Behind the Scenes #4 (Patreon)

1. I finished up the terrain collaboration with Wyloch Armory, as you already know. In the final shots, I busted out my slider which I never use to get some nicer beauty shots of the final product and boy do I hate my slider. It's not smooth at all, it's hard to mount on a tripod, and the legs are super hard to take off. So, I bought a Cinevate Duzi 4 and it's on it's way to me and I'll talk about it next week. I have a little ballhead attached to the base of the slider to make adjusting the camera vastly more simple. 

2. I finished up the video that's coming out on Friday already (shocking) and it's about a new multi-part series dedicated to creating an entry piece for Crystal Brush, specifically the single fantasy category. Spoilers: it's got witches and crosses and fire in it ;) This video coming out is all about preparation, design, and ideas. While making the video I experimented with a new rig for my camera:

The purpose of this rig is to be able to walk to different locations and set it down and start shooting. I don't have to adjust a stand with a boom mic on it to get the audio set up, it's just with the camera at all times. The unfortunate part about this setup is that if you want good audio, you need to be close to mic, which means you also need to be close to the camera. So, you need a mega wide angle lens. I tossed on my 11-17mm Tokina lens. You'll notice in this video that the setting changes a lot, the audio quality is worse than normal, and I'm always really close to the camera. I didn't really like this, so I returned the mic on top (Rode Video Mic Pro). One thing nice about this setup is that the audio gets recorded directly to the video track with the nice, beefy field recorded below my camera (Sound Devices Mix Pre3) as opposed to the cameras crappy preamps. This means that in the edit stage, I don't have to sync a bunch of audio clips with video clips, which if you shoot a bunch of small segments, is a royal PITA. Also, this rig is too heavy for my crappy tripod, and it slowly falls down under the weight, so I finally got a big boy tripod, the Sachtler Ace M, which I'll talk about next week.

So how do you get the best of both worlds? You get a wireless lavalier microphone system! I picked up the Sennheiser G4 wireless system which will allow me to be any distance from the camera and still capture the same audio. This will make the shots more interesting, and the audio easier to edit. I ordered that this week as well, and will show it off next BTS post. 

3. I spoke about a new system to mount my camera to my desk, well I got it setup it it's a lot better than my old system.

Above is the Rode PSA-1 microphone stand. It has a 3/8 threaded rod on the end with a locking nut, so it screws into typical ballheads. I have a small Oben BD0 ballhead on it, with my Panasonic G7 attached. I am able to adjust the camera so much more easily than before which means getting dynamic shots. I find that my overhead can get a little stale sometimes or not shot the detail I want to show and hopefully this helps with that. It also has more reach!

4. A company reached out to me to sponsor one of my videos. It's a mobile game company. This will be my first real sponsored video and I'm very excited. The premise of the video is essentially kitbash a sweet looking wizard and I'm already working on it. This wizard will also be given away to one of my $10+ patrons! There will be a sponsored segment in it that is ~60 seconds long. It will release to you guys next week, but I want to ask: what do you think of a creator having a patreon AND doing sponsored content? Most of the youtubers I follow engage in many revenue streams (merch, amazon affiliate, sponsors, patreon, adsense), but what do you guys think? Is that "selling out"? Patreon is my biggest and most consistent revenue stream, and I want to make sure you guys don't feel like you're being undervalued. 

That's all for this week, pretty action packed! Stay tune for next week. 

Love,

Scott