. And in more expensive camera is like a bigger, heavier hammer that might pound in the nails a bit faster, but you need to develop the muscles in order to swing that hammer effectively so that you don't even hit your thumb or whatever. And so if you go three 40, $2,000 camera, you're not going to have the strength or in the case of knowledge in order to use that camera effectively. And sure you probably won't get injured, but the results are going to be not that much better before you know how to use the camera. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1 (14:54): Absolutely. There was back on episode 18 with Dalen, I think it was he, he made the reference that it's not about the tools, it's about the person using the tools. I think that's a perfect analogy right here, like you and I can both create very equivalent videos using the absolutely different camera quality. I mean, you guys will probably make something way better because that's what you guys do, but you guys can probably make a video on a smartphone way better than I could with a $2,000 DSLR camera. So it's really about learning the craft and not necessarily the tools that you're using to, I guess, perfect.

Speaker 3 (15:31): Something that I don't think gets a whole lot of publicity when compared to equipment like you're going online, learning how to start making videos. Oftentimes we'll find the people, they either share a similar view class where you got to start basic, just use a smartphone or you'll hear, Oh, you got to get this piece of equipment. This piece of equipment, this needs equipment, equipment, equipment, equipment, and suddenly you're racking up thousands of dollars. But what they fail to mention is the content. Because even if you have the greatest equipment in the world and you know how to use it, if your video or whatever else you're making, it's just dull and boring. And the content is drab. No one's going to want to watch it no matter how pretty it looks. Yeah. That was a really good point. You need story. You don't have story.

Speaker 3 (16:21): Nobody's going to want to watch it. And the arts, you name an art, it has a story. Tography if photo is worth a thousand words, that is totally true. Every photo has story. Every painting has story. Every video has a story. Even if it's an educational material, it has a story has an arc that leads you from not knowing how to do this thing, whether that's, um, setting up your camera settings or drawing a person. I don't know, whatever that's tutorial is. It has this story arc from you not knowing how to do this thing. And it arcs to you knowing how to do this.

Speaker 1 (16:54): Absolutely. And this, this is a great segue into the next part of the episode here. So we're getting ready to start. We've decided we want to start creating content for you to now we got to come up with the content ideas. I'm assuming that's where you guys kick this whole thing off. Every time you guys think of a new video, you guys are probably starting to think about the content that that video is going to entail. What does that content, I guess, thought process the planning process. There is it keyword research, like where, where are the ideas coming from, I guess, for your videos?

Speaker 3 (17:24): So I think that in the beginning, it is much more important to film and create content about whatever wants to create content about whatever you like, whatever you feel like doing and not worrying about keyword research, is this video gonna perform well? Um, even in beginning, what's your story. You don't need to do that. Yet. Story is actually something that can be very hard to implement. If the content you're creating, isn't a story like a movie. And so in the beginning, it's good to go with your instinct and just create whatever you want to, whatever feels natural. Would you agree? Yeah, I would totally agree with that because if you immediately start thinking, I need to do this, this, this, this, this, and this, all of a sudden, you have this video, like you're, you're like, Oh, I can't do that video. Can't do that video.

Speaker 3 (18:11): Can't do that one. Can't do that one. And then you start chopping off things because you just don't know how to do it because you're setting your standards way too high and you're not getting practice and practice makes perfect. We need to practice my early videos had no story or well, very little story. Um, and it might've been super simple. Like Robert runs away from cop cop catches Robert that's it that's, the story will be very simple, basic, but it was a lot of practice that allowed me to evolve my skills. So definitely agree with you. And if you're making an educational video as a tutorial, don't worry about emphasizing that story because it does take a lot of practicing. You think about it here and there in the beginning, but don't stress about it and just do what is fun for you so that you don't get burned out by and decide that you don't like doing this because the whole point of art and yes, I believe YouTube and content creation is an art is to have fun and enjoy doing.

