Design a Video Background That Looks Great on Camera (Full Transcript)

[00:00:04] Speaker 1: Step up your setup. Your camera and lighting are set. Now it's time to think about what's behind you when recording. Ideally, your background should include some visual interest, but nothing that distracts or overshadows you as the subject. Make your background too busy, and it can be hard for viewers to focus on what you're saying. A good start to building a simple yet engaging set is using bookshelves, or just shelves like you have behind me, and if you have the budget, getting aesthetically pleasing sound panels are a great option. These can range from under $100 to several thousand dollars, depending on your room size and needs. You can get various colors and designs, like the ones that you see in a lot of our videos. Those wood panel slats, they're actually getting better audio quality with the acoustic treatment, plus you get a good looking background. You can also use RGB or color LED lights to create a versatile backdrop. That's what I have here, and I can change between blue, purple, orange, or muted colors in just a few seconds. Be mindful of your clothing as well. Prefer solid colors that complement and match your background, avoid busy patterns as they can be distracting, and some cameras may struggle to capture them as well. If you're recording on the Riverside mobile app or Mac desktop app, you can also blur your background or use a virtual background too. You do not need to have a green screen to take advantage of those virtual backgrounds. And if you're on a Mac, you can also use the built-in portrait and virtual background effects with Riverside on the web. As a final pro tip to foster engagement, place peculiar or interesting objects in the background that warrants commenting from viewers. They may ask what something is or where you got it. Anything that fosters comments and discussion is good for your audience and the algorithmic platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Now that you look great and have your camera setup ready to go, let's discuss capturing high-quality audio in the next video.