Evan outlines essential gear for standout social media videos, demonstrating ring lights and box lights, comparing phone and DSLR options, and reviewing mic choices to help viewers choose practical, budget-friendly setups.
Evan introduces himself and the multi-part creator series, explains the goal of making standout social media videos, and emphasizes that technical quality—lighting and sound—greatly affects viewer engagement. This sets up why choosing the right equipment is essential before filming.
He runs a quick experiment showing how natural light compares to professional lighting, then explains the benefits of ring lights and box lights, how to use them, and affordable options. Viewers learn practical lighting setups that make videos look more professional and how his current setup works.
The segment covers sound importance and several mics (mainly Rode), describing their uses for vlogging, desk work, and podcasts, and demonstrates a simple iPhone-earbud mic while noting trend-driven choices on platforms like TikTok. It helps viewers pick a mic that fits their filming context and budget.
Evan emphasizes the power of modern phones (shooting in 4K and cinematic modes) and explains that DSLRs or mirrorless cameras are an option for higher quality, recommending 4K-capable models and noting price ranges. This helps viewers decide whether their phone suffices or if they should invest in a dedicated camera.
He offers to post product links at different price points, reassures viewers about improving with good equipment, and directs them to the next video on content formulas and preparation. This gives viewers resources and a clear next action to continue learning.
I'm going to teach you how to make beautiful videos for social media and it is way easier than you think. I'm Evan, I'm Cadre's addiction and mental health counselor and this is part of our passion series where we're going to share some of the things as creators we're most passionate about and for me it's creating content like you're seeing right now. This is part 2 of a multi-part series on how to create content. Part one was the intro where we go over the course and everything you're going to learn so if you haven't watched that yet be sure to go do that.
Today's video is about equipment and this is so important because you want to have the right tools to make videos that are really going to stand out. Just like cooking a recipe, having your ingredients prepared is going to make filming so much easier. The reason video quality is so important is that if your viewers get even a whiff of the fact that you're an amateur, they're probably going to scroll away. Having a quality video really helps establish you as a professional or someone who really cares about what they're doing.
But most importantly, it makes your videos more watchable and gives your viewers the best possible experience. Hopefully you accepted my challenge in part one and as many social media videos as what's reasonable and I bet when you were watching those videos they were all at least of moderate to high quality. If the videos were pixelated they weren't well lit and if the sound was poor I bet you were much more likely to scroll away whether you realized it or not. Like I just alluded to in order to make good content you want to have these three variables in place.
First you want the video to be of good technical quality, you want good lighting and sound so now I'm going to show you some products that are really going to help your videos stand out. First we're going to talk about But before we get into the products, we're going to do a quick experiment. What I just did is turn off all the professional lighting I just had. All I have is the natural lighting in my room, which is actually quite a lot. And as you can see, the quality is greatly suffering. The most important thing you can invest in as far as lighting goes is a ring light.
They're extremely versatile. You could put them on your desk. They come in different sizes. You could use them as a tripod. And right now, it's holding up my phone. These are great because you could adjust a lot of the settings. You can make the lights dimmer, brighter, warmer, colder, but at the end of the day having a good ring light may be all you need to make your video pop. The other lighting I use is box lights and this is similar to what you'd see on a photo shoot. It really helps give a wide, brighter light.
They come in sets of three and they're really inexpensive just like ring lights. You could probably get all these for under 100 bucks. Here's the lighting I'm using for this video right now. I could probably get away with just using this ring light but having the box lights really helps light up the background around me. Now let's talk about sound quality. There's a few different mics that I like to use. All of them are the brand Rode. These are extremely high quality mics that I trust. You could probably find a lot of different brands that are really good and potentially cheaper, but I really like these.
This is probably the mic I use most. I love it because it's super versatile. I can mount it on just about anything like this boom. You could put it on a desk stand, but the original purpose of this mic is for vlogging because you're able to mount it on top of a camera. So when you're outside and you're filming impromptu, you're going to have great sound almost no matter where you are. The other mic that I frequently use is this Rode desk mic. This is great. It's small, it's versatile and it's really powerful.
This is great for podcasts or filming any kind of video when you're sitting on a desk or you want to have it next to you on a table. This is the first quality mic I used and it works with a lot of different filming devices. I even use it on my iPhone and a lot of my videos I just put it on my lap and they sounded great. I'm going to quickly demonstrate this next mic, which is basically just a pair of iPhone headphones and they seem pretty basic. However, they're pretty good quality. Now, if you watch TikTok, you'll notice a ton of creators using this, but why?
Just like the clothing and fashion you wear, some things are just trendy, even if they don't look that great. It's kind of cool to use this mic because a lot of big creators use it. So it's very familiar to people and a lot of people want to look like their favorite cool creators. I'm going to talk more about these trends in the filming section, but I just wanted to show you this. over what to film with and it's important to understand that what you're holding right now or what's in your pocket is extremely powerful and that is your phone.
Depending on when you're watching this video right now this is 2022 I have an iPhone 13. Now going back to an iPhone 11 I could shoot videos in 4k on either my front or the back of my phone. No you don't necessarily need an iPhone androids are extremely powerful tool just find any phone that you could shoot in 4k you may not always need to use it but it's good to have that option. Right now I'm filming this video in 1080p which is also good quality for most social media purposes but right now I'm using a mode called cinematic mode that's in the newest iPhones and it gives it this really cool look where it blurs the background as it changes the aperture of the video.
For even higher quality videos you could shoot with a DSLR or a mirrorless camera. These are really versatile. You can get some really good ones for around 500 bucks. Be sure to get one that shoots in 4K. Oh and don't forget all this equipment could be used as a good I'll go ahead and post links to some of these products at different price ranges, but I promise you if you use some of this quality equipment, your videos are going to be great unless you talk like a bumbling fool. But I promise I'm not going to let you do that.
That's why you're going to go watch the next part of this series where I teach you different formulas for how to write and prepare the best quality content.
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