Speaker 3 (19:07): Yeah, absolutely. Um, and then, so some of our videos are scripted and others are not, um, usually we do bullet points. Yeah. Usually we have bullet points. So with a lot of our videos, no, no. We'll usually come up with the idea. Like I would say, I usually come up with the idea, generally I collect the idea, put it down in a word document and then go from there. But oftentimes that ideas presented to me, whether it's from you, whether it's some shower thought I have, uh, other times I get, uh, quite often the ideas from questions people ask me. So just today, actually I released a video about recording audio to multiple places and seeking it in post production. And this came from someone who asked me a question is a microphone, port was broken and he wanted to know what the best way to get good audio was.

Speaker 3 (19:58): And if he had to upgrade his camera, I said, no, you don't actually have to upgrade your camera. You can record audio on your smartphone and use the inbuilt microphone on there. I need the microphone on the DSLR camera. And as long as you know how to use a smartphone as a microphone, you can get good audio from that and get in post production. And he had some questions about how to do that. So I wrote him, um, a brief tutorial, but then I said, you know what, I'm also going to make a video about this so you can see how I do it. Yeah. And so we come up with these video ideas and then we'll when we all come over to the studio, we'll sit down. We might write down bullet points, um, come up with, you know, the basic, usually like three, at least three points.

Speaker 3 (20:41): Um, and then if say, if I'm presenting, I I'm a big fan of just, just going for it improv. Yeah. Just total improv. Uh, I'll say what I say. If it comes out wrong, I'll reset. We can fix that in editing because this is YouTube we can edit. And so think about bullet points in improv is it allows you to be more natural on camera. And as long as you have those points so that you remember what you want to and what you need to cover so that it makes sense to the viewer. Then you can just flow with it, have fun doing it. I don't seem more natural to the viewer. Now, one thing that you're skipping here is something that we only kind of just started implementing. And of course, since you just came back from Cortland, you haven't involved in this process.

Speaker 3 (21:24): That is, I created a worksheet. And so for each video, I go through this worksheet and I have questions on it. Like, what is the subject of the video? What are you trying to accomplish with this video? What is the story of this video? What are the title ideas? What are the thumbnail ideas, stuff like this. So that going into filming, we haven't even more clear idea about what we are covering, uh, even more than just bullet points, which is another thing that's in this worksheet, in the worksheet. I think that's a separate document, but you get the point

Speaker 1 (21:56): When you guys actually go to do the recording. We'll talk a little bit more about this a little bit further down, but you're talking about just kind of winging it going off. You guys have like a note card or do you guys just write down a couple notes, then hit record, say what you're going to say, come back, check your notes, hit record, come back. Or how does that? I know for me, when I tried starting to get into video, I would kind of freak out, forget what I'm going to say. Go back, try to remember, come back to the video. And I was almost like memorizing what I wanted to say, even though I was trying to quote unquote wing it. So I think it, I don't know for someone that's just starting out in video, it's kind of difficult to grasp that concept. What would be the best way to start recording?

Speaker 3 (22:39): I have a friend. So I will so say if I'm in the video, I will be standing in front of the camera. We hit record. We usually mumble for a few seconds about what the opening line is going to be, because we forgot to plan that before we hit the record button. Now we have this, now we have this worksheet and then I've read over the notes. And then, so I have an idea and then I'll start going and I'll stop. If I forget something and he'll prompt me, he'll be like, talk about this next. Or sometimes he'll raise his hand and I'll find, you know, I'll just stop myself at an appropriate spot. And it'd be like, add this, uh, we'll edit this in, you know, in this spot or like add this line. I want you to say it this way. Uh, so there's somebody watching, saying, okay, this is what the video is going to look like.

Speaker 3 (23:23): Ooh, we need to make this point. Now it's very like the relationship between an actor and a director or more so, uh, in a movie. Um, and that's the nice thing about having a friend is one of us can be filming and we'll both have reviewed the bullet points and the worksheets, so we know what we're doing, but then as we're filming, we can prompt each other and work off of each other in way. However, if you don't have a friend or if you're just starting out, this may be a kind of unnecessary stuff for you, especially if you're a genre, it's entertainment instead of education. Um, it's definitely good for explanation to have made a deal of what you need to include so that the viewer, it makes sense to the viewer. Um, but for something like entertainment, uh, it's not supposed to maybe even make sense.

