How to make a TV show on a low micro budget.

I must admit,  I hesitate to share this stuff.  I don't want to shatter any illusions. The setup we have at UCB for creating our main show, Jovis Bon-Hovis and the Creation Crew is a very good setup, multi camera shoot, great quality equipment, top notch lighting rigs with all the lighting you could ask for, sound-proofing, separate gallery with multiple monitors and facilities for remote live camera switching, high quality radio microphones and so much more!

On top of that, as anybody who understands production and production values will clearly see, we have various experts specializing in their own areas.  We have somebody who knows all about lighting, and expert at editing, camera people and sound technicians, as well as myself being responsible for creating the content of the shows.

So the end result of our main Christian kids' TV show Jovis Bon-Hovis and the Creation Crew, although it is produced on an extremely tight budget, is nice and clean and polished.

Now compare that to the work I do in the home studio.  I am having to face the reality that it is impossible to achieve the same kinds of results as one person working alone with very limited equipment.  But the challenge is an exciting and inspiring one, to milk every last drop of potential out of the equipment and opportunities I have.

I don't feel I have done that yet, 20 years ago my setup would have seemed pretty dreamy to a budding producer; instant high definition movies edited live on screen at the click of a mouse at a cost many would find affordable.  And I am certain that there are many ways I can improve on the productions I am attempting at the moment.  I find myself pining for more lights, more space, more cameras, more people, but if I think about it, I don't imagine God will bless me with those things until He knows I have fulfilled the potential of everything He's given me so far.

So that's what I am going to do.  I have every intention of producing a higher volume and broader range of Christian media, a Christian chat show, a family quiz, another children's show, more songs and kids music perhaps from other artists.  But now is a time of honing and milking skills, and making the very best of what I have, so that when the time comes to move up a step, invest in more equipment, bring in some help and setup a more significant studio I will be ready to fully utilize it properly.  I don't think that time is too far away, it 'feels' close at hand.

Anyway, I thought you may be interested in having a little look at the setup.  In these pictures you can see the lighting arrangement, ordinary domestic lamps but with 100 watt halogen bulbs, pumping out a good amount of light.  They were about £3 each at a charity shop, and the bulbs about £2 each. The backgrounds are cardboard boxes which had contained a TV, and the paints are my kids' poster paints.  I ink the edges with an ordinary black marker.

The space I use is the garage, and it is extremely tight; it is still used as a garage and is shared with kids' bikes and tools!  Quite a squash!  My camera for home shoots is an ordinary digital video camera, a Sanyo Xacti.  It is full HD, but not so good indoors.  Lovely for outside in the bright light, but the colour balance seems to let it down on my little home set.  You can pick one up on ebay for £30-£35.

So camera and lighting with bulbs would cost about £75.  The tinfoil you can see shaped around the lamps is remarkably successful, I have simply curved and shaped the foil into a bowl shape and folded the foil several times to increase the thickness.  Be sure to get baking foil and not wrapping foil to cope with intense heat from the bulbs.  This intensifies the light and enables you to direct it.

On the ceiling you can see something that looks like tracing paper which softens and disperses some of the light, it's important that some of the main lights are dispersed like this. Try it both ways to get a taste for why and how it works.  I was fortunate enough to be given a bit of colour neutral professional stuff, but tracing paper will do the job.   So you'll have to spend a fiver on that.  The most significant outlay will be the machine you use to edit because sadly there is a minimum standard you simply must purchase, otherwise you'll just tear your hair out when you can't edit.  You can pick up a used machine which will just about handle HD editing for £200.  Possibly less if you're canny, so come on, friends and neighbours???

There's a massive amount of software out there trying to grab your attention, including some very high-end stuff which has a very low yearly subscription called Lightworks.  Amazing kit, but very top-end.  Is that really what you need?  I find Magix movie edit pro fast and easy, intuitive and fun and it cost me £29.

In a home studio you can get away with an old-fashioned hand-held mic, or a mic on a table or suspended from a rafter, radio tie-mics are very expensive.  You'll also need some kind of usb preamp interface, to plug the mics into, which then runs into your pc enabling you to manage the sound.  You can plug a mic into your pc directly of course, but...just don't!  My mic cost me £19, and a preamp can cost anywhere from £12 upwards.  Spend a little more if you can.  I use the Saffire 6 usb, which came with an extremely good and immeasurably helpful 8 track sound recorder which I use very very often.  I would recommend it, Ableton Live Light 8 Alesis edition, or whichever software you can get for cheap.  You can edit the entire soundtrack for your movie with ease, and create music for it all on the same piece of software.  Extremely helpful.  Use a midi keyboard (£30) to make the whole music production process simpler, even if you don't play the piano it's just helpful to have this keyboard as an input device.  Ideal for making a simple theme tune, background music which you will fully own the rights to enabling you to monetise your videos on Youtube.

So there you have it, a simple HD studio setup for aroud £400.

But before you prepare to hit the big time, let's have a look at the differences in what is achieved with the two different ways of producing, here's is an example of the $400 setup:

And here is an example of the tens of thousands setup with numerous experts hands:
The end!