Your Virtual Production Home Studio – There's No Place Like Home

Photo credit: Room Rater @ratemyskyperoom

As follow up to my last post, these pro tips come by way of @NewscastStudio from an April 2020 column There’s no place like home – your home studio simplified by Angry Badger Productions. While we've all been doing non-stop virtual meetings now for over two years – and most of us have our office or home  virtual production studio set up – there's always room for improvement. In this blog post, Angry Badgers' Director of Photography shares his Pro Tips for setting up your virtual production home studio or "at least to make improvements in your current set up."

The top ten topics are:

1. Color Temp - keep lights the same color temperature
2. Illumination Level - you should be the brightest part of the picture, use soft light, watch out for backlights
3. Camera Sensitivity/Dynamic Range - make sure you have enough light so your picture isn't too grainy
4. Contrast Ratios - don't over light, keep lights at medium brightness
5. Manual Controls - use manual controls, don't just use auto settings 
6. Camera Support and Placement - get camera a few degrees above eye line, that's the most flattering, stack books, boxes or anything you have to get the right angle
7. Monitoring - keep an eye on your stream, monitor on an iPad or other device
8. Framing and Composition - stay centered in the frame, use rule of thirds, keep background simple
9. Connectivity - use a wired ethernet cable directly to your router so you don’t have to rely of Wi-Fi, it's a more stable connections
10. Prompter - use an iPad or another laptop below the camera, printed scripts and index cards work too

Gear tips:

• Three-light kit with stand
• Compact light with great features from Moman
• Super compact light with great features from Supon
• A simple Joby GorillaPod works well in the home

@NewscastStudio The trade publication for broadcast production, including broadcast technology, engineering, production tools, set design, gfx, augmented reality and virtual.

#WFH Look better-Check out our #lighting #Protips for #homestudio from #AngryBadger via @newscaststudio https://t.co/exiBZFoJqi pic.twitter.com/O0hTeUBbDz

— Kathryn Mosher-Boule (@kmosherboule) April 17, 2020