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thank you for joining me

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that didn't quite go as smoothly as i thought but yep

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that's me 10 years ago videos like this were filmed on a sony handycam that

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actually belonged to my boss at ncix's sun

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so we're using the camera's on-board audio and entry-level photography light

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that we borrowed and instead of taking screen capture we just

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we zoomed in on the screen and yes that is that is actually electrical tape

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stuck to the front of the screen nowadays we put a lot more technology

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talent and time into our videos and i like to think that it really shows so

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thanks to b h photo for sponsoring this video where we'll be doing a 10 year

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challenge not with facebook profile pics but

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rather with the production quality in our videos that continues to change as

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our channel ages and i have got to admit i actually got

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really nostalgic going through all this stuff and i'm not the only one

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brandon can i get a challah super nostalgic

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that's not a holla

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b h photo is the largest non-chain electronics retailer in the us serving

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amateur and professional photographers and videographers since 1973.

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with fair pricing and a fantastic shopping experience both online and in

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store b h has been our go-to gear store for over six years now check them out at

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the link in the video description or learn more about our experiences with b

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h at the end of the video the early days were pretty rough like this one where we

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accidentally filmed an entire video without audio

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and then instead of reshooting it because i didn't have time i just dubbed

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a voice over at my desk wow what is that that's the transmitter the infrared

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transmitter um then there's this video that has audio but with unbearable

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background noise because the camera and its onboard microphone was so close to

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the computer hardware we were trying to film so there's a few buttons down at

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the bottom of the board you've got your oc genie it's so funny for me to hear

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people hearken back to the good old days when Linus tech tips was better back

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when he was at ncix i mean can you guys even imagine if i uploaded

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this video today why does Yvonne get abruptly cut off at the end of the clip

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i feel bad for the that's the actual end of the video like

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we didn't edit that just now and sadly the quality of Linus tech tips basically

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didn't change for a solid year LTT's

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first real hardware purchase was a canon powershot sx1is which was decidedly

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consumer grade but definitely an upgrade over the original sony camera because

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that one recorded to tape so to ingest

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our footage we actually had to connect the camera to a pc over firewire or

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actually a mac to be more specific and then capture the footage off of it so

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yes my friends that thing was from the era when faster than real-time footage

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capture was a feature what a pain in the butt the sx1is

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actually recorded 1080p 30fps video fully digitally to sd cards and had a

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pretty wicked optical zoom but there were actually some ways that it was

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worse it didn't support any form of external

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audio so we couldn't even use that stupid gray twinkie microphone mind you

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at that point the goal was not great production values online as tech tips

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which was supposed to be our vlog channel anyway because remember when i

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worked at ncix we were actually working on two video series concurrently

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ncix tech tips was believe it or not the

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higher production value one with editing some graphics and

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a little bit of preparation on my part the problem was that we couldn't make

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those videos fast enough to meet the demand from all of our partners so as a

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compromise and it was actually my boss's idea even though it ended up biting him

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in the butt when i ended up splitting later we created Linus tech tips which was

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still owned by ncix at that time and the videos still went on the ncix

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website but the company name was no longer in the title of the channel so

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the idea was to give me a bit more leeway to be edgier and not worry as

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much about quality which quickly turned into what i called

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the one take policy where we would just keep recording through stumbles with the

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goal of shooting as many as six to eight videos in a single session that would

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last just one to two hours today we'll be unboxing the sans digital

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tower raid you know what i like i like things that

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are called special edition you can see there's some more black stickers these

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are to prevent people from taking it apart never take apart a hard drive thank you for checking out my blog on

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the wd black and that was really how things were for a long while that is

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until we upgraded to a well okay looking

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back it's kind of cute to me that i was so excited about this but to a canon

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xa10 that i pre-ordered thanks to our increased ncix tech tips budget back in

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2011. actually you know what no in fairness this was a big upgrade because

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even though it was a fixed lens camera so barely even above a consumer camcorder

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unlike the old sony one which used a proprietary interface for external audio

