- So far this school year, all the classes that I teach have been online. And now that we're like, I don't know, a month and a half into the school year, I added it up, and that has
been over 100 Zoom classes, which is way too many Zoom classes. But I feel like I've
gotten pretty good at it and I've gotten two setups
because I do my teaching from home three days a week and I do it from my classroom two days a week, although there's nobody else
in the classroom, it's just me. And so I've set up
basically the same setup at home and at school. So I wanted to share with
you what I have set up, why I have it that way,
and how it works for me. (upbeat music) What I've done here is basically set up like this mission control center. And so the whole thing hinges
on my 16 inch MacBook Pro. This is my same computer
at home, the same computer that I edit all my videos on,
just my personal computer. That's what runs all the Zoom stuff. I have it connected to a TV over here. And on this TV, I have a timer
app called Red Hot Timer, which lets me add in multiple
timers throughout the day for the starts and stops of classes. And I also have just a short checklist of what I need to cover in my classes. All my audio's running through
a RodeCaster Pro, of course. And my main audio source
is this Rode NTG2, which is a great sounding XLR mic. This is another one of my
personal pieces of equipment. It's a sampler, so they have all kinds of goofy sound effects added in here. Normally we use this
in our daily broadcast to just liven up the show. But I figured if I'm doing Zoom meetings, half of the job is to be an entertainer. So now it's here to liven up
my Zoom meetings, as well. For lighting, I have two aperture 120D's. And if I turn off the overhead lights, that's kind of more what
the setup looks like. This one is being used as a
backlight and a hairlight. And I also do just like to
have it in the background because students see it and then they ask like, "What is that light?" And then that lets me tell
them more about lighting. A lot of this setup is
definitely over the top. But I feel like as a
digital media teacher, I should have a good looking
setup for online classes. But also, the more little
things I can throw in that make students ask
questions makes it easier for me to then teach them about those things. I've got my classroom as the backdrop. And the whole setup is
on these risers here. And the reason for that
is so that my main shot, you can easily see almost
like an overhead view of the classroom behind me. I've got these little acoustic panels here to try to reduce echo. These are Auralex like standalone panels. There's four of them. They work okay. And then the camera rig that
I'm using an EOS R, of course, with a Sigma 24 millimeter 1.4 lens. But it's on a tripod head
that is attached to a C stand. And the reason for that is so that way, I don't have to have more tripod legs on these risers, which
was kind of dangerous and the camera could fall. So the C stand is super sturdy. It's here, and it's just
projecting the camera out to be in the exact spot that I need it. And with the EOS R and the Rode NTD2, this is my basic setup. Normally I actually do have
these lights turned off. So now you can see here's
the key light that I have, here's the backlight that I have. And when they're both together, this is kind of what it looks like. Now I've got all my sound effects here, lasers, goats, dog barks, all
the really important things. But the reason I really
like using the Sigma 24 1.4 is not just because I like
the way that it looks. But it gives me that super
shallow depth of field, which even though I'm
physically in the classroom, because it's so blurred out right here, it kind of looks like a green screen. And I've had a lot of students think that I'm standing in
front of a green screen, this is like my Zoom virtual
backdrop, and it's not. And then when I actually go back here, they get kinda tripped out a little bit. So that's a great opportunity
for me to start then talking to them about aperture and F stop and depth of field, and
stuff that they might not be interested in if I
just showed up and said, "Hey, we're gonna talk
about F stops today." They're not gonna care. But if suddenly they have a question, like why does your shot look like that, how is the background so blurry, now I can explain to them in a way that's actually gonna be more
relevant why that's the case. So half of what I do is just
providing these opportunities for students to ask
questions about something they're curious about,
and then I can dive in and teach them more about it. And they're gonna be more interested in it because they asked the questions. And right now, I'm just running everything through an Elgato Cam Link since I'm just doing one camera angle. Sometimes I will bring my
ATEM Mini and set it up with a second computer over here to switch between angles. And then since part of my program includes a Broadcast Production
class, sometimes I actually have a stream from here,
which is our broadcast studio, which I just do because it's fun. It's a full on studio. It's a little bit of visual variety. But even though we have
our nice three camera setup with all our fancy switchers and stuff, I usually just sort of set up my EOS R kind of right here and just
stream directly from here. So I do like to change up my
backgrounds for my students just so they don't get bored, because seeing the same
thing in the same way every single day can be a
little bit boring sometimes. So when it comes to
teaching online from home, which I do three days out of the week, I've tried to basically just
create the same setup here. But it's actually a little better because it's got some more
versatility built into it. And the whole setup is still based around my MacBook Pro
