Stop Talking While Filming! Try This Voiceover Technique

Are you struggling to talk and film at the same time? In this behind the scenes vlog, I share my "vamping" technique for recording professional voiceovers. I show you exactly how I use the DJI Mic 2 and DaVinci Resolve to narrate a 9-hour LEGO build in just a few minutes.

I explain why recording a separate soundtrack is a massive boost for your YouTube SEO, as it provides the algorithm with a clear transcript of your keywords and phrases. I walk you through my voiceover workflow and show you how to keep your energy high while speaking to a microphone.

Stop Talking While Filming! Try This Voiceover Technique



TRANSCRIPT: (CLICK PLAY ON THE VIDEO ABOVE)

THIS IS THE TRANSCRIPT - CLICK PLAY ON THE VIDEO ABOVE!

Hello. Welcome back to the Happy Hut. Uh, I've not made a video for a while because I've been making lots of videos for my other channels. Uh, this one is for the Dad Delivers vlog channel. And I'm just about to record a voice over for a video over on that channel. And I thought, well, why don't I share with you how I record my voiceovers because it might be something you've not tried for your videos. I found it's a really good technique to actually get videos done. Sometimes if you're trying to walk and talk or film and talk at the same time, you're trying to think about what you're saying while you're actually doing the thing that you're commentating on. And many times it just gets in the way because you're worrying about or you're thinking about what you're trying to say as well as doing what you need to do, you know, on the topic that you're filming. So, I wanted to show this just as another way of getting videos out on your YouTube channel. So, it works like this. Instead of filming something and talking at the same time, you just film yourself doing the thing. And it just completely takes the weight off your shoulders having to think of something interesting or even calling out all the steps that you want to commentate on. It also means that you can just enjoy doing the thing that you do that you're filming and worry about how you're going to explain that to the viewer just some other time in the future. This video is about me building a really complicated Lego train station. I knew it would take me 9 hours to build, so I just went ahead and did it and filmed everything. And then I thought, well, what if I sped up the footage? So, it's like a time lapse, nine hours worth of building into just a couple of minutes, and you'll just see it come together. And it it worked really well. It looked really good. But looking at the footage now, it just feels a bit a bit plain. So, I'm going to record uh a voice over at the beginning to explain what I'm doing and point out some of the things that I want to point out. And I'm doing that with this. It's a DJI Mic 2 and it actually comes with the DJI Pocket 3 camera that I'm filming this on. I I just thought, why don't I turn the camera on and then you can see how I do this because it might be something that you want to do for your videos. So, I've got the edit up here. I've moved to DaVinci Resolve. Tell me in the comments if you want me to talk about moving to DaVinci Resolve. It's very similar to Final Cut Pro, which is what I've been using for the last 5 years. And I was on iMovie before that. And then I got worried that I was locked into the Apple ecosystem and if my my MacBook died then my editing stopped. So I wanted DaVinci Resolve because you can use that on a Mac and a PC. So I've edited the footage here and I've actually got it playing out on my laptop down here. So I've got a big screen version while the edit is playing through. So, I can have the footage playing here while I'm commentating and I'll just commentate on the footage. The other reason that I wanted to do this, YouTube takes all kinds of cues to decide what your video is about, what you write in the description. For a long time, it's been really good at analyzing the footage and being able to tell what the subject matter is just by looking at the visuals. It also takes cues from the thumbnail. Some people reckon there are other bits of metadata that might also go into that mix, that soup, where YouTube decides what the video is about. Some people reckon the file names are taken into account or tags that you put in underneath the description. For me, I think YouTube takes all kinds of cues, as much data as possible to analyze your video to decide who to show it to. One of those very very strong uh influences is the soundtrack. It's the transcription. It creates a transcript of your video pretty much within minutes of uploading. And I think it then analyzes that transcript to decide what your video is about. It makes sense. It's obvious that if you're talking about something, it will want to know what you're saying. So, if I had a video that's just a time-lapse footage of me building a Lego building, I reckon it could tell pretty quickly on first analysis that it's about Lego. But with a soundtrack on top of that, it has extra data to go on and keywords and buzzwords and phrases. So, I think recording a voice on something that is just essentially B-roll footage will help bump up its Google juice. This technique, I've done it also within videos where I might do a piece to camera. So, I'll talk to camera like this and then I'll cut to footage and I'll voice that over later on so I don't have to worry about thinking of something to say. You don't have to do this, but I've made little notes just to just to help guide me. I don't need to get it right first time. I can edit this voice over. So, I'm going to vamp. In the in the industry, we call it vamping. I'm going to vamp on these key words, these key phrases. I don't if you can see them. And I've got uh two Post-it notes worth here. Feel I feel slightly self-conscious that you're here watching it, but um I just wanted to show this process because this is another way of making videos that you might not have considered. And you can just watch over my shoulder. Maybe I'll put it in the the footage on screen, but I'll leave the fluffs in so you can see how this goes, how this rolls. When I do voice over, I like to smile. The emotion that your body is carrying will definitely come out in your voice. Or just raising my eyebrows just to uh it just gives you a bit of energy. I've got a really creaky chair as well. I always want to belch just before I start.

