Recording and producing Vinod Shankar’s episode

Recording the podcast episode itself is of course the most enjoyable part of the whole process. Much of the post production, as some of you would know, is just necessary drudgery. AI is certainly making some of that easier, but one still does have to start with a good quality recording and the content of the conversation itself needs to be real.

You can argue that generative AI is getting better, more capable, with more features each morning one gets out of bed. Sure, but if your soul is enriched by the journey, in whatever vocation you’ve chosen for yourself, then AI will always be a tool. Your processes and workflow will keep changing.

Anyways, moving on from the pop philosophy, we met at the Beehive co-working space on Church Street to record this episode, as Vinod had a meeting nearby later.

The cabin we were able to book on the go cost a little less than Rs. 500 for one hour. It was one side glass and three sides grey wall, and it was maybe about 7-8 feet across. It occurred to me a bit late that I could have placed one of my telescopic portable stands at its smallest height right on the table, instead of to one side ... that would have given the so-called wide shot -- showing both of us -- a better angle.

I’ve two of these stands. They are those selfie sticks with a small tripod at the bottom that fold out and back in, with a clamp at the top for a smartphone. So the wide shot was one iPhone. And my A camera angle (the one that shows my guest from the front, Vinod in this case) had a Sony ZV E10 with a Sigma 30 mm APSC prime lens (I love this combo) and another iPhone as back up. Plus this allowed me to use the iPhone for the wider A camera frame you see in the video and the vastly superior Sony + Sigma combination for the tighter close up.

I did try some basic automated colour correction in Premiere Pro. The iPhones, as you know don’t allow a whole lot of manual settings, unless you’re using an app like Blackmagic Camera (I use the default video option that comes with the iPhone.) The Sony camera was set to S-log3 ... and I applied Apple 2020 LUT in Premiere, which I like more than Sony’s own S-Log3 or S-log3.cine options.

I’d deliberately chosen to shoot only in 1080p 60fps and not 4K. This meant, after about 55 minutes of recording, the camera battery hadn’t even exhausted 50 percent. Super important. I did have backups. Will write separately in more detail on the 1080p v 4K decision.

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One bad mistake

I forgot to keep in mind an important relation between the chosen frame rate (60 frames per second) and the camera’s shutter speed, which decides how long the sensor captures light. The rule is, the shutter speed must be double the frame rate. I left mine at 1/50. It should have been 1/125, the closest available on the ZV E10. I got away with this because one, the camera compensated, and two we were recording a sit-down interview, and not a lot of fast motion. More on this in a separate post.

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About the wide shot (B camera? sort of) the way i did it, and you can see it clearly in the video, the perspective is skewed, with me closer to the camera and looking big and Vinod farther off and looking small. I decided not to use any post production features in Premiere, like the corner points, to try and fix this. In any case, much of the time it would be just him in the frame.

I also decided not to use any of my own lights ... the compact space + the worry about bad reflections that I’d miss (didn’t really have any time for a recce). Don’t remember now if there were even any plug points for power for the lights. But, it shows that we could have definitely done with more/better light. Maybe a lantern softbox with a good COB light. (COB stands for chip-on-board, I think ... look it up and you’ll see why).

I have a couple of Neever LED panels ... they’re great, but not the first, or second, choice for this Beehive cabin. I guess they could also have been placed to bounce of the ceiling, but still, again deliberately, I chose to avoid any possibility of horrible reflections that I’d miss or wouldn’t be able to fix.

I’d love to hear feedback from any of you professionals out there who stumbled upon this post. Until next time, wherever you’re reading this, I hope you’re doing well.

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For an old dog learning new tricks, it took me a while to eventually figure out that even though I'd set the correct frame size for the video itself, Premiere Pro was still exporting the final output to the default setting from the previous video which was a regular long-form video.

I went back in and fixed that and viola, my two shorts of Jay Panchal at Aule Space appeared right away under the Shorts tab in YouTube. In the interim, I'd checked off several other possibilities ranging from how YouTube adds a second of processing time to some folks offering the opinion that the 3-minute limit sometimes doesn't work — definitely not the case with my short, as it turned out.

This all also taught me first hand how the short form can really extend one's reach when it comes to multimedia journalism — got a whole bunch of hits almost right away. Nice way to end the work week. I hope you all have a good weekend, which i expect to spend with more tinkering like this. What fun!

Note:
I wrote this post first in LinkedIn in Feb 2026. Wanted to have it here as well.

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Note:
I wrote this post on LinkedIn in January 2026. Wanted to have it here as well.

Subscribe now