plugged into a 34 inch ultra wide LG display. And this is actually not my own display. I was able to borrow it from work to use while we're doing online classes. But it is really terrific,
and I definitely want my own when it has to go back. When I'm teaching from home, the ATEM Mini is kind of the heart of everything. And if you haven't seen my
video all about the ATEM Mini, I'll put a link to it up here so you can kind of learn about this. But this thing is absolutely amazing and pretty much, on a daily basis, I run three cameras and
a computer through this. And the first camera, the main camera, is my EOS R, which is
actually in a small rig cage. It has a little monitor attached to it. All of those things are 100% unnecessary, but also very very fun. And my second camera is actually
an overhead shot over here. So right now, I've got my 6D Mark II with the 24 to 105 lens
mounted on a C stand. I made videos about C stands. But I ended up getting a second one. This one is a Flashpoint
C stand which I chose because each end of it has a quarter 20 and a 3/8 inch mount on it, so I can put a ball head and
then the camera right here. It's also spring cushioned
here, so if it does happen to fall down or anything,
it doesn't just slam down. It kinda softly bounces a little bit. So it's a little bit
safer, although it's not quite as heavy duty as the impact C stand, which I have over here on my key light, and that I made a whole
separate video about. And the overhead shot is really helpful for things like this. Just yesterday, we were
talking about storyboards. I was creating some amazing artwork to show students how to use storyboards. You know, fill up the whole frame, don't just, even if you're
using stick figures, don't make it totally useless. And so being able to show this
really cleanly and clearly is incredibly helpful, and
that's where the overhead camera comes into play. And then I do have a third camera, too, which I don't use too often, but really does come in handy sometimes. And that is, if you look in
this little preview window, the Sony RX100 Mark V. So now, look, here's me talking into the microphone recording this. But this camera is great if I
do need to just sort of show a close up of something I'm explaining or just some kind of
detailed view of something. Having a little small portable camera to show things really
closely, really easily, is really really helpful. And the fourth input on the ATEM Mini is actually my 2013 13 inch MacBook Pro. And the reason for using this is to play like Keynote presentations or video clips, because even though I could do
screen sharing through Zoom, which is what all of our
classes are run through, when you screen share on Zoom
and you try to play a video, the quality is bad. It's very stuttery, it looks
like 12 frames per second. But if you play a video
off of the MacBook, use that as an input on the ATEM Mini, it plays really really smoothly. And then also, if you've
ever tried to share or screen share a video on Zoom, you know that the audio settings are always just a little
strange to get going. And then having the audio from the MacBook going into the RodeCaster, I can make sure everything looks good and sounds good. And for audio when I'm teaching online, I use the Rode NTG2, which is
an awesome shotgun microphone. This is not my own microphone. It's another thing that
I'm borrowing from work. And I'm sure it's no surprise, but this is all running
into the RodeCaster Pro where I can bring in my audio,
I can bring in the sound from my MacBook that's
attached to the ATEM. I can bring in all of my sound effects, all of those very important things to just deliver high quality audio. And then back here behind it
all is just an absolute mess of wires and cables, and you know what? I just don't care. I know how wonderful it looks when things are beautifully cable managed. I love that too, but the reality is this is what it looks like
when you're doing this stuff every single day and I'm
breaking parts of this down several times a week to take to work so I can teach from my classroom, and then I'm bringing it back. And the result is that it's
just not going to be practical or feasible to keep everything
beautifully cable managed all the time all day every day. Now I do find myself really fortunate in that when things switched
to doing classes online, I literally had a room that
was already set up to film because of my YouTube videos. And even teaching classes online is really really similar to livestreaming. Like you're literally checking the chat and trying to monitor everything. And so that weird form of multitasking is something that I had already
kind of been able to build a muscle memory for, just
from practice on my own. And so I feel fortunate that that helped this super weird time of
having to stream your classes be a little easier for me. There's obviously
downsides to not being able to meet in person, but in general, it's been a dream stream
with my student team. I didn't start doing YouTube videos to have it become part of my job one day. But just because I started doing something I was interested in and
something I was excited about, enthusiastic about,
eventually the dots connect in really weird ways that
you could never plan for. And so this is how I've been
setting up my online classes. Total overkill, but I
think it looks great, I think it's a ton of
fun, I think it's good for the students to see it. And the only reason
that I was able to do it was because, you know,
years ago I just started poking around in little areas
that I was interested in for no reason other than that
I was interested in them. That's one of the best things you can do. Just explore stuff that
you're curious about, that you're interested in. And down the line, those
things can come together in very very strange, yet useful ways. (funky music)
