Minimalist Home Studio For Content Creation

Does your content look professional? Does it sound professional? If not, we’re going to fix that!

You don’t need a $50,000 dollar home studio to create good content but you do need some basics.

The goal is to reach at least a minimum bar in the essential elements of video content:

• Lighting
• Audio
• Video

If you don’t meet that minimum bar, people will not watch your content.

If your lighting is poor and you look like you’re being recorded in the witness protection program and people can’t see your face they will scroll past.

If your audio is annoying with lots of noise or echo, they will scroll past.

If your video is blurry or low quality, they will scroll past.

So let’s talk about getting setup with a minimalist home studio that addresses all of those requirements.

The reason I call it a “home studio” is that you want to remove as many barriers to content creation as possible.

Or put another way, you want to be able to record any time you want, with a consistent setup so that you don’t have to think about it or spend time setting things up and tearing them down each time.

Choosing your recording location

If possible, try to find a location in your home or office that you can use consistently for recording and where you can keep your setup in place.

The next consideration is the layout and background you will be recording in front of and trying to find an interesting angle. Try standing or sitting in a few locations and having someone film you with your phone to see what it looks like.

Choosing the right gear

This is where many people get tripped up since there are more choices than grains of sand on the beach. When you search on YouTube you’ll see these super-high end studio setups that are cool but totally unnecessary.

For our minimalist home studio, we just need these elements:

• Camera
• Microphone
• Lights
• Tripod & Teleprompter

I’ve put together the EXACT items I recommend for each in this kit.

Camera

For camera, we’re going to use your cell phone. If you have a modern iPhone or Android phone, you have a camera better than the cinema cameras of 10 years ago. It is more than good enough!

Microphone

For the microphone, we’re going for versatility since I don’t know if you will be recording at a desk or maybe you are a fitness coach and will be moving around.

So I’m recommending a wireless lapel microphone setup. If you’re not familiar, those are the small microphones that clip to your shirt or collar. Then there is a transmitter it plugs into, then there is a receiver that plugs into your phone.

This setup works in almost all filming scenarios.

Lights

This is another area that seems mysterious but is pretty simple when you break it down (and I’ve put a link below to a YouTube video that shows how to do simple but very nice lighting)

To have a professional and YouTube style look, you want to have two lights in front of you, at 45 degree angles from you and pointing toward you. One light will be on high/max power and the other will be on half power. This will put a slight shadow on one side of you face for a nice professional look with depth.

Then optionally, I’ve included a third light to put some color on your background or whatever is behind you.

Tripod and Teleprompter

With clients I strongly recommend having a teleprompter setup. If you’re not familiar, that is a device lets you put your script or notes directly in front of your camera so you can either read your script or refer to your outline while looking directly into the camera.

The tripod and teleprompter setup in the kit let you simply drop your main phone in as your camera then you can use an older phone or tablet as the device with your script in a teleprompter app like Prompt Smart Pro.

Hard to explain in words but if you go into the kit and open that item there are some good pictures of what the setup looks like.

Putting it all together

That’s all there is to it! For ~$500 dollars worth of gear you can dramatically improve the quality of your content. You will also likely improve your consistency if you can keep it all set up in one place. If not, all the items I’ve recommended are collapsible and portable so they can live in a closet until needed.

Take Action

Whether you use these specific recommendations or not, you definitely want to make sure your audio and video quality meet the minimum bars so that you don’t lose people.

• Pick a consistent location to record
• Get a tripod and teleprompter for your phone
• Set up decent lighting (not your overhead lights in your space!)
• Get a proper microphone for better audio