Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Behind the Scenes of the UnboxTherapy Studio!”.
Yeah that thing’s broke oh really, but i can show you around the rest of the studio if you want little behind the scenes, let’s do it what’s up guys mkbhd here welcome to the long-awaited episode 2 of this series. It started with the casey neistat studio tour. Well over a year ago, then, there was a bit of a pause and now it’s back under a new name, so welcome to the bts and this time we’re joined by none other than louis hilsenteger. The mind behind unbox therapy to take a look through his iconic studio space used to make his videos the gear, the team and the philosophy behind it all so we’re in the studio uh the unbox therapy hq. I guess i could say you could call it that this is it we’re. Looking for a little behind the scenes, i figured we’d start with.
The iconic desk tell us a little bit about what we’re looking at right now honestly, this thing this just happened over time. The main objective was always to get like a push button, one power bar and have lights camera, and then i could bring the action. You know it’s very important part of it.
So these are, these are just giant uh, they’re led lights. You can adjust the brightness, but they’re, usually blasting. I mean you sat there earlier and you probably recognized it’s blinding. It’S not a comfortable place to be in fact, and so that took a while to get used to the idea of just ignoring the fact that you had all this light.
But in the beginning i mean you could probably attest to the same thing when you start out on youtube you’re like experimenting a lot you’re just like. Maybe this will work. Maybe that way – and i was always in this situation of trying to light myself and an object all at once, all the time, and so i figured out that by bouncing all this light off of a light surface and with a relatively light backdrop, you could kind Of achieve that, with a fairly simple setup, so i mean i sit right there and there’s these giant tvs on either side that are going to showcase, what’s happening in the angles other than the one, where i’m sitting other than the front shot.
Having a bigger version of it was helpful for focus and stuff because oftentimes you know jack will be standing over there and i’ll know. If he got focused on the thing i’m talking about or not, and since everything is happening live like we rarely redo anything uh. It’S important that, like that, we link up on that. So i can look in this giant tv and be like okay. Did you catch that shot yet, and once i see it then on to the next, so the video setup itself to achieve that right now is a trio of canon c500s recording into atomos 4k recorders.
The main angle is with the tokina 11 to 16, so super wide. The one operated from the side by jack is rock in a sigma 70 to 200, and the one rigged pointed straight down from above has a canon 70 to 200 focus right on that table. The lighting is super simple: it’s just this trio of led softbox lights, full brightness, filling in any possible shadows and reflecting off the table to create light around the object on lou and even this nice. You know recognizable gradient on the background as you’ve seen and you can’t forget audio. There is a shotgun microphone right in the middle over the center camera being recorded separately and synced all right. So this is upstairs from the other side like behind the set where you’re used to seeing me over there – and this is kind of i mean it’s a weird space now up here.
This is where everything used to take place. All the desks were up here. The editing was up here. There was like a little lounge area. I guess there still is one over there, but i don’t know it’s kind of just makeshift products accumulating over here on this side, most of the editing and sort of post-production move downstairs now, along with the new set that was recently built. So i could take you down there and show you that all right so we’re downstairs now this is the bigger part of the space, but surprisingly we didn’t start using it up until recently, everything used to be upstairs now. A lot of it is down here, including that gigantic mess over there all those products packed up. I don’t actually have a desk right now. That’S kind of weird these guys do there’s a little kitchen in this region over here. Of course, we got the papa shot as well.
If anyone wants to test their skills and what else i mean, there’s some old camera gear monitors a couple of go-karts, which there’s kind of a story that goes with both those, but i can’t tell you that story right now, because it might hurt jack’s feelings. This is the editing area, i would say, was the desk area. It’S where everybody sits. We have kirk’s spot over here, jack right there and will behind that and it’s where the magic happens. Really it’s where all the ranting and raving turns into something that you can watch. So, let’s talk to these guys, let’s see what their setups are about.
