Creative partner handbook
Here are direct links to everything you need to succeed in creating your best class or lesson for your students. As always, feel free to reach out to hello@ivynewport.com with any questions!
Are you a Creative Partner getting started on creating your classroom? Download this document to guide you through setup and organizing your classroom.
Creating a lesson for our monthly Studioworks Journal? Download this document to help guide you through your lesson.
Audio
Without high quality audio, your video quality won’t matter. The good news: getting high quality audio is cheap and easy!
Lighting
LIMO STUDIO SOFTBOX LIGHTING KIT
Lighting is essential for your videos and we highly recommend these lights as an affordable option.
LED HALO RING LIGH WITH LIGHT STAND
One of our new favorite lights for front facing video recordings. I hightly recommend this light for smoothing out the shadows (and wrinkles) when recording.
Video
Good
MOBILE PHONE
Mobile phones have come a long way and are excellent for starting out on a budget. In addition to your phone, you can purchase a great lighting kit and microphone to get started at very low cost.
BETTER
CANON VIXIA HF R80
Please note: The Canon Vixia HF M500 we purchased 4 years ago is no longer available. Most consumer camcorders now have WiFi capabilities and allow you to control with your smartphone. Unfortunately, the zoom-in feature with these new cameras are less than ideal.
Other Recommended Cameras:
BEST
CANON EOS 80D
DSLR cameras are excellent for creating rich color and quality video. There can be a large learning curve to understanding these cameras so make sure you feel comfortable before purchasing.
Please Note: purchasing a quality lens is essential to creating great videos. Here are the recommended lenses we use.
EASY-TO-USE VIDEO EDITING SOFTWARE
We teach Camtasia because it is the one that works well for our needs. Here are a list of others to check out too ranging from free to more of an investment.
Camtasia's FREE trial version here.
MAC
Camtasia ($199)
iMovie (Free)
DaVinci Resolve (Free)
ScreenFlow ($99)
Final Cut Pro ($299)
Adobe Premiere Pro ($21/month)
PC
DaVinci Resolve (Free)
VSDC (Free)
Filmora (Free + Paid Version)
Lightworks (Free + Paid Version)
Camtasia ($199)
Adobe Premiere Pro ($21/month)
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Here are some software-specific resources to get you started.
RECOMMENDED MICROPHONES
As always, having great audio is essential to your video. When recording audio directly to your computer for voiceover, we recommend the following microphones.
GOOD
This is a wonderful and affordable microphone to start with. Even though we've upgraded over the years, this mic served us very well for a long time.
Better
It's virtuallly a tie between our Better and Best options... even though this is the most expensive of our recommendations, we still prefer the Audio Technica 2100 as our favorite.
If you tested this microphone against the Audio Technica, you would be hard pressed to find the differences (they are very subtle). This is a great mic with a nice variety of recording options.
best
By far our favorite microphone for the money. This mic is extremely sensitive to placement (needs to be up close) but it does remove virtually any background noise and provides a deeper/richer voice.