The Art of Not Tinkering With Your Setup (Episode 198)

[00:00:00] Speaker: Hello and welcome to DIY Video for Professionals. I'm your host Chris Schwager and in this episode, it's all about maintaining a consistent professional video environment. If you're on our YouTube channel or in our resource area of our website, thank you for your support. In this video, I'm going to dive into the art of not tinkering.

[00:00:21] Speaker: with your setup, leave your equipment alone. And this is crucial for anyone who wants to be a DIY video professional, because when I started in the world of video, pretty much since I was about seven years of age, it was all about tinkering. It was all about getting to know the gear playing. It was fun. It was playful.

[00:00:42] Speaker: I was excited by what could be achieved by tinkering. But as I go a little bit older, a little bit grayer, I realized that tinkering cost. Money. Tinkering costs you time and you get pretty bloody stressed out in the process. So, a lot of trial and error goes into tinkering and that's precisely What I want you to consider when you start going down a rabbit hole that you don't know anything about.

[00:01:16] Speaker: We're a tech savvy business, Ridge Films. You know, I'm probably like you, using computers every day, using hardware for different things. We do a lot of editing. We Dealing with heavy data files, and occasionally things don't work out in the same usual streamlined workflow that we're used to. And years ago, we used to tinker!

[00:01:39] Speaker: We used to try and fix it, and spend four hours trying to do that and blow our entire afternoon. Piss fartin around, right? At some point in my career I realized that there needed to be this moment of realizing that you're something that is not working for some reason and there's not a likelihood that you're going to fix it anytime soon.

[00:02:04] Speaker: So what we started to deploy was this concept of It's not working. I've done some basic troubleshooting. Shut the computer down. Restart. A couple of little workarounds. It's still not working. I'm going to abandon it and I'm going to look for something else to do in my day. And of course, if you're like me, you got plenty to do in your day, right?

[00:02:27] Speaker: And in some cases you could, the longer you leave it, the more likelihood it'll rectify itself. Uh, and often sometimes when you come back, you circle back and you've had a fresh think about it overnight, or even a week later, you get straight into it and you understand what the problem was in the first place and you rectified it.

[00:02:48] Speaker: And you've saved yourself ultimately a lot of time because you haven't gone into this heavy, deep, dark troubleshooting environment, trying to work it all out there. And then on the spot, the main thing that I want to press home when it comes to tinkering is that. It's not just about me saying, Oh, don't touch your gear because you know, you'll wreck it.

[00:03:10] Speaker: It's about stop tinkering with things. You don't know a lot about, and that may take you away from the business that pays you good money. So the more you tinker, the more likelihood that it'll stop you from getting on with your day. And every little tinker is an increment of time. And that time. Is better spent on your business rather than tinkering.

[00:03:37] Speaker: And I want to take you through a couple of client stories who have taught us a lot about how to refine the DIY video production process. What's interesting about this is I'm not only going to teach you something, but I'm going to learn something as well, because every story I'm going to tell you. Helps us refine our process.

[00:03:57] Speaker: Every little rabbit hole that our clients decide to call us up on for troubleshooting and little tech support here or whatever builds our processes and strengthens our business. This is something just to be paid particular attention to. Every tinker teaches you something. It gives you feedback most likely and hopefully not to do it again and Lynn Pedetti who we love great partner we installed her kit.

[00:04:25] Speaker: Three years ago now told her story and it's up on the rich films website you go and have a look she's a sweet looking lady there you'll see she talks about life before. She invested in the DIY video program and how she used to have a DSLR camera and she used to set up her own gear and then she used to have it all pretty much working perfectly one day and then she bumped the camera and all the settings were out of whack and she couldn't get it back to the way it was.

[00:04:55] Speaker: Now that's an unfortunate instance, right? Like. She's [00:05:00] bumped it. She's, she's made an accident, but just the fact that she's known so little about how to set that camera up in the first place, she wasn't able to replicate the situation. Again, part of the reason why maybe, maybe this is just an idea. Should you invest in a complex camera with all the dials that you don't know anything about, like ISO and shutter speed and Gain and blah, blah, blah, right?

[00:05:22] Speaker: Like half of the bloody cameras that I'm using these days, I don't understand the shit. I just do workarounds all the time. I don't want to spend time learning how to bloody work the inner bloody functions of a bit of a camera. I mean, I know the basics, I can get good quality output, but I'm not going to sit through and look at every finite detail of a camera because that takes time.

[00:05:47] Speaker: It takes a learning curve and I'm just not going to see the output. So Lynn's story is a reminder of the frustration that can come from even minor adjustments. Now, Jason, who we love in Brisbane, uh, we did an in store for him. He's such a cool dude, sales coach, uh, but. We did installation for him after a couple of drinks on a Friday afternoon.

[00:06:13] Speaker: He decided that he's a bit OCD and he got underneath our desk and started pulling out cables and power boards and suddenly he set up was in chaos and he's calling me and I'm getting all frustrated because I'm spending an hour going through all the possible variables trying to figure out what was what right.

[00:06:31] Speaker: And this is a great lesson that we learn from Jason because it was probably the first time we started to understand the concept of stop tinkering because he didn't know what he was doing is just pulling random cables out but he couldn't determine who's. Well, what was his original stuff and what was the new stuff that came in?