Hey, i’m kirk! This is my desk. I’M rocking an old school dining room table, splashing it up with a little bit of newness with the rgb lighting. I got the macbook pro that i edit from and always some fresh fruit on the table here, i’ll be editing stuff for the youtube channel or the social media. Stuff photos, videos all the things hello. My name is jack, and this is my workspace um. I have my laptop here uh my monitor um, my marshmallows and my hot sauce.
I edit here yeah, i don’t have a keyboard or a mouse. I find i have gotten pretty good at just editing right off the laptop, so that just i take that wherever i go um these guys are great. They come right out of my laptop if we want to rock out in here and they’re, also plugged into this um record player over here, for when i uh listen to queen. What’S up guys, i’m will – and this is my setup uh pretty standard, except for this crazy wide gaming monitor. I do mostly photoshop. I do thumbnails and stuff uh working on the macbook pro, and this is where otis sleeps all right.
So you saw most of the main floor. You saw the editing spots for will kirk and jack. You saw all the various piles of gadgets over in the corner over there.
Of course, the little kitchen and whatnot by the stairs, but the most exciting thing down here – is also the newest and it’s right over here and, of course, it’s the new set. So this set is again a trio of c500s, the two side cameras with 70 to 200s and the middle with a canon 11 to 24, one of my favorite wide-angle lenses and the set itself is kind of amazing. There are 10 4k oled tvs, stitched together.
Next to each other in the back and then also a 77 inch wallpaper tv on each side and the tvs are held up by this sort of plywood frame. That’S about 15 feet tall to fill up the whole background complete with leds. It’S a pretty unique! Look! Pretty modular as well and all centered around this pair of seats and a table in the middle.
So this is a look at the set. You know it kind of it goes all around. It’S uh, it’s like almost 360. In fact, you could shoot in a number of different directions. Originally, we thought about doing a full 361, but then it’s like you get weird stuff with cameras looking at each other and whatnot, it’s a whole different story, but we did kind of go overboard with the lighting the all these led lights in here that you see Behind the the kind of cover on the front, they can go how many different gradients it’s like a thousand different gradients of rgb, so you can set up these incredible kind of color schemes and then the actual important lights that are lighting me are up above that, On a grid, so the whole thing was actually built, or at least most of it was built off-site and then brought into this unit here and then and then basically just assembled and set up inside of here.
In fact, originally there was a giant desk in this region here a circular desk, and then i sat there and i was just like i don’t know something just felt off. It wasn’t comfy enough, didn’t feel like a place that i wanted to sit and talk. So we had that thing removed brought in the couch chair situation, but much like upstairs. It’S often about experimentation in this space.
So even this might not be permanent. It’S cool for now and it’s fun to shoot somewhere other than where i’ve always been, which is at that desk and that really confined space. This is big. This is this is exciting. It’S like i can breathe. I can chat, i can talk. I can be comfortable while doing so. In fact, this this particular scene.
This lighting setup here reminds me of those those popsicles. You know the ones like the rocket popsicles firecrackers yeah. It did that actually kind of reminds me. It just sprung on me right this moment, but of course we can change it up. Maybe we should change it up right now. Kirk. Can you throw another scene on real, quick, just just chuck a different scene, something real quick there. You go: okay, blue, oh actually! There was a bit of a blue. There was a fade there. It kind of went to a bit more white teal at the bottom, but you can configure everything through an app.
Every single light is controllable, independently of the others, so you set up these scenes for whatever you might want it to look like, and it gives you a little bit of flexibility so that the set doesn’t doesn’t stay, static or identical all the time you can switch. It up so okay number, one thing: i’ve learned from loose studio is: i definitely now want to build a set for myself where i can just walk in sit down hit one button everything turns on, and i can just record like this. This is the ultimate frictionless studio, just removes any barrier of setup between having an idea and recording it, and that’s what lou’s built here and multiple versions of it.
Anyway, that’s been it. Thank you for watching this episode too hope you enjoyed and let me know what other types of setups and bts you want to see in the future until the next one catch you later, peace, .