Michael Walker: Yeah. Alright. Oh man. I am really excited to be here with my friend, LJR, Luke Justin Roberts. Man, we just solved the hard problem of consciousness immediately before this conversation. So I’m like, everything else just feels like… I don’t know, like—

Luke Justin Roberts: Icing on the cake.

Michael: Icing on the cake.

Look, you’ve probably had more of an impact on my personal evolution with videography than anyone else in my life. And I remember before we met, I was using this webcam, and it was very amateurish, like—

LJR: Hi guys, I’m Michael.

Michael: And it was like the string lights, but there was a before-Luke and after-Luke, in terms of video quality.

And there’s a lot of talk about how production quality isn’t the most important thing, and like, “Oh, you can do anything on an iPhone.” I think there’s a lot of truth to that. The heart and the core are probably the most important thing. But man, it makes a pretty big impact when you have professional assets, just in terms of immediate recognition and quality.

So, yeah, I really think that us connecting—you sharing your video tips for me personally, with Modern Musician—has made a massive impact. So I’m really grateful for you, and for your role in video production, and excited to have you on the podcast today to talk a little bit about that journey.

For you as a musician, and you with your video career—I know now you help other artists to create high-quality content, whether they’re doing it on their iPhone or on a professional setup. So, looking forward to connecting on the podcast, and thank you for the role that you’ve played in helping me level up my own presentation and how we show up here.

LJR: Yeah, man, thanks for having me. It’s been a pleasure working with you and seeing your evolution over time—not just with the video production stuff that we’ve done, but seeing what you work on. You’re always trying to do more to meet the need for artists, which is a tough problem to solve.

And I imagine it opened you up to a lot of judgment at times too, from different people. So I think it’s a courageous thing to really continue to pursue that as you find your way in that journey. And it’s been fun hanging out in all of our deep conversations. So yeah, man, it’s great to be here.

Michael: Thanks, man. It’s also probably worth noting that this whole setup exists as well because you helped to build the studio. You were one of the founding members who came out here when this was nothing and helped us build this.

LJR: Yeah. This was fun. It was a lot of fun. We got all the walls painted, figured out where we were gonna shoot everything, got lighting equipment set up. The logo—I knew we needed that. I’m glad you got that, because that thing is so sick.

Michael: It is pretty cool. Cool. So Luke, I would love to hear a little bit about your background and story, and your quote-unquote hero’s journey as it relates to your upbringing—your music and videography.

And I’m curious: how did you go from not understanding this whole world of videography to becoming someone that I consider a bit of a master? You’re like a Yoda of videography.

LJR: Thanks, man. What is it? “Do or do not. There is no try,” Michael.

Michael: Okay. Okay. I think our work is done here.

LJR: Time to go.

Yeah, so I started off—I’ve always been musical ever since I was young. My dad had a band, and so I learned how to play drums at a very young age. I thought that was just the easiest instrument because you just hit stuff. A lot of people think it’s the hardest, but I don’t understand that. To me, any sort of complex fingering is the hardest thing.

Michael: Mm.

LJR: But music was always a part of my life from then onward. I was part of the church band. I was also part of a band with my brothers. I was just always playing—whether it was band practice, or Sunday mornings, or Friday nights, or gigs with my brothers and stuff like that.

So, huge part of my life. And I didn’t really think at the beginning that I wanted to do it professionally and really make that my thing.

But over time, as I went to college—I went to engineering school. I ended up going for my PhD at the University of Maryland. I didn’t finish that. I was four years in, got a couple journal papers published, and then realized I don’t really want to do this. This isn’t making me feel fulfilled in life. This isn’t bringing me joy. And I switched careers.

Michael: Hmm.

LJR: And this is where the videography really started to come in. I had started to film a couple of music videos in late college because I had seen what Tyler Ward was doing—Boyce Avenue, Sam Tsui. There were people like this that were really talented, and they made these amazing covers of popular songs at the time. They were stripped back, but great videography—very cinematic—great lighting, and just beautiful arrangements of these songs. And I thought that was really inspiring. I thought maybe I could try to do some of that.

Michael Walker: Hmm.

LJR: Well, I didn’t know anybody who shot videos, especially like that. I remember working with some people for the band, and I was thinking, like, “Oh, these videos are gonna be great.” And then I saw them and they were just trash. They were just so bad. And I was like, “I can’t… this is not at all what it’s supposed to be.”

It was like some corporate guy tried to shoot a music video and it didn’t look artistic at all.

Michael: Mm.

LJR: So that was disappointing at the time.

But when I started to decide—just like when I was really young—I thought, like, “If I don’t have something…” My family didn’t have a lot of money growing up, so if I didn’t have something, my mom said, “Well, just make it.”

Michael: Hmm.