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sources really limiting our upgrade options the xa10 had xlr which meant

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that we could finally use professional external mics like the sennheiser

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ew110g3 later that year we would make our first hire luke who by the way

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grossly misrepresented his experience in both camera operation and video editing

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yeah you heard me luke and let's start with

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a warm welcome for our guest camera operator who's also interviewing for the

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tech tips assistant job and we also reached a hundred thousand subscribers

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this was after three years of videos that quite honestly like i can't even

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bear to go back and watch now like those of you who have been with us since then

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you guys are hardcore like just amazing that stuff sucked a year after that in

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october 2012 we finally got our first piece of real professional caliber gear

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at eight thousand dollars the sony fs 700 would be our companies which hadn't

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officially started yet most expensive equipment purchase for years to come by

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the end of 2012 we had moved into the era of Linus media group being a thing

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and Linus using his garage as a studio

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which actually worked great because we could open the garage door to give us

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some natural light because we still didn't have enough lights and we reno'd

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the whole thing into a state that i mean we thought looked kind of cool and techy

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including the original tech wiki set which believe it or not was not an

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actual green screen but rather real white walls that were supposed to look

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kind of like i was inside one of those infinite white apple commercials

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but actually looked more like i was standing in front of an ugly piece of

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drywall overall though even in spite of some stumbles this was

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when our videos began to look like not

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complete scorched garbage for the first time we had two kino-flo diva lights

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plus whatever cheapies we could borrow from ncix when we weren't back there

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doing contract work we had a lav mic of our own and we had our fs700 still

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shooting at 1080p equipped with a new shoulder stock and a counterweight that

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seemed like a great idea for balancing the rig but in reality was just brutally

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heavy to carry around anytime we'd actually need it like our first year at

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ces where we made over 50 videos with

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just three full-time employees speaking of employees this is actually the first

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video that our fourth employee brandon ever shot

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look at that it's like the guy was destined for greatness isn't it you got

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some nice bokeh in the background there and everything i mean not that we paid

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for the privilege even though we had a decent camera by this point it would be

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over a year before we bought any extra lenses for it i actually never told ed

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or brandon to bring their personal lenses to work but like

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they refused to use the kit one and i refused to buy any more so everyone's a

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winner right anyway when we finally bought a couple of sigma lenses we didn't really get a

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quality boost because they were the same ones that we had already been borrowing

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for some time now around the time that brandon showed

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up coincidence we also released our first video with

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dedicated b-roll footage and it's

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actually frankly kind of amazing that we continued with the concept considering

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how bad these shots are in hindsight i mean

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i thought at that time that it was just a waste of time i was like well

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come on you already have the host there you've already got the camera there

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you've already got the product if you want to see it closer just move your

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butt over closer to the thing and then just like step back when i'm ready to

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address the camera like what do you need to come back later for

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but we did and it was around this time that we also made our first pc build

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guide ever on Linus tech tips this was

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actually supposed to be a statement piece for us it was the first time that

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we were going to try to meet or even exceed the production values of the ncix

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tech tips that we had left behind with my old employer and we spent a lot of

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time on the intro the graphics the

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lighting setup and we even tried to get like as much depth to the shot as

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possible by pulling the table out from the shelves behind me and then

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positioning brandon literally cheeks to the wall at the other end of

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the garage one of the most amazing things about this video to me which ended up doing 50

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000 views in the first day which was like a huge deal for us at that time is

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that i was still doing all of these videos unscripted with at most bullet

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point notes open on a nearby laptop or scrawled on a nearby piece of paper

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that changed when we switched sets yet again to the infamous langley house and

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brandon won another battle with me this is where the teleprompter makes its

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first appearance allowing me to read my notes while looking directly into the

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lens that is at least once we started shooting our a-roll on a tripod because

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brandon refused to try to hold the camera with the teleprompter hanging off

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the front of it what a lightweight oddly enough the kitchen set that we moved

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over to shortly after that became so beloved by our fans that even though we

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were only actually in the langley house for just over a year here we are today

