AI Safety Video Starter Kit

Written By Chana Messinger

Caveat: I’m still figuring a lot of this out

Also, if you’re interested in getting involved with this, feel free to get in touch!

What to get

Products

  1. Camera: Most phones are good enough for basic filming - check your settings to be filming in 4k or even 8k if possible (useful if you’re going to want to zoom in on the footage and keep it high res)

    1. Your back camera will be better than your front camera, but then you can’t see yourself or use teleprompter apps; I usually consider this too big of a downside and use the front camera

  2. Teleprompter: There are many teleprompter apps, the one I use is capcut (which I also use for some editing)

    1. What's annoying about this is you can only film for three minutes at a time, so you'll have to stop and start over. Then, you'll have to re-copy in the text of the teleprompter app from something on your phone. I often use facebook Messenger to get stuff from my computer to my phone, which is really quite janky. It works well enough for me, but there are probably better systems.

  3. Lights: For more elaborate setups, there are all kinds of lights you can get. But for a basic talking head, if you're going to be close to the camera, all you need is a ring light. If you're going to be further from the camera, you probably want two lights to avoid shadows. 

    1. Ring light: I use this one because it’s cheap and easy. Contains a tripod (they almost all do). 

    2. I have this other light, I don’t strongly recommend or disrecommend it, it’s fine, I like that it has multiple temperature settings.

    3. Annoyingly, if you wear glasses, there is often glare, especially from a ring light. I have not figured out how to fix this. Sometimes I take my glasses off for videos. 

    4. I’ve bought this to try out a really portable setup but haven’t experimented with it yet

  4. Mics: Common wisdom is that audio quality is the most important thing, even more important than video quality, so I recommend getting mics. The best ones for basic use seem to be these, which I have. A huge pro of them is that you can plug them directly into your phone, so that you don't have to have a separate audio file and video file. 

    1. There's definitely a bit of an upfront cost in learning how to use them. I recommend using o3 to walk you through the process. We're still having trouble with them, but that's probably user error. I don't have a better recommendation.

    2.  They're not very directional, so they'll pick up all kinds of sound which can be good (especially if you're moving around) but can also be bad if you have noise in the room. Avoid touching the mic or putting your hair or hand over it while it's filming.  

    3. I have also now bought this for a more directional approach, which I'm hoping will reduce echoing and noise, but I haven't tried it out yet. It's also on the cheaper end of these, so it's possible I will need to upgrade. 

  5. Tripod: If it doesn't work to just have the ring light tripod, for instance, if you want the two lights on either side of  you. I use this one.


Editing software

  1. Capcut on desktop and mobile - worth paying for pro. Not hard to learn

    1. Capcut’s “enhance voice” and “reduce noise” is surprisingly good, as is its “erase background”

  2. Descript - I get this from my workplace so I don't know how much it costs or if it's worth it in general. I really like it for talking head videos because you can move around sections of the video just by moving around what you said in it. It uses a transcript to anchor the parts of the video. 


Advice

  • Whenever you're stuck on any product or software or aren’t sure what to buy, ask o3 or another LLM how to do it. Upload screenshots. Constantly be using AI for help here. 

    • In general I find using AI helpful, but your mileage will vary

  • If you have a separate mic and video, be sure to clap or make some loud noise so that you can sync up the footage.

  • Check out aisafety.video for other people in the space (and get in touch!)


What to say

  • There's obviously a billion trillion pieces of advice one could give on how to make successful videos and how scriptwriting works which I'm not gonna get into here except to say that 

    • The hook at the beginning is important

    • It's probably worth spending a fair amount of time watching videos similar to yours that have done consistently well and seeing what they do. 

  • A handful of topics I think someone (or multiple someones) should make a great video on


Chana Messinger
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Getting and Questioning a Therapist (Amateur Edition)