This was how my videos looked.
One light, filmed in my apartment, nothing cool about it…
…and this is how my videos look now.
When I posted the transformation on Twitter, so many of my friends and favorite creators showed support — I knew I’d struck gold.
I’ve been looking to create a space that allows me to easily film whenever I want to for years.
So today, let’s talk about what went into building my dream studio office!
(I’ve got Amazon affiliate links for almost everything in here, so click on something if you like it!)
The Desk
My girlfriend and I bought a 3 bedroom, 1,000 square foot house — so if I was going to have my own office studio, it was only happening in the smallest of the three bedrooms.
The room I’m working with is 9x10, with a small closet for storage. Not too much room to work with, but I knew I could make it happen.
A few years ago, I hopped on the standing desk bandwagon and bought this one from Amazon. I’ve had it for a minute and see no issues with it. A little small, but so is this room.
First came the most important decision: Where should I place my desk?
I had three important rules for this:
- The door can’t be in the background (don’t like it)
- The desk needs to be in a corner (to create depth)
- The window can’t be in the background (screws up the lighting)
So there was only one spot to put it — this spot right here.
Almost all of the magic that goes into looking professional on camera is in front of me.
Attached to my desk…
An office isn’t an office without a monitor.
So I saw this one from LG in someone else’s office tour video and decided I had to have it. It’s pretty big and the colors are almost exactly like a Mac screen, plus it clamps to the back of my desk instead of sitting on it. Nice.
The big component I love about it is how it moves — giving me the option to put it in the center of my desk for normal working, or off to the side so I can look at it while I record my videos.
After the monitor, I had to set up the single most important piece of technology in this entire room:
The CalDigit TS3+.
What the hell does this thing do?
This little guy allows a million different things to plug into my computer at once. Right now, I’ve got my:
- Monitor
- Speakers
- Camera
- Microphone
- Hard Drive
- SD card
- Phone charger
All plugged into the TS3+ Plus, along with the power cable and the connection to the computer.
7 different outlets, all in one — and it’s crazy fast. No delays on anything. It’s the backbone of my entire setup.
Next, I had to set up my key light. For the longest time, I’ve had this set of RALENO lights that come with stands and a case. They’re my old reliable.
I’ve got one of them sitting on this SmallRig desk mount stand which clamped in super easy to the back of my desk. I made sure to put it on the right side of my desk, on the same side where any natural light could come through in the day time from the windows.
On top of the light, I found this D-Fuse Combo softbox that I set over the light, giving me that YouTube look I’ve always been searching for.
But to see what all of this looks like…
Video & audio gear
I still have the first camera I bought back in 2020 — a Sony a6400.
For so long I’ve been contemplating leveling up, but I really don’t need to. This thing shoots 4K at 24 frames per second, which is all I need.
I ran into a problem, though — all of the lenses I had were too close of a shot, with none of them having a shallow depth of field. In noob terms, nothing in my bag got me that blurry background look.
So I opted for the Sigma 16mm f/1.4 lens — which is cheaper than almost every other Sony lens and still gives me the exact look I was going for.
Messing around with manual focus and the aperture, in addition to being lit properly, allowed me to finally get the look I wanted.
A late addition to the setup is the Elgato Prompter. I had no plans of using a prompter, but I realized during the first episode of Buzzer Beater that I couldn’t look at the camera and the guest at the same time. Then, I realized I could plug my scripts into the prompter (what it’s ACTUALLY supposed to be used for… duh) and I solved all of the anxiety I had about my presence on-screen. Major W.
Let’s talk audio. Hopefully you’ve heard this 1,000 times by now, but in-case you haven’t — humans cannot stand poor audio. It’s the fastest way to get someone to turn your video off.
Luckily, I’ve always had this Shure MV7 but the MV7+ would be the move for anyone looking to buy a microphone. The audio is impeccable. This is industry standard equipment right here — plus their customer support team is among the best and fastest I’ve ever seen.
Found this boom arm to connect the mic to the side of my desk and it works wonders. I just pull it in or out of the way when I need to.
When I finished everything on my desk, my setup looked like this:
Lighting!
So I’ve got my main key light, plus I have this window in case I ever want to record during the day time — but I’ve got three more lights that take this setup to the next level.
Here’s what I look like with…
You can see how each of these helps with the look.
The lamp is the RANARP black floor lamp from IKEA. I love the look of having practical lights in the background of talking head videos — this was a non-negotiable for me.
The hair light is the other RALENO LED panel light, set just outside the frame and pointed directly at the back of my head and shoulder. This just gives me an extra bit of separation from the background.
The RGB light is called a Falcon Eyes F7, which can be every single color ever invented. I have it on a gold-ish color to match the other light and balance out the shot.
Lighting is so incredibly important — I know the lighting setup I have isn’t perfect, and set design experts probably could set me straight on how to look PERFECT, but I think what I’ve got is damn good.
Let’s fill in the rest of the background.
Furniture & accessories
I know the true interior designers would hate this decision, but each of these shelves are from the same IKEA set.
I’ve got a wide shelf unit, a tall shelf unit, and another end stand to my right for some extra storage — all from the FJÄLLBO set, with the walnut tops and black framing.
The tree behind me was something my mom found at an estate sale. I needed some kind of plant or something — super happy with this one.
I always wanted a nice record player, so I picked up this Audio-Technica LP60X. It looks awesome in the background.
Some other small things:
The finishing touches…
Lastly, this office wouldn’t feel like home if I didn’t surround it with things important to me!
To my left I have:
- The concert poster for a Lil Yachty concert in Detroit on my birthday
- A Detroit Red Wings bobblehead
- This hat from Creative Department which I loved
- My championship ring from college basketball
- A Kobe Bryant rookie card my brother got me for Christmas when I was young
- Hats from two former clients of mine, Rally and Enjoy Basketball
- Graded Kevin Durant and Cade Cunningham rookie cards
- The album LOUIE by Kenny Beats
- Most of the books I own
Behind my right shoulder, I have:
- The piece of art that hung up in my previous apartment’s community room
- Posters for NBA Street Vol. 2 and White Men Can’t Jump
- The record player and vinyls I own
- A Detroit Lions hat, because of course
- A green decorative basketball from Local Hoops
- And three other lenses I’ve picked up along the way
With all of this, I’ve created a place that feels like ME — and it allows me to feel comfortable & confident on camera.
In conclusion…
I want to make a few things clear, because there’s a whole niche on YouTube of people showing off their desk and office setups:
- You do not need any of this to create awesome content. You simply just need yourself, a camera, a decent microphone, and incredible ideas.
- Buying all this stuff isn’t a magic potion to get better at making videos. I found this out first-hand. I thought the confidence to be an incredible speaker would just appear as soon as I sat down to record in this awesome office — it didn’t. I still need to script and edit my videos to the best of my ability.
- If you want to build your dream office studio, make sure you’re building YOURS. Get the gear, furniture, and decorations that YOU want — the stuff that reflects YOU, not just what me or anyone else is doing with their office.
- Optimize for practicality. Make it easy for yourself to get the camera running and in focus, lights on, and audio ready in just a minute or two. You want to create a studio that has almost zero barriers to recording — because if you’re like me, your mind is going to create barriers for yourself anyway.
That’s it! Let me know if you have any questions about my office, any of the gear, or anything else.
As always, thanks for being here.
Tim