Thanks to Amaran for
sponsoring this video. So we're back doing another studio tour. Now, usually we visit somebody
who has sort of a set shot and we would start in that shot and then explore how they
shoot it, light it, whatever. This is gonna be a little bit
different because we are in Adam Savage's Cave for the
"Tested" YouTube channel, and it kind of feels
like every shot is a shot and they don't have anything set up as far as tripods and cameras go. We got Patrick Tomasso again. He's filming this one on, what do you got the FX30 today, Patrick? - [Patrick] We're back on the FX30. - I'm lost on this. I never know if you're the guest or if I'm the guest on this because- - I'll be the guest in
this one, in this scenario. - Yeah, because I'm in your place- - That's right.
- So I'm the guest, but yet it's-
- You're the guest here- - But it's my show.
- But I'm the guest to them. - That's right.
- That's it, hi, everyone. - So a couple of guests here, Joey, your production guy was like, "Yeah, Adam recently just
shooting on his phone now and he kind of abandoned
the typical format." Right? - So, yeah, and there's some
backstory to that, which is, I'll try and be brief about
it, but years ago I realized that every shop, every
single shop as set up is an externalization of a
philosophy about how to work. Sometimes that's positive,
sometimes that's negative, but you know, mostly the shop exemplifies who built it thinks about
how to get work done, and for me, the key is
the design of this shop is geared towards the lowest
threshold to flow state. To me, I wanna just get
building as fast as possible, and when covid hit in early 2020 and we all retreated to our houses and, you know, my editors can
all edit out of their house, that's not a problem, but
as far as filming in here, Norm Chan, who's the
Editor-in-Chief of "Tested," set up a camera here in the corner just after covid started with
the microphone and was like, "All you gotta do is
put the microphone on, push this button, push this button, push this button and shoot." And I was like, "That's way too
much for me to think about." Now, I know how to shoot,
but I also know myself and I know with this big
camera on its tripod, if I'm setting it up, I'm not gonna be thinking about building and so I just started filming
on the phone and that, we were off to the races. Actually, Apple was very fascinated about our production workflow-
- I bet, I bet. - When they found out we were
doing it all on the phone. - What phone are you using? The latest? - We started with the 12 and then 13. No, we started with the 13, then the 14, and now we're shooting on a 15, 14. We're going back and forth. - When you shoot on the latest stuff, are you using any of the
new Apple stuff, like the, what do they got, Patrick? The Pro... - [Patrick] ProRes Log. - I love that Apple has done that. We haven't implemented it yet, but we're really excited about it. - So you're just shooting their standard- - Yeah.
- Like full-color look, or whatever they call it. - In fact, they were, Apple
themselves were impressed that we were doing a lot of the shooting on the front-facing camera. - Oh, so you can see yourself? - I need to.
- Yeah. - And I can see on the videos, I can see the lower
quality of that camera. Again, our brand here is less it's gotta look perfect
than it's intimate. The specific way in which this channel sort of tells its stories is
about a sort of an intimate, like you get to be a fly on
the wall here in the Cave. - Interesting. Now is the phone that you
shoot on your actual phone or is it just a camera
phone and that's it? You know what I mean? - For the first six months
of covid, it was my phone and I was going home
every night and uploading. And like, actually, that
was where the pipeline was a little sticky.
- I bet. - And has since become
much more easy to use, like the software and the
transferring large amounts of files that are themselves
large has gotten a lot simpler. - And if you treat it just like a camera, you get to have a different
level of disrespect to it, or whatever too, versus your- - Completely, and so now,
because we shoot on two phones, I've always got one in here set up and someone will come in
and swap out the phone for a new empty phone and
just upload that footage. - So what about the audio? Is it just the built-in mic on the phone? - This is the most fascinating lesson I have learned on YouTube. You know, I have my base
in film special effects and film and theater and
then also with "MythBusters" and doing a science show, I love telling stories
in different modalities. YouTube is completely unique. So you ask about sound. A couple years ago when DJI came out with that beautiful
little microphone set. - You clipped it on?
- Yeah. We got one, of course we did, and Norm set it up for me and I put it on and we recorded a video 'cause it seemed like a
really low threshold due entry for getting good sound.
- Sure. - And I watched the
video when we put it up and I was like, "I've
got a problem with this." I had to watch it three times to figure out what my problem was and it was that the sound was too good. When my phone is here on the workbench and I like turn to talk to the
phone, the volume attenuate- - It's throwing it off, yeah.