Speaker 3 (24:09): And so if you're doing something that's entertaining, you don't need to make sure that you talk about what exactly bit rate is or whatever. Yeah. And then also there, I see two sides to the entertainment sort of thing. You have a, you might have just, I don't know if anybody's seen the channel Ozzy man reviews, the guy just sits down, hits record and watches some videos and reviews them. And he's hilarious. It's all improv and that's, whatever comes out, comes out. But then there's also the scripted side of entertainment and that requires memorization, which can be hard for some people. But yeah, a little practice you'll find memorization gets way easier with just a little practice. It's not that bad. And you'll learn a technique so that you can remember some techniques don't work for some people everyone's brains work different. Everyone works completely differently.

Speaker 3 (24:58): And so depending on your genre, yeah, you might be winging it, but you might be scripted. So if you're doing short films, that's almost always completely scripted, nothing wrong with that. That's, you know, that's the genre, that's what it's supposed to be like. You just have to get used to memorizing and that just takes practice there. I can't give you any shortcuts, just practice. Now, the other thing that we haven't mentioned is camera shyness and getting comfortable on camera. Now this is something we actually also covered on the UV piers podcast. Sorry to be plugging another podcast on your podcast.

Speaker 1 (25:35): Absolutely. I'm going to actually link to them in this one. So

Speaker 3 (25:38): It's a really good podcast. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in audio video stuff. But in that we talked a whole lot about getting comfortable on camera and it boils down to that. It's a mindset issue, and you need to go into reporting knowing that you have control over the final product, unless you're doing it professionally, in which case you're going to have editors and stuff, but it's just you doing YouTube. And so you have control over the final product and you can edit out your mistakes and you can, you can basically make yourself appear as you want to make yourself appear. If that makes any sense.

Speaker 1 (26:15): Absolutely. I know exactly what you're talking about. I, uh, as I was starting to create video, I kind of had that idea of I'd basically read it out one line at a time because that was my issue. The, the camera shyness. I kinda get anxiety as soon as I hit the record button and I couldn't look at the sheet, remember my line and go say that one line. It's like, okay, take a break, come to the next one, say my next line. And kind of, it's difficult to try to make it seem very natural without having like a bunch of jump cuts, every single sentence, but just something. So you're used to yeah. Looking at the camera lens and talking to the camera. And for me, I'm a typically a monotone type of person. So when I'm on camera, I really noticed that when I go back to play it back and I'm like, I'm talking like this and you can't, you sense no emotion in my voice sound like a robot. And I don't know, it's part of how I just sound naturally, but you really notice it and being, getting comfortable in front of the camera, like you said, it's a mindset thing to be able to get excited and let your voice go up an octave or down an octave or however, like fit the kind of tone. But yeah, like you said, it's, it's a mindset. I think that practicing constantly getting in front of it, even though it is uncomfortable is probably the biggest thing you can do.

Speaker 3 (27:31): Yeah. As you said, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, you do it. You record 50 videos. Um, by, uh, you know, after 50 videos, you'll be really good at being in front of a camera. You know, if you have only done five, because you're scared of starting, you're not going to be as good. So, uh, just keep doing it. And the other thing is that some people have tricks for acting on camera that allow them to act more naturally. For instance, they might pretend they're talking to a friend or pretend they're, uh, uncle Jared is sitting there in his pink polka dot underwear, who knows. Uh, it's a, if it's a co you know, we have coping mechanisms for different things. And so if you can develop a mechanism to help you feel comfortable in front of a camera, uh, then that's, that's gonna help you a lot.

