We've come a long way...
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
2,938 words · ~14 min read
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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