- It's through right there. There's an intimacy to that that's lost when my sound
is perfect no matter where I am in the room.
- I totally get it. - And I would've never
understood that necessity unless I was working in this format. - So now it's just
built-in mic in the phone? - Now it's built-in mic. I wear a lav when Joey or Josh or Norm are filming me with their camera. - Have you ever really
been much of a camera guy? - Absolutely.
- Yeah? - Oh, no, no, no, so one of
my first jobs as an adult was as a graphic designer and I think everyone
should have about a year of graphic design under their belt 'cause it teaches you to formally, like graphic design is all
about transmitting information in an efficient way. Do I know what it's meant to tell me? Do I know what I'm gonna learn from this? And in graphic, this is terrible, right? - [Gerald] Yeah, you can't even read it. - [Adam] You can't read it from here. - [Gerald] It feels like one
of those colorblind tests. - And so, as a graphic
designer, you look at that and you do different
tricks to pop out the type to make it more readable
and understandable and I think filmmaking
is the same exact thing. You look at the frame and you're like, "What is the story of this frame?" - I'm curious about your graphic
design background though, and how it played into this here. - Are you maybe making fun
of my terrible handwriting? - Maybe a little.
- Because to me, this is readable. Here on this toolbox,
this is a better example. I love the Dymo labeler,
the old Dymo labeler because it's nostalgic, but I know what's in
every one of these drawers and I don't need to see
this from across the room, but this I do. Like these are less
commonly used tools and so- - Have you noticed that white-
out pens have a specific font? It's like if I were to write
this and you were to write it, it would look exactly the same. It's strange. - It's a very readable font. - [Gerald] It pools,
though, in the corner. - [Adam] It certainly does. - So anybody that writes
with a white-out pen, all their like typeface
looks exactly the same. It's funny, this looks like
my white-out pen writing. - And as you could see, this
one, it's a palimpsest now, there's been, multiple labels have been scrubbed away and relabeled. It is, acetone dissolves
white-out like that. - I was gonna say, what
gets the white-out out? If the white-out gets
out of the pen, what? - Yep, it's acetone. - You got one of those things where you gotta bring in
the snakes to eat the frogs, and then eventually, what
gets out the acetone? Is this brass? - That is a KNS engineering brass. This is actually one of my bread and butter materials in here. I have this in every
size that it comes in. - This was just a test to see how much you would ramble about a tube. - Dude, I have had friends
come in and pick up a scrap of like colored plastic- - Oh, that scrap.
- And ask me where it came from and
I was able to answer. - Well, in 1954, you see.
- Yes, exactly. - [Gerald] Lighting-wise,
I've noticed you've got sort of a cornucopia things going on. First of all, we got natural light. - Yeah, there's a skylight here, which has always been sort
of the biggest problem with this space. - 'Cause you can't control it? - You can't control it, and
in the middle of a sunny day, I've got one ND on there. I've got one neutral
density filter across it. Before that, from noon to two,
you couldn't film in here. I was too hot. - Really?
- Yeah, I would blow out the rest of the room. These are the bread and butter
lamps for the workbench, and actually once I got these,
I was a little mad at myself that I hadn't had them all along just because these afford so much, like the moment you put a lot
of light on your workbench, you realize you haven't had
enough light on your workbench, like that's the main thing. - Is it just for you
to see, or for filming? - Just for me to see.
- Okay. - Both, right, 'cause when we
film from behind this table, we'll often use these as sidelights. - [Gerald] Can you move
that for me one more time? - Yeah.
(light rig creaking) - That's not gonna work for me. - Our "Tested" viewers
hate this sound so much. Oh, and it's because, hold
on, wait, where is it? Hold on, stay right there. (camera rig clicking) That's my camera rig. So phone goes in-
- And it holds it steady? - Phone goes in here,
clamp it to anything. - That's some janky stuff
you got there, Adam. - Totally. - [Gerald] And you don't
find, well, I mean- - Oh, it totally wobbles. - [Gerald] When you press record, you probably have to wait
for it to settle, right? - Oh, 100%. That actually has a narrative function of letting you know aesthetically you're just gonna see everything here. We get lots of complaints
about that sound. - Oh yeah, it's brutal. - But nothing is better
than this 3/4" Loc-Line for a complete because I
can hang this anywhere. - You can't make something
in here that doesn't squeak? - I have made something in here. (camera rig creaking, thudding) Problem solved. - So you said that's the lights in here. - And there's a overall plan, which is to get rid of this
chock-a-block nightmare here, mostly because it's not
great shop lighting, and it's also not great film lighting, and we could make it even more even, so we're gonna build a grid in here. That's the next big shift we're making. But we've already made a shift in here, which is this space that
didn't exist three months ago. - So what'd you put in here? I see you got some, so you still have, were these already here away? Oh wait, oh wait.