LJR: And I was like, “Okay.” So I kind of did that for most things. Halloween costumes especially. Or any sort of—like, I loved swords and Nerf guns, and I loved playing lightsabers and stuff.

A lot of these we would make different Nerf guns. We would make different holsters for the Nerf guns. I’d make those out of cardboard and duct tape. I’d make my own armor. I would make a Lord of the Rings, you know, Second Age elven armor, with all the gold banded armor, or the scale robe. There were like a thousand individual scales that I cut out of duct tape to put onto this robe and try to make it hyper realistic.

So I’d always had this idea of, “If I don’t have the thing, make it.” And so I started doing that with video. I was like, “Well, why can’t I do this?”

I just tried to look at the video that I was seeing that I loved. I’m like, “Where are the lights? What makes this so good?” And I realized, okay, you can kind of tell where some of the lights are. They’re literally in the video, but you can also guess where the other lights are based on where the light is on people’s faces.

And so I started to experiment with that. I started getting work lights from Home Depot and just putting them in different places in the room.

And one of the big things I noticed was having a lot of backlight. It was always present in all the videos I liked, so it created this cool edging effect around people—almost like a halo, like a rim of light around the shape, around the silhouette of a person.

I just fell in love with doing this. And as I started to do more covers, I enjoyed making more and more videos and trying to advance a little bit—do something a little bit different with every video.

And over time, people started really liking what it was that I did with my videos for my music, and they offered to pay me to make theirs. And I was like, “This is cool.” So I started to say yes, and that slowly turned into a little video production company where now I work with a ton of different artists filming all sorts of content for them.

And it’s also turned into the thing that can really fund my life in terms of basic expenses, but also cover, like, if I want to invest in some marketing, or a new really good mix. I’m not a mixing engineer, don’t ever plan to be, but I can pay for that now because I have enough video work that’s doing that.

So that’s been really cool to experience.

And it’s been very difficult to go through the ups and downs of that, because obviously as an entrepreneur, things are up and then some things are down. And it’s all based on you—your performance—and how much you’re able to do.

And there are all sorts of blocks that you have that you don’t realize that you kind of have to overcome. And there are a lot of those in there, in terms of creating real discipline and pushing through things that I really hated doing—that were tedious and difficult—or would trigger my nervous system dysregulation, and learning all these things to be able to find ways to overcome that, to get to where I’m at now, where I feel very confident that I can quickly make a really high-quality video, whether it’s for myself or for an artist.

So that’s kind of the quick version of how I got to where I’m at now with the video stuff.

And so now I teach other people how to do it on their own, whether it’s with their cell phone—I can teach them how to do it on a nice camera too. But I find it’s typically a little bit easier on the phone, just because everybody’s already familiar with the phone—lower budget—that type of thing.

Michael: Mm-hmm. Cool.

You know, there’s something interesting about your story. What stands out is how you have a natural genius zone for videography, or a passion. Everyone is different.

I think Einstein said: if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, then it might grow up thinking its whole life it’s stupid.

LJR: Yeah.

Michael: But you had the self-awareness to realize, after having gone to education for a certain role, you’re like, “This is not it. This is not what brings me to life.”

And you discovered this passion for creativity and videography, and that’s turned into a genius zone that’s really empowered you to do all the things that you enjoy in making music.

And it just seems like everyone is kind of different. We have these different puzzle pieces. We can figure out the things we resonate with most. What’s our genius zone, or what are we willing to develop?

The same way that you have the ability to say, “I can create this, I can make this. If I make a decision, I can do this.”

So I guess the question I have for you is: for anyone that’s listening or watching this right now—part of the purpose of this conversation is so that we can share some tips and advice specifically around video production for artists, and how to take that into their own hands, or be able to work with someone to do it for them.

So I’d be curious: what are some of the key benefits you think specifically for this topic of video production? Why is it worthwhile for them to learn how to master this topic? And who do you think is best suited to get value from going deeper into this world of videography?

LJR: Yeah. There’s a lot of benefits. The first question was… repeat that again?

Michael: Mostly: what are the biggest reasons why someone should go deeper into this? If they’re on the fence and they’re like, “Oh, that seems cool, but I’m not really an expert at that.” Why should they consider diving deeper into it?

LJR: Yeah. I think there’s a lot of reasons for that, especially as an independent artist.

The number one way that you get discovered right now is on social media platforms. And the type of content that gets pushed the most is typically video content—not only because the algorithm likes it, but also because people connect best with a person that they can feel like they understand and see, and have a chance to understand a little bit about their story.

And you get a lot of that from how a person moves, how a person talks, and how they engage with you. It’s the closest thing you can come to interacting with the person if they’re not right in front of you.

And that’s your goal as an artist: to connect with people, as many people as you can, that share the kind of story that you’ve gone through in your life, and to present a piece of art to them that’s gonna resonate and help them feel seen—so that they feel like they’re not alone. Right?

