The Event Tech Podcast is back with its third and final installment on the best virtual speaker gear. After talking extensively about sound, video and lighting, itโs time to look into backdrops. While the most expensive options generally bring the best results, itโs not necessarily so when it comes to backdrops.
One of the main takeaways from the 2021 Event Trends is that expectations towards virtual presenters are slowly, but surely rising. A huge part of that is minding the space youโre in and what other people can see. Our hosts Brandt Krueger and Will Curran got creative and talked about all there is to know about the art of setting the perfect backdrop. Who is your audience? What kind of message do you want to send? Should you get personal or is it better to keep it neutral? What kind of backdrops even are there? All this and more on todayโs Event Tech Podcast. Take it away, tech-nerds!
Virtual Backgrounds
Will and Brandt kick off the podcast with the widely used virtual backgrounds. โThe easiest thing is to flip on the virtual background. And I hate it. Itโs one thing in a meeting environment, in a social environment where itโs a fun thing, and itโs a social activity. When itโs even remotely a work meeting or something along those lines, Iโm not a fan. And Iโm definitely not a fan when itโs an actual presentation at a conference online, where youโre a presenter being brought in to bring your professional opinion to bear, and youโve got the beach behind you,โ says Brandt.
Virtual Speaker Gear: Watch Your Back!
After Brandtโs hot take on virtual backdrops, Will starts listing other things not to have behind you. โOne of the first things is to be cautious of whatโs behind you. Just be careful. I have my cat litter box behind me, for example. And at any moment, one of my cats can come over and use his bathroom. And no one wants to see that.โ
โI donโt recommend having doors behind you,โ adds Brandt. โBecause thatโs how you accidentally get the kids coming in. Or the dad that comes out of the shower with his shirt off. So make sure that whateverโs behind you isnโt going to be that public space or that somebody is going to be walking through. Itโs much better to have just even a plain blank wall.โ
Putting In Angles
Will and Brandt go on to suggest a few solutions. โBy putting in angles, youโre able to do things. So if you do have one of those swing arm computer monitors mounts for your desk, maybe you swing it over to your left and then mount the camera over on that corner of the desk. So that most of the time, you have your desk set up for your day-to-day work, but then when you want to present, you just swing it over,โ explains Brandt.
โIt doesnโt matter what the rest of the room looks like, it doesnโt matter what you see. It only matters what the audience sees. And so really paying attention to just the four feet, in each direction, that four-foot tunnel of video is all that really matters,โ he adds. โIf youโre back up against a wall, with only a couple of feet behind you, thatโs only a few feet in either direction that anybodyโs going to be able to see. So, put a plant, hang a picture and youโre done. It doesnโt have to be a whole big stinky mess and it does not matter what the rest of the room looks like.โ
Adding Distance Goes A Long Way
Will suggested to add a little bit of distance: โWhat Iโve seen a lot more compliments and notes on is that Iโm much further away. And when you look at my angle, Iโm about maybe three or four feet away from the backdrop, but then the edge of the bookshelf goes even further back Iโm 10, 12 feet away from it. So it creates this really long distance in my shot.โ
And how does this translate to the video edit portion of the best speaker kits? โYouโre using a lens with a very high aperture, get that really beautiful bokeh blurry effect. The more distance you have between you and the backdrop and separation between it, the more you get that blurry bokeh effect.โ
Photography Backdrops
โOne of the things that Iโve been using for my presentation area are photography backdrops, but what I like about them is their fabric. The ones that Iโve been using are by a company called Katebackdrop and theyโre five by seven fabric backdrops. Youโve got fake brick, youโve got the Christmas backdrops and then Halloween backdrops and Thanksgiving backdropsโ, Brandt explained.