- No, that's- - What is this? - That's one of the new elements. I made a little scoop for it out of foam. - You made it look like it's a shop light. - Yeah.
- That's kinda cool, but it's actually, oh, that's
one of the Amaran tubes. - Uh-huh.
- And you, is this foam core?
- Yeah. Just black foam core and hot glue. That way I don't have to look
at all the elements directly. It shades them just a little bit. And this system is really great. - I like it. - I have an iPad here in
the corner and I absolutely, it's much simpler to
come in and set this up. Oh, I guess there's Party
Time, I haven't tried that one. Having this system with the iPad, really nice for adjusting
color and pockets of light. - If you don't mind-
- Yeah. - I couldn't have asked
for a better segue. - Yeah. - The sponsor of today's video is Amaran and this is the Sidus Link
app, which Aputure uses for their lights and obviously for Amaran, but I noticed that... Where'd that come from? (Adam laughing) That's no good. So you got the tube lights from Amaran. These are great, T4c I
think they're called. And then I noticed you also got the- - We have two soft boxes.
- Mat lights, right? Yeah, the F22s. Is there a reason why you chose Amaran? - That's Joey.
- Production side. - Yeah, that's production side. - Okay, so now we've got- - Joey Fameli. - Who is, as Adam put it, a
shooter, editor, producer. - Yeah, we're a small team. We kinda all wear all hats
and I'm one of those members. We've been struggling with
lighting in both of these areas of the shop for a long time. You saw like the skylights
and all the fluorescents. Choosing a lighting
package that had something that we could control on like an iPad, so we found a middle
ground with Amaran stuff and be able to choose color temperatures, choose intensities, let Adam do that from the iPad for himself. - And that reason for the F22s, so you got light mats here, the F22s. - And so we put in these
F22s in sort of ambient areas for the areas that he's in the most. So we wanted to get a nice ambient spill where he's going to shoot. - Yeah, you can see everything here well. - Yeah, and the big thing was, you know, we've shot a lot of
maker videos in the past, and the big thing was like
making sure your shadow's really not, like if we
have one smaller source, a little bit hotter- - It's pretty soft,
yeah, it's not too bad. - Yeah, the workflow's been good. We've been using
Aputure lights since the beginning and so there was like this like, I feel like early Aputure
was like what Amaran is now to some regards, like there was a point where Aputure became a lot more robust, a lot more like heavier. - I feel like there was a creator and then now it's like industry level, and now Amaran is now creator again. It's like we still need a creator segment. Have you been utilizing the
full color capabilities at all? - We just started playing with it. - I saw that there was a part, Adam pointed out there was a party mode on your iPad over here. Party Time.
- Party time. - What happens if we press
that? Does it do anything? - Yeah, so look, we got party mode now. - Oh, this is really nice. Look, I started working
in the film business when we were using incandescent 10K cans and every set, your props
melting was a issue. - I was gonna say, you'd be
getting a sweat on with those. - Especially with motion
control or with stop motion. There's one extra light
I wanna put in here, which is I want an operating room lamp. It's got like a nice 12-foot swing and I wanna have it here so I can bring it over this work bench, or bring it over this work bench, or bring it over here
above my sewing machine. - I'll let Amaran know you want one and maybe they'll work on it. - If they wanna build
some of their elements into a surgical lamp, I'm in. Over here underneath my lav, you can see that I've lit
the cabinet underneath it. And this actually does a
couple of amazing things. One, it makes it easy to
find the stuff in here. Two, because it's lit, I tend to keep these cabinets neater because I can see them from far away, and when they're messy,
like I'm on the phone, I come over and I make it neater again and it provides this
sort of romantic warmth to this tool when it's
seen in the background that I really dig, so
every cabinet I make now includes lighting integral to it 'cause I think that just
inherently makes the space more interesting and more involving. - You've got an interesting brain. (Adam laughing) - Finished building the
sorting hardware source system of my all-time dreams. That's what this is. - Hardware as in like
screws and stuff like that? - This is every nut and
bolt you could ever need- - Oh, they slide, that's nice.