And ideally, you’re helping them in their journey, whether it’s processing through a loss or a change in their life or a season in their life by giving them a voice to express who they are.

And video is the best way to do that.

So the other reason that it’s important to learn this—this is just like having videos is important for that.

If you’re gonna learn how to do it, this is the ideal situation I think for most people, because most people don’t really have the budget to hire somebody like me to come out, because that can get expensive.

But you don’t really need to have somebody like me to come out. If you’ve got the time to be able to learn the skill, it’s gonna take a long time to really get to the level of somebody that’s super pro, but you don’t have to be perfect in order to start creating content that people resonate with.

Because like you said earlier, it is hugely impactful to have high image quality, but what I teach people is that doesn’t matter at all until you have something of value to give.

So good video will only amplify great quality content.

Michael: Hmm.

LJR: And the content is the value that you deliver in the video.

So the example I always give is: if you’re watching a video and it’s got great cinematography, but bad audio—harsh audio, or it doesn’t sound good or doesn’t resonate emotionally—you’re probably just gonna turn the video off. You’re gonna stop watching.

But if it has really good audio, or the content’s good—think like your favorite cat video that’s super grainy but it’s hilarious, and the audio is good enough that the content is there—even if the video is trashy from an iPhone in 2006 or whatever, you’re still gonna watch it and you’re still gonna share that with friends because it made you laugh. You connected with it.

Or somebody’s honestly sharing a story about something that you resonate with, and you’re like, “Wow, this makes me think of my friend Joey,” and you want to send that video to Joey. You’re not really concerned with the video quality.

Video quality will advance the professionalism once you’ve got that core value offer set up.

But a lot of the time, focusing on the image quality a little bit too early can essentially be like trying to put makeup on a pig. And not to say that people are ugly or whatever, but—

Michael: Pigs are beautiful.

LJR: Pigs are beautiful, actually. Yeah. I saw some pigs giving birth on a Facebook video the past couple days, and I’ll say that was pretty gross.

But yeah, it’s that old adage of like, where is the real value? It’s in the essence of who you are and your story.

And it’s easy to compensate for that by trying to get good at something else that doesn’t feel as vulnerable.

I speak as somebody that I think I’ve done this. A lot of my music career, especially at the beginning, was really focused on: “I wanna do covers”—which, not bad, nothing wrong with covers—“I wanna make them look really great.” But I wasn’t leaning out as much into telling my story of my life.

And I also had a lot of fear around focusing on my voice. I’ve always had a lot of imposter syndrome there.

Recently, I’m just connecting truly with my mixed voice without as much strain, and that’s been a huge jump forward for me. And that has come as, over the last couple years, I’ve really been focusing on: what is my story? How do I really connect with people around that?

And the last couple months, especially on TikTok, I’ve seen real resonance with a lot of people where, when you’re honest about what your journey has been, and you share music that connects with that, and you want to call out your audience so that people know, like, “Oh…”

Like for me, it’s like: if you grew up Christian and don’t believe anymore, I make music for you. Because I grew up in the church—that was my foundation for meaning and purpose and all that stuff—and then I lost that as I tried to find truth. And so now I make songs largely about that.

And that content has resonated so much with people that tried their best to hold on to their relationship with God, their relationship with church, and they couldn’t. Or they got really hurt by the church, right?

And so there’s many reasons why people left. I can speak to that because that’s been my experience.

So yeah, I think I’m maybe beating a dead horse at this point, but that’s really the key: what is the value that you’re offering?

And then once you’ve got clarity on that—some direction—you can look at increasing your image quality. But before then, it’s not really gonna help.

I’ve posted tons of super high-quality covers to TikTok without any sort of story attached to it, or connecting with people, and they don’t go anywhere. They’ll get like three views.

But as soon as I talk about this stuff—leaving church and everything, and here’s part of my journey—I’ve got like 10,000 views in the video, and it’ll make an uptick on my Spotify because people are going over there streaming the song crying. “I haven’t felt seen like this in forever.”

Or, “I was a pastor and I left after 40 years and I don’t have any community anymore.” All that kind of stuff.

Michael: Mm-hmm. Wow. Cool.

So what I’m hearing you say is that image quality and production quality are an important part of the process at a certain point, but it can’t cover up or fix a core root-level issue, which is being disconnected from who you are and actually sharing your authentic voice and your message.

So you help by focusing on that first, and then depending on someone’s free time or their budget, you can start to make recommendations for amplifying that message and polishing it.

But really at the root, the most important thing is the heart and the message.

LJR: Yeah, totally.

There are some situations where, let’s say you wanna get booked for gigs—for festivals. Booking agents aren’t really looking for that as much. They’re mainly looking for a professional video that’s truly live, where they can see what you do, and they go, “Wow, I can see this fitting in my event.”