Speaker 3 (28:21): Some people are good on stage, but bad in front of a camera. And for those people, I would encourage you to think of it like a stage. It's exactly the same. Um, and there's still an audience it's just that you have more control over what goes out there. And so just build that mindset. This is the same as the stage, because I know people that are comfortable on stage, but are terrified in front of a camera, which has always confused, but, you know, build that coping mechanism and you'll, you'll, uh, develop your skills further. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (28:48): I like that. No. Okay. So that, that kind of covered our, the section that I wanted to talk about with actually recording it. Now, you guys pump out a lot of videos. You said, what twice a week, you guys publish, I need to know how do you really see, how do you guys put out that much content with the recording and the editing and all that?

Speaker 3 (29:10): The thing is it's kind of only one and a half videos because one of those videos released every Friday is our series called real quick camera queries. And those are literally very minimal editing, less than five minutes usually. So they take them very, very little time. It's like, what? 20 minutes of editing on the total product? Probably. So that's nothing. If you think about editing 20 minutes is peanuts like zero time for a three minute video. That's pretty, so it's about org organizing. And, you know, on top of that, and Noah's probably know is the one that should be talking about our organization cause he does a lot of the, uh, post, uh, well, the pre and post production. I'm mostly involved in the production process. He does a lot of the pre production post production. So talk about pre production, how you handle that, the schedule that.

Speaker 3 (30:04): So as I mentioned, we have a word document with all of the ideas and when I need a new idea to film a video, I will just go through this document and I will pick one out that I think is going to be fun to produce and it's going to fit our audience well, and I will put this idea through the worksheet. So I have to answer questions. As I mentioned, such as, what am I trying to accomplish with this video? What am I going to cover? What are the bullet points? What are the thumbnail ideas? What are the title, ideas, all these different things. And if by the end of this, I feel that I didn't answer these questions very well or that they couldn't be answered very well. Then I just to just scrap the idea, um, and that hasn't really happened yet.

Speaker 3 (30:51): We've postponed ideas on ideas. Let's wait for another, another week. Like we don't have the resources this week. Let's wait a week, let's wait two weeks. And sometimes those leads have multiplied so that we don't get them out. Uh, not just the next week, but the week after that or that we got to that, uh, you had this one idea for a video. It was window lighting, video, light indoors when you're letting video indoors. And this idea we had, uh, probably over months ago. Really? Yeah. Well, we didn't get around to producing it until we made our course. And we just said, you know what, since we want to make this lesson as a YouTube video, anyway, let's just post this lesson as the YouTube video, but it be promotional for our course. And so we posted it and it's actually done quite well. Yeah. I think you can postpone ideas as long as you have another idea there on the clip board, like, Oh, we can, we can fall back on this. Or, you know,

Speaker 1 (32:00): No, I was saying, you guys have them, the list of ideas, kind of like your bank of topics and ideas that you can just kind of pick from. I do something kind of similar with my blog posts. So I have, it's actually a list on Trello. And every time I come up with a new blog post ID, I just throw it into Trello. And when I'm ready to do another blog post, I have this big list of stuff and be like, okay, that's when we're going to do today. So I really do like that. It's a nice way to, for one now forget ideas when you have them. Cause I've done that too. I've had this great idea.

Speaker 3 (32:29): If I don't write an idea down then guaranteed, I will forget it within the hour, unless it's something really big. If it's something really big. Oh, forget it. Well that's cause you texted about it.

Speaker 1 (32:40): I got an idea.

Speaker 3 (32:42): You know, it's still in writing, it's just in DMS or texts. The other thing I want to mention though, is that in the beginning, I don't think that it's terribly important to get caught up on. I don't have any ideas right now, or I need a video for this week. What am I going to post? I think that it's important to add like that and have fun doing it. Don't get burned out and do it in a very relaxed way. And that way still have fun doing it. And you don't stress about deadlines or anything like that. Don't treat it like a job at first,

