What a Recording Day Looks Like

Recording day – it looks different for everyone but the basic preparation going on behind the scenes is usually pretty similar. Your first couple of times prepping for a recording day may not look great – you may forget things you need, spend hours re-recording due to messing up your lines, or simply take longer than you thought because you weren’t as confident once you got in front of the camera. 

We took the time to put together a behind the scenes video on what a recording day looks like, and as you can see in our edited version – you wear a lot of different hats and switch from one task to the other. 

If you’re planning a recording day, here’s our top tips on what you need to have prepped and ready to go to make recording go a lot smoother. 

Outfit Changes and Equipment

One area many people go wrong, especially in their first recordings, is to do it all in one outfit. While you may be batch recording videos, that is, recording a few at a time, it’s always better to have a few outfit changes available and ready to go. This means your videos will all have a slightly different look to them. 

We recommend laying out the outfits you are planning to record in so that you can make easy changes. Having a base outfit is a great idea as it means you can make slight changes without needing to do a full outfit change. Lay out everything including jewellery, ties, and even your makeup so it is all on hand. 

Warm up your studio lights and get your tripods ready – make sure you are happy with the different angles and heights for your tripods and lights so that you aren’t wasting time changing them halfway through the recording. If you don’t have studio lights, you can pick up a selfie light from Ebay which works well when recording. 

Ensure your mics are working, and that you have screen wipes on hand to clean up your lens if it gets dirty. Our other recommended tool is a Bluetooth remote which allows you to control everything easily while recording. 

Make sure you also have some water bottles ready to go, as well as anything else you feel you may need. 

Recording Day Notes

Have your recording notes on hand and easily accessible. A to-do list with your recording order is a great idea, as are prep notes that you have already read through. Managing scripts and notes is easy if you use a tablet and a cloud based system like Google Drive. Make sure you read through and are fully prepped before going live. 

Software for Editing

It’s always wise to be across your editing software. Within Course Creators we like to edit our files on the cloud. Once we have done recording, we take the videos and upload them onto Google Drive. We then use a cloud based editing tool called WeVideo. Once edited we can easily schedule and upload our videos to YouTube, our website, social media or anywhere else we would like to have them. 

Are you planning a recording day for your course content? Not sure where to start? Our video on what a recording day looks like in the office is a great way to get some handy hints and tips that you can use when recording and editing your own videos.