So if you’re looking for a really great video that you’re gonna use to get bookings for festivals or private house concerts—high-ticket things—we’ve had people that booked $4,000 solo shows off of the videos we’ll shoot for them. And that’s been really cool to see the impact that something like that has had.

Michael: Yeah. So what it sounds like is it depends on what the purpose of the video is. If it’s meant for a high-ticket opportunity, then sometimes that polish can make a big impact in terms of credibility and someone getting an understanding of the value you’re gonna provide to the event.

LJR: Yeah.

Michael: Cool.

So Luke, I know that you’ve literally created a whole course around how to master this topic for an independent artist to be able to create high-quality videos.

And part of this conversation is we’re gonna peel back and share three of the most valuable nuggets or frameworks or pillars.

So I’d love to hear the first one that you’d like to share, that you think is one of those most important pillars or frameworks that artists need to understand in order to master this topic.

LJR: Yeah. The first one I would say is not actually related to a technical aspect of shooting the video. The first one is just to start—to avoid a sense of, “It has to look like X.”

It’s to return to a sense of play and enjoyment when you’re creating something.

Specifically, as we get older, we lose the connection with this ability to play without judgment. We’re so afraid of what other people might think. A lot of the times we internalize that judgment over time and we judge ourselves and levy all this shame on ourselves.

It’s like if you try to learn a new instrument when you’re older, it can be harder because you have an idea of what it’s supposed to sound like, and you’re comparing yourself against that in your infant stages of learning. And it’s like, “Oh, this sucks. This is so bad.” And that makes it hard to enjoy that initial process, which makes it hard to move past that initial point.

Michael: Permission to suck.

LJR: Permission to suck. Yeah. I actually just started doing this with my own voice, trying to find mixed voice. The past two weeks have been transformational for me in finding that. And I’ve been able to sing way higher. I don’t think I can do this in front of people yet, but it’s been amazing just letting that go.

And so I encourage anybody that’s watching this to try to do that, so you can free yourself to experiment, to play around with it, to see what might come out of a new way of positioning the lights, or a new setting on the camera, or a new environment.

Because oftentimes you have to tweak your shot a little bit to get it to look the way that you want. You don’t just set down the camera, get good composition, and then you’re like, “Alright, sweet. This is it.” You hit film.

A lot of the time when you’re filming something more professional, you want to consider the lighting. Lighting is a huge part of video. In fact, this is probably the number one tip that I would give people in general: you want to have a lot of light, especially when filming with a cell phone camera. The sensors are not as good in low light, and they tend to get a lot more noise when you’re trying to boost the brightness to make it such that you can see things in the image.

So that’s one of the big things: just having a lot of light.

The second part about lighting is your lighting position—where you put them.

So I always make sure that I’ve got a light that’s about 45 degrees in front of me, shining down, because that’s gonna create some contrast on my face. I wanna have some areas that are a little bit darker and some areas that are a little bit brighter. Usually I still wanna see detail in the darker areas. I don’t want to be pitch black and shrouded in shadow, and be like, “I’m dramatic.” I want it to have some contrast.

And then typically having some type of backlight behind to create that edging around the shoulders. It’s gonna really show on your hair. That’s gonna add a real level of cinematic feel to it. Part of what’s happening there is it’s separating you from the background.

So there’s a couple other big tips.

A lot of the time people will put themselves right in front of a wall, and one of the things that we love to see in videos is depth.

So depth is going to come from two things. It’s gonna come from the difference in focus between your subject and the background, and it’s also gonna come from how close you are to that background.

And these are kind of tied together in the way the camera operates. If you move away from the background, you’re gonna get more blur in the background no matter what lens you’re using, no matter what camera you’re using.

If you’re close to something in the background, you’re gonna get a lot more of that background in focus.

So if you have a bookshelf in the background, it can look pretty good if it’s blurred out and you’re in focus. But if you’re too close to that background, then it’s gonna be very in focus and it can be distracting because there’s a lot of different books, maybe titles you can read, it might be a little messy. If it’s blurred out, it can be great.

So if you pull yourself instead of being two feet from the bookshelf, and you pull yourself so you’re 10 feet away, you’re gonna get a way better shot.

The other thing you can do is use a different lens. On your iPhone, you’ve got three lenses to choose from, right? If instead of doing the 0.5 you do the 1x or the 2x, as you go up in those numbers you’re gonna get more and more blur in the background. It’s gonna zoom in more, so you might have to pull the camera back farther, but you’re gonna get way more of a blurry background. And that will really help your shot a lot.

Excuse me—it’s coffee. I put a lot of honey in my coffee and I think that’s doing it.

Michael: There’s a bunch of good stuff to unpack there.

