How do you pick a location for your podcast? If you’re on a podcast journey and
you’re not planning on doing something in video, it’s actually pretty simple.

Now, of course, I’m here in Studio B in our office right now, Studio AM looking at, and
they’re built for video. They’re beautiful, they’re big, and they are almost
unnecessary if you’re doing an audio podcast, because we’ve got all this video extra
stuff. If you’re on an audio journey, I want to suggest to you today that your
location for your podcast really requires quiet.

The number one thing for you to look around and find is a place where you’re going to be comfortable having the conversations that you want to have with your audience. And they’re going to be quiet enough that outside noise is not going to interfere with your show. So a
little bit about quiet really has to do with your microphone.

So I’m gonna make a suggestion right now that your laptop microphone is probably not going to be enough for you to do a podcast that you feel proud of. And though you can go to
your local electronics store like a Best Buy or maybe B &H Photo and find something
that feels cool because it’s in a cool case, like the Blue Yetis that are out
there, not a huge fan. They’re accessible, they’re easy to find, but they don’t
sound that great even though they’re easy to plug in and go with. Just my opinion.

So what I’d like to suggest to you is you find that quiet place and consider
finding maybe the Audio Technica AT2020 USB microphone.
I’ll say that again. Audio Technica is the brand. The model number is the AT2020
and there’s two models out there. One of them is based on something called an XLR
cable. In fact, it’s actually the type of cable plugged into this microphone right
now. It’s a professional audio standard, but you’re plugging into your laptop and you
don’t have that connection. If you don’t want to have a grand adaption plan, there’s
all sorts of different adapters that do really cool things, then just buy the USB
model and it’s very much plug and play, and it’s a great sounding microphone.

Other brands that have really high quality USB solutions, I’m going to give you my
favorite, Shure. Shure has a great USB solution. All of them are good from shore
and honestly all of them are good from Audio Technica of their USB. But again, the
AT2020 Rockstar option. So now you’ve got a quiet place and you’ve got a great
microphone. I would get headphones. You need to actually have a quality headphones so
that you’re not bringing audio back into your microphone from the speakers. I’m
assuming you’ll be on a laptop or a desktop in a situation like this. So grab a
quality set of headphones. If you can plug in, Audio Technica is actually the
headsets we have around here. We also have some Mackey headsets. Both of them are
great brands. I wouldn’t overthink it. You just wanna make sure you’re not sending
audio back into your microphone.

Another thing to consider is loud seating. We actually have an office chair somewhere in the building here, I forget which room it’s in that squeaks. And if we were gonna do a show from the squeaky chair and you’re, you know, I’m a fidgeter. I don’t know if you’re a fidgeter, but I’m a fidgeter. And you would hear that squeak through the entire thing. And by the way,
these cardioid condenser microphones, that’s the type we’re suggesting you get. They
really do have a very tight pickup pattern, so that squeak might not be too loud,
but it’ll be there. So you wanna find maybe not the comfy leather chair that makes
all the leather creaky sounds or the squeaky chair, you wanna find maybe a cloth
chair that is comfortable and you can be there for the duration and that’s a great
solution. So quiet, quiet furniture, good microphone, you’re probably on your way to doing your own audio podcast.

Now, if you’re gonna do a video podcast, and I highly recommend that you consider doing things in video, ’cause if you’re gonna record it, you might as well have the camera on as well.
There’s a couple of solutions to talk about. One is we actually use Riverside.fm
and a lot of people use StreamYard. Both of them high quality streaming solutions
that you can go and research on your own in order to record your show, right?

Your podcast, your video podcast, and get a lot of things done pretty powerfully in that
system. You can try to go ahead and do that on your own. And a lot of people do.
Couple of tips for video. Have more light on your face than behind you. The harder
your camera has to work to overcome bad lighting, the you’re going to look. So you
have more light on your face and don’t be backlit. A good example of backlighting
is if you’re in front of a very bright window and you don’t have anything masking
the sun out of that window, you’ve got the strongest light in the universe on your
back, the sun. It’s going to be very hard for your interior lighting to overcome
that, even if you have some, you know, maybe cute little Amazon purchases of
lighting and stuff, cool, but but they’re not gonna meet the sun. So try to make
sure that you’re not overlit on the backside and underlit on the front side. That’ll
help your camera do its best. Another thing to consider is not having a terribly
busy background.

Every once in a while I’ll see people have all of the, the little Marvel characters and things on their bookshelves and a lot of books on a shelf. And it’s a very busy pattern in the background. So try to curate your background a little bit, do something that feels clean and I would do a test recording before you even try this and then watch it maybe on a big screen in your house. Go find the 50 -inch screen, put it up there, take a look and then go through and pick
some things out. They’re also occasionally, if you’re just doing this as a hobbyist,
you might have family photos in the background, things that you don’t want there.
Some people are very sensitive about having their kids on display. So that’ll give
you a good view of what you may have accidentally displayed that you don’t really
want out there.

If you’re in a business setting, it’s even more important to make
sure that it is appropriate for your business conversation. More to consider with
that. So good microphone, good lighting, clean audio environment,
so you’re not getting massive interruptions. I think you’re pretty set to go on a
good podcasting journey.

Now, I will say the hardest part about doing something like this is having the bandwidth and the holistic expertise to pull it all off.

That’s what we have here at C47 Films Digital Studios. We’re happy to set you up with a lot of these cool ideas to get you going on your journey. I want you podcasting.
You probably have a certain passion and expertise that the world needs to hear. I
encourage you to go for it, but when it gets overwhelming, it becomes too much.
Maybe you’re growing and you just need more support. That’s what we do here at C47
Digital Studios, and I want to encourage you to follow us on all of our social
medias, follow my personal podcast, Bootstrapped Unicorns. It’s really good for anybody
who’s on an entrepreneurial journey, and keep up with us so that we can be a
resource for you.

And if your business is doing this, don’t take your eye off the ball. Whatever your mandate is internally at your business is probably not podcasting or video and it takes a lot of time and a lot of expertise to pull off. That is definitely the type of person you are very much the type of person needs to call us and consider bringing us in as your resource so that you can do your job at an expert level and not get bogged down by something like this.

So thank you for coming to our page or our YouTube channel if you found us there and I look forward to a conversation with you so we can help you bring your very best to your video
podcasting journey.