โIโve just been getting different kinds of gray and theyโre about $30 each, so theyโre not terribly expensive. And then I got the cheapest Amazon curtain rod I could find. And so, because theyโre pocketed on the top, you just run them on the curtain rod.โ
Get Creative With Your Virtual Speaker Gear
Will suggested how to build you own backdrop with the help of, say, furniture or bookshelves. โOne way I like to get inspiration for these sort of things is I search for YouTube studios and look at the famous YouTubers. Theyโll all do a studio tour where they talk about where their main shots are and things like that. And that gives you a lot of ideas as far as furniture.โ
Think of it this way: backdrop is an opportunity to promote your brand and get your audience to know you. โWhen I started doing these Funko pops on here, I got asked almost every other video call: โWhat is that behind you?โ And it was just such a great story. Then people really started to get to know me really, really well.โ
โI think itโs also a way to, to set your own image,โ Brandt added. โIt has the opportunity to say a lot about what you want it to say, what tone are you trying to set.โ
LED Bulbs
Will has many ideas about different ways to bedazzle your audience. โI got started in these blurry backgrounds. I wanted to add a little bit of color texture. Cause I had some lamps and some hue bulbs. Iโve spread kind of all throughout this room. It was cheap LED bulbs. Make sure they have a high CRI, all that fun stuff.โ
โI got this neon lightning bolt and itโs actually not neon. Itโs just an LED. And I got it for $10 and it plugs into a USB plug. So then I just got a little brick and plugged it on in there, but that looks really cool in the backdrop. And then I also got a normal neon sign, but honestly, the normal neon sign isnโt as effective as that lightning bolt because the text is just hard to read from far away.โ
โWhat worked really well for me was the light string bulb holder that LED lightning bolts and then just a bunch of huge, bold splashing color all over the place. And thatโs my whole setup. Itโs literally just shelves full of toys and a couple of LED lights all over the place. And I get so many compliments on the backdrop all the time,โ Will concludes.
Green Screens
Next up, Will and Brandt touch upon green screens, or as Will calls this particular virtual speaker gear, the elephant in the room. โSo everyone knows we donโt like green screens and that weโre not the biggest fan of them.โ Nonetheless, they have no shortage of good advice. โThe green screen version of the Katebackdrops is like $12 on Amazon right now. If this is something you want to play with, it might be worth getting it. Itโs a microfiber backdrop. So itโs nice and soft. If itโs wrinkly, you can actually throw it in the dryer with a wet towel and itโll come out all nice,โ Brandt says.
โItโs hard to do it well. And so what Iโm using over there is basically a professional level green screen keyer. Itโs a black magic ATEM Mini,โ Brandt says. โIโm just a big fan of avoiding it, unless youโre going into a professional studio where itโs professionally lit where you have great camera quality that can really do it.โ Will added: โAnd also letโs be honest, professional keyers whose jobs is to chroma key things for a living.โ
Again, the most important thing to look out for is lighting. โMake sure that the backdrop is lit evenly and make sure that you are lit evenly. And then the third thing that Iโll throw on is it often helps to have backlight on you as the subject. So if you are the subject and youโre standing in front of green screen, you want something high and behind you, facing forward onto your shoulders. And what that does is help define those lines.โ
The next setup Will brings up was El Gato, which costs $150: โEl Gato makes a great LED screen that pops up and folds down into a roll and then pops up and down. And itโs not really big. So if youโre planning on standing up, itโs not the best. But if youโre looking at something that you need to open and close, you need to shove it in a corner every once in a while, itโs super helpful.โ
XR Stages
Finally, the tech duo talks about the most exciting virtual speaker gear there is in the world of backdrops, the highly immersive XR stages, and LED walls. โThe whole movie industry, the TV industry, and also the events industry is moving towards whatโs called XR stages or mixed reality stages. And itโs the idea of putting an LED screen behind you. They look so good that it looks like itโs a green screen backdrop,โ Will says. โEveryoneโs moving towards these LED screens. They look more lifelike. They also admit light. So it looks more natural, too.โ
The good news is that LED screens can be emulated by getting a TV. โI have this like 65 inch TV over to the side of me. I could easily bring that in a frame and fill that in the entire frame and put a backdrop behind it. And I think that will look a hundred times better than a green-screen backdrop on here tooโ, Will explains.
Final Thoughts
Will and Brandt wrap up by agreeing that backdrops are not to be overlooked. โCare about your backdrop, care about what your audience is going to see,โ Brandt emphasizes.
โIt blows my mind that this many months into it, the number of folks still appearing on live television that just clearly donโt care and arenโt paying attention to the things that weโve covered in these last three episodes, not paying attention to lighting, not paying attention to the audio quality, not paying attention to the cameras, not paying attention to the background.โ Donโt be like those folks! And with that checklist in mind, our tech-aficionados concluded their three-part mini-series on the very best virtual speaker gear.