So the first big pillar I heard you say is giving yourself permission to learn—permission to suck.

I feel like that is such an important starting point because I can relate with this. Anyone watching this as a musician can probably relate too.

First time you pick up an instrument and start trying to play it, generally it’s awkward, doesn’t feel great. You have to go through a period where you’re learning. And a willingness to learn—a willingness to not look good—is what allows you to take action and learn quickly.

So I really resonate with that as a big pillar and place to start.

And what I’m hearing you say with the lighting is really helpful practical tips.

I remember you helped me. I’m a very simple outfit man. I have the same outfit that I wear literally every day. I have like 20 versions of the same shirt. It used to be a black shirt and the black shirt kind of blended with the background. And I think you suggested to me, you were like, “Hey, just thoughts—if you wear a different color shirt, that’s gonna help create some separation from the background.”

So I went and bought like five different solid colors and tested out what was gonna be my new main color, and ended up with this one. I think it made a big difference in terms of not looking like a floating head with a black background.

LJR: Yeah. You got that separation going on.

Ironically, I’m wearing a black shirt right now. Originally we had planned to do this interview a couple days ago, and we had some cool stuff come up, which moved it to today. But back then, that day, I was wearing a red shirt for that reason.

Michael: Oh really? Classic.

Also, am I hearing you correctly: one of the biggest tips around getting a high-quality shot is lighting first and foremost—45-degree angle—creating some contrast on your face—making sure you have a backlight that creates an edge around your head.

And I mean, this is one I feel like until recently I hadn’t learned, but we’re kind of doing it right now, which is pulling this desk and the foreground out from the background. So there’s more of that depth of field, or bokeh effect—is that what it’s called?

LJR: Yep. Both good terms for it. Cool blurry background—it’s all the same thing.

Michael: Nice. Did we just blend into the second or third pillars there too, or are we ready to move on?

LJR: Yeah, we definitely hit a couple of them. I would say lighting is the first, and then positioning is the second. The first one is really being willing to fail—being willing to suck at something and to not shame yourself. And then the other two—lighting and positioning—would be the big ones. I could totally share more too. There’s so many things that go into doing it well.

Michael: Yeah. Let’s peel back each of those.

With lighting, I’m curious: what have you found is the biggest mistake that people usually make when it comes to lighting?

LJR: Yeah. There’s two things. The first is not having it at all.

Michael: Hmm.

LJR: And it doesn’t have to be expensive. It can be totally free. You can use a window to do this.

If you set yourself up at a 45-degree angle to a window, then that can cast a wonderful light on you and create some contrast on your face. And it’ll give you a lot of light, because windows are actually way brighter than we think they are.

And if you have one of those blinds in front of it that’s translucent and the light still comes through, that can make it more even light—especially if you have one of those windows that’s not just panes and it’s got the wood in it too. Sometimes that can create some shadows if the lighting is pretty strong. And any sort of shadows typically aren’t super great.

So that’s one of the big mistakes: not having any lights.

I see videographers do this all the time. And depending on the style you’re going for, you could do it if you’re operating purely with natural light, but usually things look way, way better when you have light.

Not having enough light is a big thing. Typically people don’t turn their lights to the right brightness, or they think having just a tiny light is enough. And sometimes it can work, but a lot of the time having a bigger light is gonna help a lot.

The other thing with lighting is positioning. People will usually put it right in front of them, or shining straight on their face. Sometimes they just go to a 45-degree angle and shine it this way.

And you also want it up a little bit, so it’s shining down at a 45-degree angle as well.

So those are big things.

Michael: Okay, cool. So lighting—you wanna make sure it’s kind of above you. And when you say 45-degree angle, that’s diagonal, kind of what you’re looking for.

LJR: Yeah. Imagine you’re here and there’s an arrow pointing from your eye or your nose up into the right—that’s about where it should be.

Michael: Okay. Cool.

Positioning—we know that we need the lights, whether it’s natural lights or setting up some lights. It depends on the room too, how big of a light you need.

Can you talk a little bit more about positioning? As an amateur video guy, I understand some of the terms like key light, fill light, backlight. Could you share the most important things to understand as it relates to positioning?

LJR: Yeah. So depth is one of the biggest things we wanna see when we’re watching a video. That’s part of what makes it look really cinematic or professional.

One of the things that comes into that is how far something is behind you. Like we have right now, this table is probably eight feet out from the wall. And that gets a lot more blur behind. That’s a big thing.

Making sure the space is also very clean is a big part of having it feel good and drawing your eye to the right spot.

Shot composition is part of positioning—where the camera is.

A lot of the time people set up the camera where it’s too low and it’s pointing up, or it’s too high and it’s pointing down.

Michael: If it’s not pointing up, then how will we see the boogers?

LJR: That’s right.