- And it's 100 of everything. - Oh, look at this.
- These are indexable. They come out, I can- - Can I give you a credit on
something irrelevant of that part? It's just this, the fact that it slides. - Oh, yeah.
- And then the lid opens up so well-
- Yep. - That it's not even like,
you ever try to get something and you get this, come
on, get out of here. - Dude, I thought through everything. I even went so far as to the
company that makes these boxes, I had 1,000 of them shot with my own logo in my custom color, and
this tool-sorting system represents basically my profit. Like I basically, I bought
1,000, kept 100, sold the rest, and that paid for this shelf system. - I just noticed that
it says right up there, yeah, Savage Industries.
- Yes. And so we've got metric
bolts, we've got bearings. I mean you've got every bearing
you could possibly want. You've got springs. Yeah, this is a complete- - It's worth being excited
about, it's pretty sweet, man. It's pretty sweet. - So, that all happened-
- I'll give you some bonus points for that one, okay? - That all happened in December. - I would like to know where
in all your little shelves and cubbies you keep your Marrettes. - My what?
- Your Marrettes. - What's a Marrette?
- Yeah, for like twist- - A wire nut? - Is that what you call it down- - Hold on, hold on. - [Gerald] Is Marrette a Canadian thing? - Is that what you mean?
- Yeah, that's a Marrette. - Oh it's a wire nut, wire lug, but now- - It does kind of sound like a little bit French
Canadian, doesn't it? Marrette.
- Italian. - That was Italian, you made me do that. - Except that if it's French Canadian, I could never get the pronunciation right. You would correct me every single time. - Whenever I say anything to Patrick, I always do an Italian thing. I was like, it does sound kind of French Canadian, doesn't it? It's like why am I doing this? - And then there's those,
the WAGO connectors. - [Patrick] Show me that thing, dude. - [Adam] You know about these? - Do these bridge or are they still? - Yeah, these are lever nuts. So you open them up and put
a wire in here and clamp it and a wire in here and clamp it. - And will it complete the circuit? - It's rated, yeah.
- That's cool. - No, and check this out. They make these in, they
make them like busbars. They make them as splitters, one to three. There's like all sorts
of different executions. This has changed my life for wiring. - Kind of looks like a Lego kit.
- Two to six. Yeah, no, it is, again,
actually it's not far from how I like to keep all this stuff. - But Adam, that's all fine and
dandy that you distracted me with your lovely shelves again,
but you still didn't explain why you have a wire and just
dangling from your ceiling. - Because I haven't gotten around to getting on the ladder and cut that. It's literally dangling
from like two projects ago. It's not live.
- It's not live. - It's not hot. - And it's not grounded.
- No, not at all. (Gerald laughing) So you got your iPhone on your little, (imitating tickling sounds) on a wand, and you got it there. Do you ever line it up and
then go, "Ah, wait a minute." And then you like... - Yeah, 100%. - You know, and then get back in- - Yeah, absolutely.
- And then you like, yeah. - Yeah, I totally shift things in shot to make the shot more
clear or to make sure. I mean, all of this is storytelling. It's all narrative transmission. So to me, the key to storytelling is do you understand what's
happening at any given moment? And that's why I would
adjust anything within a shot just to make sure that
the subject of the shot is the main thing coming across. If you went and took
an art history course, or anyone that's ever
taken an art history course got an education in how Rubens or Bruegel, how they would set up a painting so that your eye followed a narrative. - Right.
- And this is a really, this is what graphic design is all about. Are you gonna look at the
most important thing first, or are you looking at
some dumb thing first? Okay, then you have to
change so that you're looking at the most important thing first and then moving your
eye through the frame. - You've done a whole career. - Yeah.
- Maybe a few, right? - Several, yeah.
- You had a TV thing. - Mm-hmm. - He did a TV thing.
- A TV thing. (laughing) - You had a TV thing. And so now you're making YouTube videos, and I have this opinion
that it's the correct way to do it is to like do
your thing, do your career, and then make YouTube
videos with the stuff that's your hobby, but I'm curious to see what that hobby/it's a
show when it's serious, it's just my hobby, like where
that needle kind of falls and what your attitude is toward it. - It's a great question. It's an insightful question. For the longest time, the YouTube channel was totally
in my brain, the side gig. 'Cause I was making television full time. We started this channel, we
were still making "MythBusters" for the first six years of "Tested" and so I would be in here in this shop for like two or three hours a month. Not a ton of time.