[00:06:53] Speaker: So look, either way, it was an absolute bloody mess. So from there on, what do we start doing? Labeling cables, labeling powerboards. So he could actually see what was going on. So that actually taught us to improve our processes and. As I mentioned, first time we ever started to think, Oh, maybe this is a thing we should be telling people.

[00:07:11] Speaker: Like it's set up, you're looking, sounding right. You look beautiful, right? Agreed? Don't touch it. It's perfect. If you don't touch it, you're not going to have a problem. I'm not going to get a call and you're going to end up with a perfectly lit, beautiful looking studio for years to come. I had a client in New York, Who had sent me a message saying that he was out of focus he was constantly out of focus couldn't work it out is out of focus the background was always in focus but he was out of focus and I went back and forth again another thing that I could have caught a lot earlier but.

[00:07:45] Speaker: He sent me a photo of himself and immediately I knew what the problem was because he had tinkered with his lights, his front lighting. He was a lot darker than the background was and the autofocus on cameras will always gravitate towards a light source or a highlighted source, more light than the rest of the image.

[00:08:06] Speaker: It's going to by default go there if it's having difficulty focusing. And I said, Oh, you're underexposed. You're way darker than your background. So I immediately knew that he had tinkered with it. And so once. I identify that with him. He was able to rectify the situation himself because he turned the lights down.

[00:08:29] Speaker: Now he can turn them back up. H4 Consulting. I love you guys in Sydney. They had not really tinkered. This is not a tinker story, but they had a lot of different people starting to use their desktop studio. And they were all different heights doing different things and after a while it became quite inconsistent.

[00:08:47] Speaker: One person was higher than the rest, maybe one person would stand a bit closer than the other person. So there was always these different things, these different looks going on because they just weren't adjusting for the same situation every single time. That things had moved, things had been bumped, just, you know, cleaners come in one day, whatever, right?

[00:09:08] Speaker: So. They deployed me to come back in and tweak this and tweak that. And for what took about a five minute session, I was able to get it back to where it was, but the process of actually showing them how they could integrate multiple people, like where to stand, what their seat height was, like we actually put markers on the floor.

[00:09:28] Speaker: We put markers on the seat that they were using so that different people knew where they needed to be. depending on the height, depending on where they were in the frame and whatnot. And they are all then, uh, equal distance from the teleprompter on the camera. So they were framed and they were lit perfectly.

[00:09:43] Speaker: So that wasn't so much a tinkering story, but it just gives you an idea of even having multiple people use this system. They really do need to conform to, The environment that has been set for them. So that's why we love sit, stand desks, right? [00:10:00] Because nobody has to touch the equipment. It doesn't matter about the height of the talent that can just adjust the desktop studio accordingly.

[00:10:07] Speaker: And it's always going to be in frame. It's always going to be lit perfectly, and it's always going to sound fantastic. And shoe. I love and shoe and shoe. If you're listening, you'll resonate with this and we've brought it up in our podcast as well. Uh, if you go back and have a listen, but, uh, Um, Anshu, you know, so by this stage, right, this was just a recent install.

[00:10:27] Speaker: I said, Anshu, right, cool. You look great. You sound great. Yes. Agreed. Cool. Don't touch. So Anshu calls me up and he goes, Oh, I can't get my sound working. I got on the call with him and I got him to actually FaceTime his studio so I could see what was going on on his desk. He had a multi camera switcher and I said, Oh shit.

[00:10:47] Speaker: Oh, I just noticed that your, your, uh, audio button's not selected there. Did you press that by any chance? He's like. Uh, yeah. I said, why? He's like, I don't know. I just do it. That's what I do. And I'm like, well, that's tinkering, isn't it? And so you don't do it anymore. That's the end of it. So we kind of had a laugh about it and thankfully it didn't take us too long to rectify the problem.

[00:11:09] Speaker: Byron Trezickiakou is just an absolute stand up rock star, man. This guy, I tell you, for video ads, he is our man. I can't wait to see what comes. Of this business in 2025 and it's all to do with the input and the effort and the strategizing that Byron brings through video ads across, you know, Facebook, Insta, TikTok, we'll be launching back into LinkedIn next year.

[00:11:34] Speaker: But anyway, uh, he's moved his equipment. He changed houses and he shipped all of his staff. Obviously we couldn't get down there, uh, at the time that he was relocating. And the next zoom session that I got on with him, I was like, What the hell's happened and literally look like the lowest grade webcam I've ever seen is just because the lighting was so out of whack and it wasn't till I got down there and restored it all to its former glory, oh man it shows how important is to have a consistent integrated setup.

[00:12:10] Speaker: That you stop tinkering with, but with our system, of course, you probably know this by now you can skip all of the steep learning curve. You don't need to become a tech expert. Our system lets you focus on your message, knowing that the technical side is already handled from the thought to recording. Uh, you don't have to worry about lighting, sound or frame.

[00:12:31] Speaker: You just hit record, get on with your business. So what's the key takeaway here? We'll leave your equipment alone. Stop tinkering. Once you set it up, dial it in. Resist the urge to tinker. It's not just about keeping things simple. It's about protecting your time, protecting your productivity. Every minute you don't spend fiddling is a minute you can spend growing your business.

[00:12:57] Speaker: Thanks again for joining me on this episode of DIY Video for Professionals. Remember to keep it simple, keep it consistent, and most importantly, leave your equipment alone. If you found this episode useful, don't forget to subscribe, share, and leave your thoughts. Are you a tinkerer? Let me know. Until next time, keep filming and keep connecting.