Some people say you always look better from an angle up—like a selfie. That does work for selfies. You bring the camera up here instead of right here. It frames your face a little better. You also look a little thinner.

But when you’re doing video stuff, it’s too dramatic to have it up there. Usually I’m filming almost exactly at eye level. In fact, we’ve got the camera pretty much right here as well.

And I normally don’t turn it down or up at all. It’s pretty much level. I might do a slight little down, but it’s only a couple degrees. It’s not like 45, 30, 20, even 10. It’s just a very small amount, if I do that at all.

What I found is that if you have the right shot composition—what you have in your frame—you’re gonna get a much better shot doing it that way.

I’ve had plenty of people that, when I’m shooting them, they’re like, “Oh, don’t shoot from low because I’m gonna look fat.” It’s funny because they hired me because they want the type of stuff that I shoot, but then the way that I shoot, sometimes they’re concerned.

Then they see the footage after and they’re like, “Oh, this looks great. Never mind.” So that’s a big part of that as well—where you put the camera and how you angle it.

Michael: Mm-hmm. Okay. Awesome.

So for cinematic videos, you generally wanna keep it relatively eye level. With selfies it can be nice to have it coming down, but generally with videography, having it about eye level is gonna give you a better outcome.

I’m wondering about key light, fill light, backlight. Is that stuff important? Is it important you have all three? Can you get away with just one or two? How does that work as it relates to positioning the lights?

LJR: Yeah. You’re talking about three-point lighting, which is what’s taught in film school and stuff like that. And it’s great—it’s definitely super cinematic when you do that.

I found that a lot of the time, lights can be expensive depending on what you get, so sometimes you can only really get one or two.

In that case, I typically recommend just doing two: the one that’s in front of you at that 45 degrees—that’s gonna be the key light. That’s the main light lighting your face. And then the backlight or hair light, which is behind you creating the edging.

The fill light is meant to fill in the areas that are too dark if your key light is creating too much contrast.

In some situations you want a more balanced image, which means there’s not as much shadow.

What I typically find is that for artists, you want a little bit more contrast and a little bit more dramatic feel, so usually with artists you don’t need that.

The other thing is that unless you’re filming in a black room with all the lights off except a couple lights, you probably have some other light sources that function as a fill light.

This is especially true if you’re in a room with white walls. A lot of people’s homes are like White Wall Central.

Michael: Mm.

LJR: That’s what it was in here before we painted it.

The light will reflect off the white walls and act as a fill light. But it also can create distracting bright areas.

And this is related to positioning: if you have a very small room, it’s hard to get far enough away from the walls such that whatever lights you’re shining on yourself are not also lighting up this bright white wall.

And the white wall quickly becomes the brightest thing. And if it’s the brightest thing, that’s gonna get the attention visually in the video. You want to make sure you are the thing that has the most attention.

This is why I typically recommend painting the wall black or just a darker color. Anything other than super white—especially in a really small space—gives you more control because the light isn’t bouncing off all these white walls, creating reflections and distracting bright areas.

If you’re really close, you can also easily get shadows cast from your body or your motion onto the wall, and that can be distracting and pull viewers’ eyes away from you as the performer.

Michael: Hmm. Cool.

I really enjoy conversations like this because when we have conversations like this, you can tell you’re exuding years and years and your 10,000 hours of experience. That makes it really helpful to master a topic like this. So I really appreciate you being here, sharing some of the lessons you’ve learned.

And I know you have different ways that you support artists in helping to create high-quality video products from their songs and music videos. And of course not everybody is gonna be a good fit to have it done for you or work with you.

But I know that every once in a while you do open up some spots to work with you personally to record this kind of content.

So could you share: what do you look for in terms of someone that you’re—your most successful case studies or artists that you work with—what are some of the qualities that define them?

If someone’s listening or watching right now and is wondering, “Would it make sense for me to reach out to Luke and work with him personally?” Who would be the right fit for that, and how should they connect?

LJR: Yeah. There’s a couple things that I look at when talking to artists.

The first is: where are they in their journey?

I believe the best thing I can do to support artists is to help them be sustainable. That means they’re able to continue doing their music and creating content in an ongoing fashion.

For most artists, I think that means making their own content, learning how to do that, because it’s expensive to hire a videographer.

A lot of the time when you first venture into hiring somebody like me, it’s almost a little bit premature. You’re embarking on your music seriously and you’re being told you need a lot of video, and it needs to be high quality. So you’re like, “Okay, let me find a videographer.”

What I see happen is they’ll reach out to me, we’ll film something great quality, and for situations where they want to use it for booking festivals and stuff like that, it works great.

