The NewBlue team operated remotely for an entire year. In honor of reopening the office, we decided to transform an unused office space. This space is now our very own live production studio.
Setting up an in-house studio doesn’t take a lot of time or effort. We are thrilled our new studio will allow us to shoot live video right from where we work. Now our webinars are hosted in this very studio. Continue reading to learn how we intentionally designed the studio build, through the use of space, lighting, sound, cable management, and testing.
Space.
Before we started to figure out our space, we focused on our specific broadcast goals and below requirements. We then created a blueprint for the potential setup which covered the broadcast background, interior space, hardware, and software. We then focused on maintaining the branding consistency and furniture color coordination as an extension of the rest of the office.
Our Requirements:
- Unused room
- Lighting
- Background
- Table and furniture
- Tripods
- Stream Deck
- PTZ cameras
- Fit for varied angle shots, quality output, and incorporate NDI.
- Podium
- Dedicated to product shot real estate.
- ATEM switcher integration
- For ATEM chroma key software to use in conjunction with Titler Live.
For shooting scenes well, we were in luck since one of our main brand colors is green, we already had an office wall painted lime green. This background saved us time in helping with chroma key. We spent a lot of time testing out different ways to chroma key and fine tune how we utilize our tools when combined.
Light.
Production lighting is a balancing act, and when done right, makes for a clean chroma key. We needed to make sure our background accent wall along with its adjacent windows could strike a nice balance of light sources when combined. For natural light, the available windows would have too many weather variables throughout the day, so we ended up keeping the window coverings closed to access greater consistency across our footage. Our light source is focused on all our artificial interior lighting including ceiling lights, lighting umbrella, and tripod mounted studio light. This combination gave us a soft natural glow.
Sound.
When it comes to sound, the incredibly loud bustling street corner of our office location was an immediate challenge. Also, the designated studio space would be too tedious and too costly to soundproof. “For a cost–effective solution, we decided on a combination of pairing external microphones with the Zoom conference platform’s noise suppression feature as our best choice.”—Sean Willmon, NewBlue Product Specialist
Cable management.
While cables might be the smallest piece of equipment used, they require a lot of attention and strategy for planning out how to manage them. We knew our tight space would limit where the production crew could move around the space without affecting any cable’s signal flow. We spent time attaching sets of cables and cable extensions with individual labels wrapped for each cable for easy reference and to avoid any mishaps. We then secured them in place. To help with a clean cable aesthetic, we incorporated a desktop podium with holes so the cables wouldn’t be as exposed to the camera. Our HDMI extenders were not long enough so we needed to order an increased length of 10ft extenders to accommodate the space. Taking the time to heavily blueprint and organize the broadcast makes it easier to switch things up if we ever need to unhook and re–hook across the room.
On-air testing.
“The more broadcasts you have, the more you can expect to fine tune as you go.”—Joe Zamora, NewBlue Product Specialist. As the last step, we tested and tuned our sound, lighting, space, and overall setup. We tested our onscreen dimensions to look accurate and eye level with our subjects and double checking they are positioned at the center of the screen. We made sure the colors used are showing up as on-brand. We fine-tuned the camera shots, made sure the microphones sounded crisp, reviewed the designed graphics and played them out from the playlist over live video.
DIY studio success checklist.
- Streaming computer
- Streaming software
- Switcher
- Stream Deck
- External microphones
- Backdrop or green screen
- Camera
- Tripods
- Lighting
- Cables
- Desk, chairs, and desired furniture
To experience more from the new NewBlue studio, check back soon for our webinar series produced right in this very studio.
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