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My Video Lighting Setup – It’s so smart!

My video lighting setup has evolved over the years. For the past three years, I have been working on automating as much of the video lighting setup process as I can. I have finally finished it. The majority of the smart home products in my studio are Homekit based, but some were Alexa based. Between modifying the products used, installing some new products, and using a platform called HomeBridge, I was able to completely transform my video lighting setup into a completely automated smart home video lighting setup. Now I can quickly and easily switch my lighting between video mode, headshot mode, cake smash mode, family mode, and beyond.

Transcription was done by Descript‘s automated transcription services which means it’s an AI-generated transcript. The transcript may contain spelling, grammar, and other errors, and is not a substitute for watching the video.

For the past three, four or five years or whatever, I’ve always wanted to find ways to simplify my video process. And I’ve done things like set up a tripod with clamps and arms and things to hold the camera equipment, and I’ve got to, so I don’t need lights in various places and I’ve got one main light and, and I’ve got, uh, some smart lights behind me overhead that are doing things and I’ve made it so the background could be quickly change it. I’ve got a monitor hooked up so I can see myself really well and all of these things. But one thing I really needed was to make it so I can use one smart platform like Alexa from Amazon or Google home or Apple home kit. Now I have Alexa devices and I have a home pod, but not all Siri shortcuts can go to a home pod automatically.

Sometimes you have to wait for the phone to suggest it for the home pod. So I can’t always say the key commands that I would want to trigger things. So I’ve been using Alex a to automate some of it. And then I had to manually turn on things and it was just kind of a clunky mess and I’ve figured out how to automate it all in Apple home kit. But again, I can’t always tell the home pod to, to do what I needed to do. I’m hoping that in the next iOS and the next [inaudible] and the next, uh, home pod OAS, whatever that is that I can tell it manually instead of waiting for Apple to figure it out. So, in the meantime, I want to show you how I’m using a Siri shortcuts to completely transform my studio into recording mode, go from basically working editing mode to video mode.

Now sometimes when the whole pod is actually recognizing the shortcut, I can say, Hey, you know who video lighting and it just do what you’re about to see. Sometimes it searches the web for answers on video lighting. So what I’ve got right here is my shortcuts. All my Siri shortcuts. I’ve got a lot of them in here and all I have to do is push video lighting. And here’s what just happened. I have the Siri shortcut of video lighting to access the home app and do control six accessories. It turns on the hair light, which is a Phillips you set to white aimed at me. You can see it on my shiny head. It turns off the room lights. So I’m only using the video lights. I’m not using the normal room lights. I set up a smart switch to control the room lights. I have two smart floodlights. These are outdoor floodlight that can also be indoor floodlights and their overhead one there. And one there, one is blue and one is purple and they’re set to 62%. The not at the brightest, they don’t need to be. They just got to add a splash of color to the background.

I also have a Phillips hue,

The strip overhead above the background, aimed down adding a little bit more white, white light to that background. It’s kind of the initial lighting of the background. And last but not least, I have a Waymo little Wemo plug that turns on the monitor and turns on the main key light. And that is what my video lighting shortcut does. The other thing it does is it actually turns my phone into do not disturb mode so that I can’t get text messages and things like that annoying me when I’m demonstrating on the phone or recording or something like that, no dings and things like that will happen. And that is my video lighting shortcut. It’s very simple. It prepares the studio for recording a video. And then when I’m all done, I can either say if the home pod recognizes it were click video done, and all that does is reverse everything.

It turns off all the lights turns on the main room lights and sets my phone to do not serve as off. That’s it, that’s it. The other thing I could do is turn down the volume. So in case a push notification does manage to get through, do not disturb, or if somebody’s on my favorites, contact calls, it won’t, it won’t ring or anything like that. I could just have the volume down. So when I hit done video done right now, everything is going to go back to sort of blend. But this is what’s about to happen. Video done. It’s that simple. I can do this for headshots. I can do this for video. I can do this for family photos. A lot of automation saves a lot of time, and that’s why I’m a fan of automation and smart home products and things like that. If you like this video, click that subscribe button below right now, I publish new videos every Monday and Thursday, whenever possible. You don’t want to miss it.

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