But for social content, sometimes artists really aren’t there yet for it to make sense to hire me, because you have to create so much social content to break through. It’s not just are you posting stuff that’s good—it’s are you posting stuff that’s good for a long enough time that the algorithm starts to say, “Hey, this person maybe should get some more views.” And you’ve gotta try a lot of things.

And if you’re early on, you might not have developed enough of an individual personal expression that’s really powerful—that’s gonna capture people when we do the super high-quality video.

Then you end up spending thousands of dollars making content that doesn’t actually move the needle for you with your social media content in terms of getting fans.

So sometimes I push them toward the course that I have that teaches them how to make their own high-quality videos using iPhone, if that’s important for them.

Once they go through that course and practice it, you can shoot and edit a full video in four hours or less, and it’s done. Looks super cinematic. It’s great. Everything’s cheap. The lights are like 30 bucks each. You only need two, at least as a soloist. And the stands are like 20 bucks each, so equipment’s like nothing. So it’s very sustainable.

But a lot of artists are in the position where they have tried to make social content for a long time. They feel like they know who they are. They feel like their music’s ready for that upgrade.

And for them, it’s more of a time issue. They don’t have the capacity or the interest, or sometimes they feel like they don’t have the ability to learn how to do video well on their own.

So for those people, that’s more the fit where: okay, let’s jump on a call. Let’s see if there’s a way it makes sense for me to film your content. Let’s come up with a plan for the next year where we get together in person at one of the studios that I work with, and we shoot a ton of content for you. And then over the next year, you don’t have to worry about, “What am I gonna post today?” You just go to the Google Drive and download the next video.

That makes it way easier to manage creating a lot of content and posting consistently.

Whereas if every day at the end of your hard day at work, you’re like, “Oh man, I gotta figure out what I’m gonna do—come up with an idea, try to shoot it, feel like crap while I’m trying to shoot this the whole time.” And then once you post it, it gets 20 views—or 200 views—on TikTok, no comments, and then just stops.

That is so demoralizing.

So if you’re in the position where you’re ready to work with somebody like that, then it makes sense to reach out. We can book a call, chat, see where you’re at.

And on that call, we’d go into where you are in your journey and what makes sense. It’s more like: I wanna give a lot of value on that call. What is the next step that makes sense?

And then if it really is the right move to work together, then yeah—definitely—make your way out to Maryland, DC, the Maryland/DC area, and we’ll get something on the books and make a ton of amazing content for you.

Typically that’s live-in-studio content. We can also do live concert content. But if you don’t have a lot of people coming to the show—especially if you’re a newer artist or you don’t have a big fan base in the area—then I think it makes sense to focus on the studio content and music video style content that’s optimized for discovery on social media.

Usually we’ll film full horizontal videos, but the middle section can be cropped for vertical. So you’ve got something you can use for full YouTube videos, to gain fans there, build traction there, and you’ve also got hundreds of 32-second clips you can post on TikTok and repost to every other platform.

Michael: Mm.

That’s great.

What I’m hearing you say is one of the biggest mistakes you see an artist make—and I’ve seen this a lot as well—is spending thousands or tens of thousands of dollars recording music videos. A music video can easily go for $25,000 for a cinematic, high-budget music video, or more.

But what I’m hearing you say is that a lot of times that’s an investment that may or may not be a great return on your investment until you figure out that core social media strategy and posting more regularly.

So that’s probably one of the reasons you created this specific mentorship package version of this, so people get that part of it and they’re not just leaving with a $25,000 music video, but they actually have a whole batch of content that they can post regularly, and you help them through how to build a healthy, sustainable music package.

I imagine for the right person, that would save so much time of having to figure this out on their own, and a lot of stress of trying to understand what to post and when.

So that’s great that you offer that. And it’s also cool to provide the video course for anyone that has the time to do it on their own but not the budget to invest.

LJR: Yeah.

With the $25,000 music video situation, I think you said it so well: if you’re investing in something like that, people don’t think about what the next step is. What are my real goals with my music, and how is what I’m doing aligned with that?

Artists don’t always think about what success looks like for them. Even if they have clarity, if you delved into it and kept asking questions, you could get to it: “I wanna tour and have a thousand people show up at each show across the country,” or “I wanna have a million monthly listeners on Spotify,” or “I just wanna be able to do this full-time.”

And that has specific things attached to it. Like, what’s your full-time income right now? You have to replace that. So okay—$4,000 a month is your new goal. Do these videos help you get $4,000 a month? How does that happen? What’s the mechanism?

That could be booking shows. Once you get a couple good gigs per month—private house shows—you can easily cross that revenue threshold.

So it’s connecting it to that.

And the $25,000 music video usually does none of that, because in general it’s more of an artistic statement and it’s not gonna get pushed out the way other content designed for virality will.

So I think of those assets as either: a great personal investment—just artistic expression, “I wanna make it like this, I love it, I don’t care how much it costs”—or it’s for your fans.