Speaker 1 (33:15): You're getting stressed out, you got to leave and you say, Hey man, I'm stressing out because he's super powers being relaxed. And he'll, he'll tell you to chill. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (33:24): I know there are so many different forms of brainstorming and just, I like to just go about my day and I'll have it in the back of my head. Like I need to think of something and something pops into my head or write it down no matter how dumb it is, put it down. Cause it can always inspire a different, different thought to, you know, um, right now I just thought of donkeys. Now, is that going to be a good video? No, but what can we go from there? Like that's just a word that popped into my head at that moment. Uh, don't ask me why, but write it down. How to photograph there. It's a perfect, now we can go. Now we can go into, uh, horses, nature, wildlife. So now we're at, um, wildlife, wildlife photography. There you go. So now yeah. Basics of wildlife photography or um, composition for wildlife photography and right there, I should just start rattling off like six video ideas. Cause I didn't throw out the idea of donkeys. That's what you have to do and preferably do it with somebody else because as you saw right, as you heard right there, no. And I bounced a couple of ideas off each other right there. It's like, bam, bam, bam. Now we've got a video. Well, I don't know how much I contributed to that. Brainstorm in this space

Speaker 1 (34:40): For everybody listening, you are witnessing the master brainstorm sash in action.

Speaker 3 (34:46): Absolutely though we don't have brainstorm sessions session. Wow. Um, usually we just have ideas naturally. And then when it comes to filming them, we bounce the idea off of each other or preproduction generally and say, Hey, it would be a good idea. Should I put it through this worksheet process? Again, this process we've only been implementing. And as I mentioned, I'll have ideas. How, no matter how dumb, just whatever I'm doing, a menial tedious task, like showering or I pumped them beats. I crank my music in the shower. Like we gotta have some, uh, Marc Anthony or some real good, real good Spanish. And there's actually science showers and generating ideas. Yeah. I think it has something to do with the relaxing nature of a shower. And the environment allows your brain to wander and not get caught up on stress. I bet you didn't bake. We're going to be talking about showers and brainstorming.

Speaker 1 (35:57): Yeah. Know what I bet it is because when you're in a shower, you're obviously unclothed that you're in a very vulnerable state, which means your mind like just calms down and goes into that vulnerable state. You come up with all kinds of stuff.

Speaker 3 (36:12): You, her without clothes I put on a dress generally, but then after we get our ideas, we put them through the process of the worksheet and getting bullet points out. After that, it's just go into the studio. Whenever we have an available moment report the video and now we're in post production. The production process is pretty simple for us because we've been doing it for so long. We have, I converted my bedroom into a studio. So we had built this bed frame lays on the ground. It's six inches high and it has a two inch memory foam mattress dude is committed. He sleeps on a two inch memory foam mattress and there's plywood under that.

Speaker 3 (36:59): It hurts my back. Okay. Back 10 pounds. So I can run my bedroom into the studio and we have basically everything set up all the time. Now the tripod audio set up, I don't, I think it's just the camera and the literally all mounted lights, ceiling mounted lights, the microphone is ceiling mounted. We have all the table routing on the ceiling. By the way, guys, you don't need this in terms of the production process or you viewers. I just recommend sitting down or standing up walking around even and filming. And if you want to, you can pay attention to the productivity, production quality. And uh, think about lighting. Think about Claudio. Think about camera settings. But as we've been saying, you have to start somewhere and that somewhere has to be basic and you can't go too far into the deep end immediately or you know how to dog paddle. Yeah. Yeah. There's no way I could have started a video, started filming and implemented all of the skills I have now because I just didn't have those skills. And the only reason I have them is because I filmed like 300 YouTube videos, probably more, we currently have over 120 videos on the channel. I deleted something like all the channel previously and we have what, three, four other channels that we posted on. So yeah,

Speaker 1 (38:32): To go along with that, something that I recently knew or just figured out on YouTube, you can list your videos as private or yeah. Is it, is it private,

