Boost Your Home Video Studio with Junaid Ahmed

Boost your home video studio with tips from Home Studio Mastery founder, Junaid Ahmed. We discuss lighting, cameras, backgrounds and much more. Check out Junaid’s 5-Day Home Studio Rehab Challenge: https://homestudiomastery.com/5daychallenge/.

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Conversation With Junaid Ahmed of Home Studio Mastery

How do you create a home studio that stands out and looks great on video?

Your visual presentation should represent you as a professional and a creator. Sometimes, the message your studio sends might not align with what you’re trying to convey.

Perhaps it’s time to upgrade your home studio. I know mine could use some work.

Let’s Call Junaid Ahmed 

Junaid Ahmed is not only a video creator, podcaster, speaker and author, but he’s also known for his mastery of home studio development. His company, appropriately named Home Studio Mastery, reflects this expertise.

As an entrepreneur and a brilliant thought leader in online business, marketing and tech, Ahmed is releasing a new book within the next month titled Seven Stages of Home Studio Evolution. His Five-Day Home Studio Rehab Challenge, currently offered at a significant discount, provides “practical skills and insights to optimize your space, enhance audio and video quality, and select the right equipment.”

Home Studio Mastery

While the video at the top of the page contains our full discussion and an in-depth look at Ahmed’s studio, what follows are valuable excerpts from our conversation edited for length and readability.

Ross Brand: When you look at a video, what tells you this person knows what they’re doing with their studio? And what tells you this is a studio that needs some help?

Junaid Ahmed: Well, a lot of the time the lighting might need some help. A lot of podcasters are moving from audio only to video. And they’re wondering, what do I need to invest in first? So I say, “Hey, get a good set of lights in your space so that people can actually see you and you’re not blending in with the rest of the room.”

Ross Brand:  What are some of the biggest mistakes you see on YouTube when people go from audio-only to putting their podcast on video?

Junaid Ahmed: Well, the number one thing that we like to do ourselves when we’re setting up, let’s say, our office, you’ll set up a corner of the room where you like to look. The window might not be in front of you. The window might be on the side. The window might be behind you. And sometimes you can’t really control where the windows are, but because you like the look of how you want the room to be set up, you’ll just not think about what the camera sees and it’s always going to see what’s behind you. And we don’t have eyes in the back of our head so we can’t really see what that’s going to look like.

You’ll see that people have windows in their backgrounds with light and sunlight coming in. What that does is take away the attention of the camera from you to that light because the camera wants to focus on the highlights in that shot. So you want to make sure that you eliminate that window or put a dark curtain, light-blocking curtain on it, you know, a nice pretty curtain. Just bring some kind of personality in that room. Or if you are able to, just move the camera around so that you don’t have that light shining into the camera.

Ross Brand: I’m getting the sense from looking at your studios that you generally don’t go with a green screen. Is that correct?

Junaid Ahmed: That is correct. So I don’t go with green screen because green screen is a totally different art. You have to light the green screen separately from lighting yourself. Again, more lighting conversation because now you’re lighting two different things and you got to have the distance.

Ross Brand: What about when people don’t have a lot of space to work with?

Junaid Ahmed: I’ve helped clients design studios in rooms as small as 5 feet wide by 10 feet long. So there’s no room that’s not designable. There’s no room that you can’t play around because the beautiful thing about cameras is that you can control what they see.

Ross Brand: Do you recommend using multi-camera or do you recommend sticking with one camera if you’re basically doing a talking head video podcast?

Junaid Ahmed: If you have the budget and you can spring for the extra camera, I recommend it because you’re no longer doing jump cuts. It’s almost become a trend where you have jump cuts from jump cuts from jump cuts because as human beings, we talk with pauses, we talk with breaks, we sometimes repeat ourselves multiple times. When I’m recording with two different cameras, I can cut between shots and make it seem like I didn’t even skip a beat.

Ross Brand: Are there any special considerations if you go to a second camera?

Junaid Ahmed: it doesn’t have to be as expensive as your main camera. You can use a webcam that you already have. Let’s say you start with a webcam and then you’re upgrading from the webcam to a DSLR camera, you can use that webcam as a secondary camera angle. You can use that webcam as a top-down camera angle as well, especially if you’re going to be reading books or if you’re going to be showcasing some products.

Ross Brand: Well, this is a conversation we have to continue because you’ve got so much knowledge on the topic. And you have a new book that’s coming out soon that’s going to help a lot of people, Seven Stages of Home Studio Evolution. Find him on social media. Connect with him. He’s a great follow, at @superjunaid. Thanks again for joining us.

Junaid Ahmed: Thanks, Ross. This was a lot of fun. Appreciate you, man. Great chatting with you.

Watch the Video

There is so much value in this interview that you can’t see from reading the conversation alone. You don’t want to miss Junaid Ahmed showing off his home studio and demonstrating how he uses lighting, camera angles and more. I highly recommend watching the video at the top of the page for the full conversation as well.

About Junaid Ahmed

Junaid Ahmed is the Founder of Humblezone and Creator of Home Studio Mastery, designed to teach you how to build your home studio. He has two decades of video production experience, as well as designing websites & apps focused on a systematic process and seamless user experience. He provides podcasters, speakers, and content creators a comprehensive plan for their studio equipment, lighting, and layout. He also enables video creators to create effortless content in a comfortable and impressive home studio setting. He’s the author of Mastering iPhone Video Production, and Host of Hacks & Hobbies podcast. He also speaks frequently at national events such as Podfest and multiple virtual summits.

GUEST LINKS: JUNAID AHMED
📌 5-Day Home Studio Rehab Challenge: https://homestudiomastery.com/5daychallenge/
📌 Mastering iPhone Video Production: https://amzn.to/3JZF34I
📌 Hacks & Hobbies Podcast: https://www.hacksandhobbies.com/

CONNECT with JUNAID
📌 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/superjunaid/
📌 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/superjunaid/
📌 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/superjunaid
📌 Twitter: https://twitter.com/superjunaid

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