Who are you, and what do you do?
Hello! I’m Melissa and I run an ASMR channel on YouTube called asmr beauty.
For any of you who haven’t heard of it, ASMR stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response and is often described as a tingling sensation someone feels in certain situations or watching certain content.
My channel focuses on filming real appointments around the UK as a form of ASMR to help people relax!
What hardware do you use?
I use a series of iPhones to film my videos, and RØDE Wireless Go II mics for the audio. I started off trying different things like an IC recorder and DSLR, but I found that iPhones were best in terms of getting consistent results with very little configuration. As I film with real-life practitioners often in tight spaces, I don’t have much control over the lighting, so I sometimes have to film in pretty low light, and the iPhone seems to handle it with very little fuss. It’s also a very cost-effective camera as I can buy second-hand iPhones for pretty cheap! I currently have an iPhone XR, 11 Pro, and 14 Pro as my three main cameras.
As I do a lot of editing while I commute, I use an M1 MacBook Air (in Rose Gold) as my main machine! It’s close to the base model, but I configured it with 16 GB of memory to make sure it’ll be able to cope with editing demands. It’s a great balance of performance and portability, and I think it’s been a great purchase!
Editing on a commute wouldn’t be possible without good noise-cancelling headphones (especially for ASMR videos!), for which I use AirPods Pro. The amount of noise they can shut out is crazy, and really let me make the most of my time on trains. Of course, I wouldn’t be able to edit without saving my footage first, but no amount of built-in storage would really be enough for the amount I film though, so I edit off a 1TB SanDisk Extreme SSD. (I’ve been luckily unaffected by the firmware problems!) I’m a little paranoid about losing this as I go around London though, so I have a secondary hard drive where I keep backups of the entire disk. Older footage in general goes into another hard drive; I now have so many that I have a hard drive drawer at home!
When I’m at home, I also connect my Mac to an external display (LG27UK) to get a little bit more space to edit. My keyboard and mouse are pretty basic, being spare Apple keyboards that I had lying around from I think around 2005? (keyboard: A1048, mouse: wired Mighty Mouse). I did have to splurge on a Caldigit TS3 Plus dock (again bought second hand) so that I can plug in more hard drives at once; something that’s quite important when I’m making compilation videos from footage I took years ago!
Another thing I invested in was a nice chair; I have a Haworth Zody which is probably the most comfortable chair I’ve ever owned. I didn’t invest in such a nice desk though, and I have a small IKEA table as a desk. If I’m filming any videos at home, I also sometimes use a Blue Yeti for the audio instead of the RØDE mics, depending on whether I’m speaking close to the mic or not.
Other than that, I sometimes borrow my boyfriend’s MacBook Pro to render videos as this can take a while when the video was shot in the dark I’ve done some heavier de-noising and colour grading. Having all my footage and DaVinci projects on an SSD really helps in this aspect as I can get the same environment just by plugging my hard drive.
And what software?
I’m not a big fan of subscription software in general, so my thumbnails are made in Affinity Photo and my editing is all done in DaVinci Resolve! For Davinci Resolve, I initially picked it because it was free and seemed a bit of a step up from iMovie, but I bought the Studio version when I had some footage with flickering and I needed the deflicker effect. It’s an amazing bit of software and it runs great on my MacBook Air, letting me edit on the go. I could not be happier! It’s also amazing for colour grading, which has let me save bits of footage that looked terrible on my phone as I’ve learnt some basic skills over time.
I spend almost as much time organising places to film as well, so just as much time is spent keeping track of everything in Apple Notes and emailing people on the Gmail app for iPhone!
What would be your dream setup?
I’m quite happy with my home office setup as is, especially as I do most of my work on the go! I do however always appreciate faster hardware, and it would be nice if I didn’t need to borrow my boyfriend’s laptop for heavy rendering jobs, so I’d probably enjoy having a faster laptop!
Actually, for a dream setup, I think it would be pretty cool if DaVinci Resolve on iPad covered all of my editing and colour grading needs; the Macbook Air is light and portable but not quite as easy to take around as an iPad!