Speaker 3 (38:42): Uh, published, sorry, public private unlisted and scheduled

Speaker 1 (38:46): Unlisted. That's what I was thinking of. So you can list your videos up on YouTube or as unlisted and no one else can see those videos unless you give them that link. So if you're worried about putting that out for the world to see, and people not liking the video or thinking you suck at it because it's your first time or whatever the case may be. I putting it up on YouTube. You can Mark it unlisted. So no one will see it. And it'll give you an opportunity to still publish and post the videos on YouTube. I know a lot of people, a lot of YouTube creators creators just in general, the biggest problem is getting more people to watch or read or listen to their content. So when you're starting out, chances are, there's not going to be a whole lot of people seeing your videos from the very beginning. So the, I think the mentality and the fear and the something that I personally experienced, I published the video or I'm going to publish a video and I think, okay, everyone's going to think it sucked. Everyone's going to look at, they're going to make fun of me or whatever the case may be. But chances are, there's not going to be a lot of people at the beginning. They're going to see it. So really all you have to do is just start doing it, publish it

Speaker 3 (39:50): And saying that no, one's going to be watching these videos when you first post them, isn't something negative, negative, or against you as a writer. It's just the nature of the platform. Not even the platform of content creation in general, you can't just get out of him school, film school, and go make a massive budget. Hollywood production like Avengers, end game. Those people had lots of experience and you need to start somewhere.

Speaker 1 (40:21): Now let's segue into post-production. Now we talked about the planning process, the pre-production process, the recording process. Now we got to get down to editing and I know this is another big pain point for people. There's a lot of software complicated software. I mean, you mentioned premier leaf. That's a, if you don't, if you've never been in it, it's a very overwhelming software to just pick up and start moving with. So what does your post-production process look like and where do you think other new creators should start when it comes to editing?

Speaker 3 (40:57): Um, I'm just going to always say premiere pro because that's what I love. And that's what I know, right? No, I can give you more insight on this for dinner use, whatever is for you, whether that is I movie, even windows, movie maker for three program, I personally recommend Adobe rush. I believe that that's the three, one. Yeah, there'll be rushes to free one. Yeah. Um, if you want to get more bans of editing, then you can start out with the free version of the venture resolve. That's the program I use, but like premiere, it can be very intimidating to start so intimidating. Yeah. You look at a wave for you look at wave forms and you're like, what is that? Or you look at, and you have all these menus and sub menu and all these different tabs histograms. If you don't have a general idea of what you're doing, you're not going to make it anywhere in a program.

Speaker 3 (41:49): Like if you have good detailed tutorial and you're relatively tech savvy, then you're fine. You can jump into something like premier or DaVinci follow along and learn it pretty quickly. But for a lot of people, it's just a little bit too much. And so something like mere rush or sorry, Adobe rush. Wait, is it Adobe premier rush? I'm really not sure. Adobe rush. It's going to be easier for beginners. Yeah. I've actually jumped on that program a few times and I've well, I find it simple cause you know, I can't do my advanced T frames and all that. I, I still like it. Um, it gives me enough options and the AI in it is incredible. Um, I believe they have really well content aware fill in video. I believe they moved some of that. Some of those features over the rush, serious, crazy tracking stuff in rush too.

Speaker 3 (42:41): And you can get it on your smartphone or your tablet featured on mobile. You can, if you can edit on your smart phone that makes your production process, you know, possible for so many more people who don't have a computer, only a smartphone. So yeah, I like I do like Adobe rush. And then you also asked what our post production process was. Um, this used to be divided between leaf and I nowadays it's just me. So I take the file, the SD card from the camera after recording and I put it into the computer and I import the photo, the videos into the file system that I've developed. And for anyone out there you're going to develop your own system or you might not have any system if you're a little bit more disorganized and that's just how you work. That's fine. Uh, but after that import the footage into the editor, do a color grade a, I have a custom look that I made for our setup so that I can just do a one-click apply.

Speaker 3 (43:42): Generally I process the audio cues and dynamics and then work on cutting the video, arranging it, adding the B roll, then exporting now for a lot of people, some of these terms like, and queuing and dynamics, aren't going to make much sense, but that's okay because that's something I didn't know about until just last year. And so that just goes to show with even six years of experience, I learned something new and now seven years of experience, I'm still constantly learning with these programs that reuse there's so much to learn and you can just keep getting better and better and better. It's basically as much as you can absorb as much as you can learn your videos. We're always increasing quality

Speaker 1 (44:26): Doby rush. I used that quite a bit. This past year, as I've been getting into, I was posting a lot to tic-tac and I want it to be, have a little bit more control over my videos. So I was actually recording them all in Adobe rush, which I think is super cool because you can record it directly into the platform and you can edit it. You can do all your jump cuts right in there, trim up your videos. Like I think, I don't know all the editing, the overlays, everything that's involved in Adobe rush. It's it's a very powerful app right? In your Palm of your hand. I think that that is definitely a very good option for anybody looking like what we said, start with your phone. That's a great option to get, do everything record it, edit all from one. Okay.

