SBweekly.tv - Episode 5
Cameras, Lights & Sound in our studio
This episode is all about the gear I use for this weekly show, filming in the studio as well as in my editing suite.

I don't know about you, but if I go on YouTube, I either want to switch off my brain, or I want to learn something. And what I absolutely love is to see how other people do things that I might do as well.

Hello and welcome to another episode, I'm Stephan Bollinger, and I hope you're doing well! Well - as well as you can in the situation that we're in.

Today I thought I'd talk about gear and let you know what I use to create these episodes or to film these episodes and also let you know why I have to rip it all down in a minute. We'll get to that.

So, what do I use to film this? Could I film this on an iPhone? I could absolutely do that. As a matter of fact, the camera that films the camera is indeed an iPhone 11, produces pretty amazing pictures.

Because of social distancing, I'm running this whole "caboozle" by myself today, so I'm running back and forth and if you ever tried to film yourself with a DSLR, you know how it is to get it in focus and who knows, maybe I'm completely blurry which would probably help my complexion, but nevertheless, we want it sharp. So, what do I use?

I record on an Atomos 4K recorder and I feed in the signal through HDMI from a Nikon D850 and an 85mm prime lens.

(Cut to studio 2…)

Well, I never thought that I would interrupt myself rudely, but anyway, before we go on in the studio and talk about lights and audio and so on, I thought I'd quickly let you know what I use to film when I'm here in my editing suite.

Nikon Professional Services in Sydney was so nice to send me a Nikon Z6 with several lenses and that's what I use right now to film this. This is at the moment a 24-70 f/2.8 and what I absolutely love about this camera is that I can export or send out 10-bit uncompressed log onto my Atomos recorder, so perfect for grading or editing afterwards.

In the studio we'll talk about lights and I'll use exactly the same lights that I use in the studio and in terms of audio, I use this little Neumann, this one is a TLM102, and I use it usually out of the frame, but right now, so it's right there so you can see it and when I do tutorials or record tutorials or do online classes, then I'll often use the Sure SM7B, both of them run through a very old-fashioned original Focusrite pre-amp and then straight into my MAC.

Let's go and jump back to the bearded monster in the studio and that dude definitely needs a shave.

(Cut to studio 1)

On camera, I have a Rode video mic pro and that video mic is just to get reference tone onto the camera so that I can sync the proper sound with the camera / the video footage afterwards in Final Cut Pro X.

In terms of sound, I have a Shotgun right up here which is my main microphone, and it's just outside of the frame and that feeds into a Zoom recorder, that also records reference sound just in case something happens with this. I usually try to double up things as much as I can just in case I mess something up. Because of the high ceilings and the 14.5 meters depth, it's very, very reverberant in here. So it's like the "ho, ho, ho" and "ha", these sort of sounds. To eliminate this, I've built those big walls that you can see. They're quite thick and they're filled with insolation material and sound-absorbing materials, so it doesn't sound like I'm in a big church.

In terms of light: and these are the lights that we're gonna rip down in a minute, I use a key light, which is a LED panel behind a softbox, just to make my old face a little bit prettier, and another panel here which is smaller, a little bit harder light, but on half the power to fill in the lights a little bit. Now to create a little bit of a rim light, I have two additional panels, that are slightly behind me to the side and they have a grid on it so they don't produce any flares into the camera. And then I use two more panels to light this beautiful white background.

So, why do I have to actually rip down all the gear? Some of you might know that my wife is running a ballet academy. And in the situation that we are with the coronavirus, and the social distancing, we feel that it's not safe for her students to be together in a classroom. 'Cause they're sweating, they're dancing, they have close contact and that doesn't help at all. So we are going live . Or she's going live and for some reason, I have to provide the whole technical to it. Instead of me filming in here during the day, I will take most of that gear downstairs and create a little bit of a TV ballet studio for her. We're setting up a table with an iMac, that's a 27 inch iMac. On there we'll run Zoom to have that connection to the world and to allow her students to connect from their own home. Even though they might be in isolation, they can still continue with their training, because what I've learned over the years, dancers, they just never stop.

It is important that in these times we do whatever we can to help and to make life as normal as possible. It's not normal and it's not always possible, but we can do whatever we can.

Well, that's it for this week, I hope that was a little bit interesting and next week we are going to, no idea yet. Well, we'll figure it out. I hope I'll see you next week. Stay healthy, look after each other with love from Australia.