Welcome to episode 5 of Amateur to Star: Slaying in Sex Work! I’m Aerie Saunders and I’m joined by my fellow hostess with the mostest (Katy Churchill.) Today we’ll be talking about upgrading the quality of your content without spending too much money. ♥ What are the components of quality content? - The quality of your content can be divided into 2 segments: the performance and the equipment. We’re going to focus on upgrading your equipment today. - Camera, lighting, editing software, and microphone ♥ The Camera (for Videos) - This can be the most expensive part of your set-up, but it doesn’t have to be! - Katy uses a Samsung Galaxy 20FE (a few years old at this point) to film her videos…on the front-facing camera to boot. - Aerie uses her iPhone for most of her videos although she does have a professional camera - the ease of editing from your phone and posting directly from there will oftentimes outweigh the benefits of setting up your pro camera, especially if it’s fanclub or quickstyle “amateur content” - You can typically get good quality cameras for filming at pawn shops and they’ll come in a bit cheaper than what you’d spend on brand new equipment. - Amazon offers refurbished cameras at a very cheap price point compared to brand new and it is backed by the Amazon refurbished item warranty which has an amazing return window. ♥ The Lighting - The explosion of content creators like TikTokers has made good lighting setups way more accessible. - Katy started with clamp lights covered in parchment paper, then upgraded to softboxes, and now uses a big old ring light. - Five below has many good lighting options around the $5 mark! - Your lighting doesn’t have to be complex, as long as you make sure you're placing your lighting in the right areas for full coverage lighting it doesn’t really make a difference about how much you spend on the light! - Aerie set up her light situation for webcam for $37! It’s what she’s using to stream right now! ♥ The Microphone - You don’t need a microphone in order to put on a good performance whether you are recording a video or streaming on a webcam site, many of the devices that you use have perfectly adequate built in microphones - While Logitechs Blue Yeti is considered a “high quality” mic, you can get a wonderful little microphone from the same company called the “Blue Snowball” for under $50 with similarly wonderful reviews for half the cost - You can try out any budget external microphone and pair it with software that lets you adjust your microphone to get a good quality sound from your microphone - just make sure to read reviews before purchasing mics! ♥ The Editing Software - If you have a Mac, iMovie is a perfectly serviceable editing software. - There are a variety of programs, from Adobe Premiere to Wondershare Filmora (Aerie’s Favorite) to Davinci Resolve. They all have their benefits and drawbacks, and come in at different price points. - If you opt to film with your phone you can find many reasonably priced apps for video editing directly from your phone. ♥ The Streaming Software - You don’t need streaming software in order to be successful on webcam, plenty of models stream with just the bare bones webcam stream directly from their webcam - Many webcams come with software that you can download directly from the manufacturer site for free that allow you to toggle your color correction, zoom, and more! - NVIDIA Broadcast is free (Windows only) and allows you to reduce background noise through your mic, add background blur to your stream, add face tracking / adjust zoom, and more. ♥ Upgrading Quality for Webcam Shows - Lighting is key to get the best out of your webcam - The Logitech c920 is still a perfectly serviceable - and generally affordable - webcam - Amazon offers renewed webcams that are refurbished by Amazon and covered by Amazons return policies, it can be great for getting a deal on a good webcam! - If the price of a webcam looks “too good to be true” then it probably is, Aerie tested out 10 various webcams that claimed to be 720p quality and under $20 and none of them actually worked well. Your best bet is to go with trusted brands like Logitech, Razer, or Lumina. - You can actually use your phone as a webcam too! By utilizing the app “DroidCam” available on both android and apple devices, you can stream by using your phone as a webcam in conjunction with OBS. The unlocked version of the app is a one-time purchase that is under $20 so you can save big on purchasing a webcam by using it and streaming in high quality! MODEL FEATURE: Amy Paige has been in the adult industry for nearly 30 years, first as a stripper and then as a solo content creator. While she may fly under the radar, Amy has developed a strong following of customers over the years who love her unique content, wide assortment of lingerie, and friendly attitude