This is Brickester station. It's also known as the meeting point. I want to call this Lego station brick cross, but that's a whole other Lego design. See, I've gone wrong there. So, I'll go back. I want to call this model Brick Cross, but that is an actual name of another model in the world of Lego compatible railway models. But look at it. It's absolutely massive. It looks like a really major mainline station. And I think it's beautiful. I would. This is actually an originally This is originally a Lego ideas design, but now it's a Jie Star set. I've not heard of that brand either, but they're pretty big in the world of construction bricks that are compatible with LEGO. And this set is the 89154.

It has 2,50.

It has 2,850 pieces and it lights up. There's a lighting kit that comes with the set, which is fantastic. Now, I'm going to speed build this for you right now in a moment. I'm going to go back to the beginning and we're going to speed build this in just under a couple of minutes. This model is the centerpiece of my Lego city railway.

I've built a whole subway layout around my uh garden office, and I think this is going to take pride of place on one of the curves. There's a playlist in the description for all of my hidden Lego City Railway videos. And to this model, I'll be adding some Blue Bricks modern platforms. I have a a build video for you down in the description. And also some TrixBrix track automation. So, I've got some points and uh signals that will be built around this station. I really enjoyed this build. It comes with a really nice book. You can probably just see it on the on screen there. The printed instructions are great and really super clear. All of the pieces were there, which was a bit of a worry when you're buying something on AliExpress that isn't branded by like the Danish company, but the all the pieces were there and the price is absolutely fantastic for how big this model is and how impressive it is. So much detail. You can see me building the bookshop, the WH Smith news agents. Uh, I'm going to call this station Camden Road when it goes onto my layout. And I'm actually going to turn it on its side so that it will act as a terminus. And there'll be one through platform down the side, but I'm going to twist the station round so that the platform that you see in this model will actually be the concourse for the platforms joining it, if that makes sense. This set took me 9 hours to build. I've seen from the video footage. I've added it up. I did it over a number of days and it was just so much fun. There's so many little interesting techniques here. And I think the intricate detail of some of these rooms, I'm not even going to see them because it's just going to be on the corner of my layouts, but you can see it from a distance, but through the windows you can see it's got a nice restaurant area,

a station cafe, a piano, a little uh piano that anyone can play, stairs, ticket machine, and I really like the destination boards as well. I think they look really uh really impressive and really authentic as well. It comes with some it comes with some figures too so that uh you can populate your station. And I'm going to just let this build run now so you can see how easily it came together over the nine hours.

If you like videos like this, give me a thumbs up. If you like videos like this, feel free to put a thumbs up or hit the subscribe button because my videos on my LEGO builds just get no views whatsoever. So, I do appreciate you you watching along and say hi in the comments. It' be great to hear from you. But, I'll just be quiet now and just let the building commence. But I'll just be quiet now and let the building continue.

So that's it. I'm just going to let that run at the beginning of the of the video. You could hear the stumbles. That's I'm in voice over speak now. You could probably hear some of the stumbles. Um it doesn't matter because I can edit those out. In the TV industry, we call it vamping. uh where you have a rough script, but it's just down to you to vamp what's in your head. What's interesting is that I find that if you speak naturally, so you don't script it to the word. Your brain tends to edit what you what you say, people don't really mind. I obviously you'll critique this, but I think when you're watching videos and there's a voice over, the visuals are so compelling. It's almost like this audio wallpaper where it's it's nice to have someone chatting along. I don't think there's that much pressure on you to say something uh hugely insightful. Just explaining your thought process and also how you felt while you're doing the thing that you're commentating. Those kind of things really help. I think people find that interesting. What do you think? Is this something you might want to try for your videos? Is it something you do already? Do you have any tips for anyone watching this video? Is this something that you think you might try for yours? Thank you for hitting the thumbs up or the subscribe button if you've reached this point of the video. And all my tips for you, you YouTube creators for YouTube creators, they're down in the description. And right here is what YouTube knows you want to be watching next.

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