Speaker 3 (45:06): Yeah. That's I mean, it's, I haven't seen a better program than a premier rush, although I don't know. I'm not, I'm not really in this space on mobile, on mobile, although I'm not in that space much. I, I have, I've never posted a tech talk. I feature in one, one tactile where, uh, my sister posted, she didn't have any followers and all of a sudden it blew up. It got like thousands of views. Um, yeah, I always be in real country, I got a truck stuck in a mud and we had the tractor to pull it out. She'll relate some country music and me, you know, getting mad at the truck and, uh, that got popular,

Speaker 1 (45:42): Take type famous, really just recording the video and getting it out there, especially in the beginning, the editing stuff, just like with the equipment and all that that we discussed as you get more advanced with it and you start realizing, okay, now I want to improve this aspect of it. Now I want the video to be a little bit more clear and I'm going to get a higher quality camera. I want this to be a little bit more produced and I'm going to start focusing on what do I need to do edit this thing. I mean, it all starts with one point and that is getting the content created, recording yourself or whatever it is you're trying to produce, but you have to turn the camera on.

Speaker 3 (46:19): Yeah. Yeah. One thing I want to say on this point is we all know our, our products. You know, our art will get better, but the knowledge that it will get better should not hold you back from producing something now. And it's a little bit of a paradox because if you do wait, you won't get better. But if you post now and it might be terrible, you'll get better and you'll improve. And so you will you'll have that knowledge. It'll be better in the future. So I just wanted to put that out there as we are constantly learning and trying to improve our content. For instance, recently, just the other month we released our first online course called tough bloating. And it helps you do just this started on YouTube and learn about cameras. So it's more technical, but that's beside the point we are already working or I am already working on a version two to be filmed by the end of this year and hopefully release not too shortly after because we realized that they had so much potential and so much room for improvement.

Speaker 3 (47:25): And I had the inspiration and the time to do it. So I just said, you know what? I'm going to start outlining a version too. Well, just because something can be improved does not mean it's bad. Right? It can be great. We got great feedback on this course. We showed it to have really been enjoying it, but we've also gotten feedback saying, Oh, you know what? This could be tweaked a little bit clearer, clearer to the viewer. And then I just got this, Oh, what's the word I'm looking for? I just felt so inspired that I have with these little pieces of feedback that people gave us something very different from what the courses are right now. We're basically restructuring the whole thing, but that doesn't matter right now. So to kind of like summarize this, you don't never want to stop. Trying to improve is the moment you stop trying to prove your work, your art.

Speaker 3 (48:24): That's the moment you stopped being artistic. What that doesn't mean? You have to create the same thing over and over again, better and better. The same thing through different pieces of content. Exactly. You don't, you don't get better at painting by painting the same thing over and over and over again. That one. Yeah, that one pumpkin. But if you want to get better at painting, then you need to pay that pumpkin. Now it might look terrible. Well, I'm going to go try and eggplant next. We paint the eggplant. You've taken the skills from learning how to paint the pumpkin. Now you're your next painting looks better. And you're all of a sudden know how to not only paint better, but you've learned to paint something new. And so it's through diversity and always striving for a better end result that you will improve your work and stay creative and motivated.

Speaker 1 (49:18): It would be some last I'm to ask each of you guys for your own answers, but what would be a last word of advice that you would give someone who's just starting out looking to get into creating their own content for you to leave? Why don't you start?