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years into our current studio and we still have people kind of hearkening

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back to the good old days in the kitchen anyway by this point our budget started

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to increase so we invested more in lighting we bought a cheap piece of

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green screen cloth that was so thin we had to fold it three times over to

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prevent light leakage from the window behind even with the blinds closed and

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we got our first slider that we used to get shots like this one

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this is also around the time that we made our first purpose-made thumbnail

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image instead of just using a still from the video and also when we made a pretty

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significant shift into actually writing full scripts word for word or nearly

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instead of just doing vlogs so you guys see that eye contact i'm making with the

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camera there that's because the video is scripted

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ultimately we made this move as part of

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a change in direction towards reviews

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rather than unboxings and as a way to

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both improve the information density of our videos and to leverage our larger

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production team without causing inefficiencies

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so it was more work for me up front to create the scripts but it made the

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shoots much easier and less time consuming because retakes were simple

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and editing was also faster because there was just less garbage footage for

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at that time taryn to sift through in september of 2014 we celebrated one

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million subscribers with our 7 member production team and over the following

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year we built out our kit with fancier things like diffusers which are

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especially important when you're using a jib which was another new toy that we

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use for top down shots like these in 2015 we moved finally to the studio that

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we're in now in retrospect that seems like so few people to occupy this big of

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a space we continued to build out our kit with all sorts of random stuff

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closing out the year with our purchase of two sony a7s2s which became our

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b-roll and run-n-gun show coverage cameras pushing our poor canon xa

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cameras to purely Channel Super Fun duty rip in

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2016 we bought our first big kid lights

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our two re sky panels which are super bright not to mention RGB something our

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channel was definitely severely lacking and then we kicked off 2017 by getting a

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bunch of new gear to make our lives easier at shows like ces including our

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much more reliable electrosonics wireless mic packs a variety of

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pods of various sorts and a couple of knock-off easy rigs

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which we only just replaced like last week with the real deal because they're

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like 5 000 each honestly though worth

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every penny because these things have changed our lives and they allowed us to

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finally achieve my goal of hand-held filming with a teleprompter anyway

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shortly after we got back from ces our new cameras arrived from red which

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while painful for the bank account and actually for our workflows at the time

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because like 8k footage there was definitely a workstation upgrade in

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there somewhere they also gave us kind of a sense of relief because at that

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point we had reached the top there was nowhere else to go with our gear i mean

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people shoot hollywood movies on these things and yeah

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who did i think i was kidding brandon always wants more stuff so last year

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after we changed over our set from something more seti to something that i

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think feels quite a bit more natural we picked up a dji ronin 2 gimbal which allows us

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to take smooth walking shots like this one and then right before ces 2019 we

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bought a handful of canon c200s to replace our

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poor a7s2s that are both in various

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states of disrepair and all of these things aside from the fact that we're

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just geeks and we love new toys to play with are essentially being purchased for

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the sole purpose of you guys being able to see and hear me in greater and

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greater definition something that over the past 10 years

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has surely become less appealing which i guess brings us

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perfectly into how b h figures into all of this

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the vast majority of those purchases have actually been through b h going all

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the way back to our original fs700 and

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even though i've only been to their new york store once on a day that happened

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to be closed doy they've been very good to us over the

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years with fair pricing great customer service we've actually had to return a

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fair few things for an assortment of reasons excellent delivery times especially

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after their canadian shipping got more competitive a few years back and

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generally great selection so it is no bs

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for me to say that it was pretty cool to have them reach out to sponsor this

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video because to me that's yet another indication of just how far we've come

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going from just even six years ago not being able

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to get an appointment at a trade show to be shown around someone's booth to being

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taken seriously by the real players in the production space so

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thanks to b h for sponsoring this video and thanks to you guys for watching

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if you disliked it well you know what to do but if you liked it hit like get

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subscribed or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured

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at the link in the video description probably the newer stuff not the older

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stuff so much also link down there is our merch tour which has cool shirts

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like this one and our community forum which you should totally join