But if it’s for your fans, it’s premature if you don’t have enough fans that would go enjoy it.

So focusing on social content—the discovery content—that draws people in, gets them excited, gets them streaming your music, joining your email list, buying merch, coming out to shows. Then when you do a big music video that you spend a couple grand on, or more—25, 50, whatever—it makes a lot more sense. And you’re sustainable because now you’ve got the budget and you’re not jumping on something premature.

Michael: Mm-hmm. Cool.

That reminds me of the fire analogy—starting a fire where the fire represents your fan base. If you’re just starting the fire, the fire doesn’t exist yet, then sometimes having kindling to start the fire with—smaller social content—is the most important thing to create and start that fire.

And then it makes more sense to have a big tree trunk that you’re putting in there—a $25,000 music video—because you want to make sure you have enough of a fire to justify throwing a big log into the fire pit.

If you’re trying to start with a big log without a fire, you can have a beautiful log, but it’s gonna require significant traction to justify a $25,000 music video.

LJR: Yeah.

And as an example, I’m an artist, right? One of the big things I try to do is always do the things I’m telling other people to do.

Life happens, so I try not to be too judgmental of myself about exactly how well I’m doing that at a particular moment.

But with my album that I released in June—12 songs, or 11 songs and one bonus track, there was a derivative work, there was a mashup, and I couldn’t release that on Spotify—whatever.

I wanted to do a 12-video sci-fi short film series to go along with this because I love doing visual effects. Lasers, spaceships, all that kind of stuff. It’s really cool. Each one’s like five to seven to ten minutes long, with an intro scene, then the music video section where it’s all a story the whole time, then the cliffhanger ending. It was gonna be 12 of these.

And I’ve only done three, and each one got progressively more expensive because I had to hire a team. I can’t do these entirely on my own. I was building these massive logs that would cost thousands of dollars, and I didn’t have a big fan base to release them to. So I was spending all this money on content that was super cool. You can go look it up—search LJR “When This Guy Began to Fall” on YouTube, and you’ll find the series, and there’s three of them. I spray painted Nerf guns and they’re like laser blasters, all that kind of stuff.

But the thing that really moved the needle for me was when I started connecting with my story like I talked about earlier, posting every day on TikTok, shooting all of that with my cell phone.

It doesn’t matter if it looks super cinematic on there or not. It’s more about genuinely connecting with people.

Now when I have super cinematic stuff and I’m connecting with people, that stuff does especially well.

But there are plenty of times where I just got out my phone, set it down in the car, put headphones on and pretended to listen to the song, and then synced that up on TikTok. It’s just a one-take simple video.

And that thing did 10,000 views and made a bump in my Spotify for that one song.

And I’ve gone from like 1,000 monthly listeners to like 4,000—almost 5,000—in the span of a couple months.

And that taught me where it makes sense to focus the most time.

Now, I can make my own content. It’s probably a lot more comfortable for me to shoot with my phone than it is for a lot of other people. And again, that’s where—if you want somebody to make that for you, totally. I’m your guy. But being sustainable and finding your way with that is always the number one.

Michael: Mm-hmm. Cool.

What I’m hearing you say is the person who’s most likely to get value from applying to work with someone like you is the person who has limited time and wants to avoid investing 10,000 hours learning this on their own, stressing out about what to post and when, and creating a content calendar—which you found in practice to be the most important thing for people to get what they want, which generally is to build an audience and connect with people and make an impact with their music.

And to create that content requires a good strategy—posting regularly, creating the right kinds of content, knowing what to post when, and creating a lot of social media posts.

So it seems like it would be a huge relief for the right person to not have to do that all on their own.

So Luke, like I mentioned at the beginning, you are the person more than anyone else in my life that’s transformed how I use videos and how I connect with people through videos.

So thank you for the role that you’ve played in my life and my personal journey.

LJR: Yeah, man.

Michael: This has been really fun connecting and going deeper into your journey and what you’ve created to help solve that pain for artists.

For anyone who’s interested in connecting more, where’s the best place for them to go?

LJR: Yeah, you can definitely reach out to me over social media. I try to check all those. Instagram’s probably the best one for that.

Michael: What’s the handle?

LJR: It’s Luke Justin Roberts for my artist one. But let’s do the business one—LJR Creative. People always think I’m saying “LGR.” It’s LJR—J for Justin. It’s my initials—and then “Creative.” Pretty simple.

But yeah, there should be a button on this video or something where, if you want to apply to work together, you can fill it out and we’ll set up a time to chat.

Michael: Cool. So wherever the big button is—somewhere around this vicinity—they can go.

Awesome. Well, Luke, you’re awesome. And usually we end these the same way that we start them. So let’s go: three, two, one.

LJR: Yeah. Thanks for having me, man.