Speaker 3 (49:35): I'll go first. I'll go first. So my, my piece of advice is just keep grinding, man. It's, uh, it's all about, it's all just about putting in the time putting in the work. And if you put in the work, you will, I I'm a firm believer that if you work on it, you will get great results. And so just keep grinding. But I would like to add that that grinding does not have to be stressful or lard. It can be fun and enjoyable and relaxing. It's just that when he's saying is that you got to practice. And I think that you would add to this, that you got to have fun doing it. Oh yeah. You gotta have fun doing it because, um, who likes having a hobby who has a hobby they dislike? So why would you have a hobby you disliked? And I like, it's like a job.

Speaker 3 (50:23): And I think that this is pretty in line with your whole brand. Nick, if you have a job you hate, well, there are several things you can do, including picking up a hobby. You love, why would you have a hobby? You can, Oh, and then my piece of advice, I would say, don't be afraid of what you are going to create or what people will think of it. I think in the almost three years of this channel, we've gotten one hate comment and we've had 12,500 plus views across the channel. And I think the one hate comment was just someone having a bad day because it was honestly pretty ridiculous. And it just made me laugh because that's another thing you need to keep in mind is that you can't take things personally because either someone's having a bad day or they're just trying to help you and give you some constructive feedback.

Speaker 1 (51:17): Absolutely. I think that's really important. That's again, kind of like what we had talked about afraid to put the content out there because people are going to like it, or maybe they're gonna say something bad about it, but yeah. I like what you just said. It's either, someone's just trying to bring you down because they're having a bad day or yeah. They're just trying to help. It's not anything personal. And you can usually tell from the comment which of the two it is

Speaker 3 (51:41): And adding to that think optimistically, not pessimistically. If you think all the time, Oh, my creation is going to be horrible. No one's going to like it. Then that's what you're going to force yourself to believe in the end. If you go into this thinking, not even, Oh, this is going to be great, but I'm going to try this and I'm going to have fun doing it. That's what's going to happen. You're going to have fun doing it. And you're going to enjoy the end result. Even if it's not the best thing you've ever created in your life, stay grind, stay grinding, stay happy, have fun and stay relaxed.

Speaker 1 (52:16): All right, guys. Now, where can people find you online? I know we talked about anything. Camera's on YouTube. Any other links where people can get in touch with you? If they have YouTube camera photography, videography editing questions, what do you want people to?

Speaker 3 (52:31): So again, you can go to youtube.com/anything cameras. That's our YouTube channel, where we post videos and we've been talking about, and also feel free to email us team at anything. cameras.com. I'd love to, I would love to go through your questions, hear your stories to tell us we'd be happy to read it and reply and connect. And then also, uh, we're on Instagram, not super active, but again, that's at anything cameras. Um, I think that's, those are, those are the main places

Speaker 1 (53:04): And I will, I'm actually in the show notes, all of those links will be in the show notes. So you guys can get in contact with leaf or Noah. And I will also be putting a link to your online course, which is it's still, currently. I know you guys are working on it, but is it still okay?

Speaker 3 (53:19): It's available now, the price will be going up when we release a new version, but those who have paid

Speaker 1 (53:26): For the current version will get the new version with no extra cost. Perfect. So there will be a link to that course in the show notes as well. So guys, I want to thank you for coming on and bearing with me through our technical difficulties. Thanks for having us on, okay. That is it for the interview with Noah and leaf. If you only knew the technical difficulties we experienced while trying to get this interview, it was insane, but we got it. And I hope you were able to get some value from these two. They put a lot of work into their R and they do the one thing that matters the most really well. They continue to show up in create. Now I would highly recommend you go over to their channel, anything camera's on YouTube and subscribe. They share a lot of helpful content and information that can help you take your YouTube videos to the next level. You can find the link to their channel and social media accounts along with the transcript and all the other links and tools mentioned in this episode, over on my website, the show notes for this episode can be found@ninefivepodcast.com forward slash episode 22. That's N I N E F I V E podcast.com forward slash episode two two. If you've enjoyed the podcast, don't forget to leave a review. I appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (54:49): You for listening this far, and I look forward to catching up with you guys in next week's episode,