- Right. - The show ends in 2016. I keep trying to develop television. I made "Savage Builds,"
I made "MythBusters Jr." I developed a couple of shows
that never went anywhere. I pitched to everybody in
LA for a couple of years, and then when covid hit, there was no developing
to do for television. That's the moment at which
I put the same amount of attention into the channel that I had into the television show. - So I'm not wrong in thinking
that it was around that era. Like it's not that I thought
the channel started then, but I feel like the channel
became more talked about then. - It became more of itself. It became mature.
- Because you were probably putting out
more content as well, right? - We went from a video a week
to over 400 videos a year. I think YouTube is a
serious medium, new medium. I love the fact that I
can release one video that's eight minutes long
and another that's 80, and they'll both get huge
amounts of engagement. Like not being restricted
to any specific time or layout format, or even
narrative format, is liberating, and frankly, if there's
one thing I'm seeking to do on the channel right now, it's
to allow everyone on our team to also do things that
are having as much fun as I have doing this stuff. Like I want to see more
of what Joey, Josh, Norm want to film, want to tell stories about. - Gotcha. So they can express their- - Yeah.
- Artistic side of it. - 'Cause when someone
is telling you a story that's interesting to them, they're inherently interesting to watch. - 100%. - I believe that axiomatically, because like to me, what is
this but a platform for me to spread some of the love I
have about the incredible life I've gotten to live and
the ways and the things that I've learned from doing that. All I wanna do is pass that
on so that somebody else can maybe find the same kind of joy. - I thought it might be
fun, little shop things that maybe somebody like me,
a lay person, wouldn't know, interesting little trinkets that you've- - I got one for you here. Let's see here, where is the... - And it can't be that brass tube. - No, here. If you had a ring gear like this and you wanted to know precisely
it's internal diameter, you would go to-
- A caliper? - No, a caliper gives you, a caliper gives you a
measurement, certainly, which says that this is 2" on the nose, but a caliper is, it can be off this way, it can be off this way, and all those can change the measurement. If you want a really, this
gets you in the ballpark to within a thousandth or two.
- Sure. - But there are applications-
- That's not good enough for what you're doing?
- That it's not good enough. - What's an application
where it's not good enough? - Well, if I had to have
this be a bearing slip fit on another metallic surface, one or thou is not nearly close. - Of course, yeah, a bearing slip fit. - I would go and get a telescoping gauge. The telescoping gauge goes
in and it's spring fit. And so you lock it when
it's slightly off axis and then you bring it onto the axis. Now it's telling me it's fourth thou over, which is probably the
more accurate measurement. - Interesting.
- Yeah. Oh, here's another. When you have to clamp stuff together, this is one of my
all-time favorite clamps. This is called a Kant twist, K-A-N-T. Because it's using this
little scissor mechanism, it imparts a tremendous
amount of bite force. And when I'm machining stuff and I need to machine two things at once, I'll use these to clamp them together 'cause it holds them. - It doesn't feel like it would work. It's so small, right?
- I know. Well, and they make these, they make them nice and large too. - [Gerald] Right, yeah. - And I've totally used these on products. - This feels like a novelty though, like this was a prototype to make that, you know what I mean? - But you can get this way tighter- - Then like a clamp.
- Then you can get that. I get more of a mechanical advantage. - Well, two things, one, I've- - (laughing) Did I pass the inspection? - Yeah, I've completed the inspection. Major issues obviously is
your un-Marretted wires and the fact that I
tripped on a couple chairs. But I'll give you your copy of the report. - Oh great, awesome.
- Here you go. - Oh, lovely. Oh, I got a star. Dude, what a pleasure. Thanks so much for coming by. - So we're back to another- (machine screeching) - [Adam] Sorry about that. I'm all done. - I watch a lot of children's programing-- That sounded weird,
that was a weird start. (Adam laughing) I squeezed the little one. - It's really-
- It feels like such a raw, or like a rotten banana. - It feels like a fleshy... yeah. And then they made the
big banana for scale. - When you said fleshy... - Teach you how to use those two tools to break through any
door in New York City. It's really spectacular.
- Link in description. - Yeah.
- If you wanna buy it. (both laughing) - And then you just
walk towards the camera so he has a cut point.
(Gerald laughing) - [Patrick] Yes, he knows
the way, he knows the way.
