Multimedia - Recording rooms

The University has several recording studios and recording pods.

These rooms are available to all staff on a self-service basis. All rooms have the ability to do video and audio recording. The studio at Sturt also has green screen technology, which replaces the green wall behind you with a backdrop of your choice (PowerPoint presentation, images, video, live websites or even Skype or WebEx calls).

No specialist skills are required to use these rooms, making high-quality professional-looking video accessible to everyone.

Recording Studios

Social Science South - room 374
Sturt South - room S418

Recording pods

Central Library - room 109 (4 separate pods)
Flinders Medical Centre - room 5E206
Physical Sciences - room 1302
Sturt North - room 331D
Tonsley - room T1 4.18

Access to the rooms
Booking the rooms
Arranging a familiarisation session
Preparation before you arrive
Tips to produce a professional recording
Setting up when you arrive in the room
Technical support
Room help guides

Access to the rooms

All staff cards have access to the rooms. Standard access is between 8am and 6pm, Monday to Friday. If you require access outside of these times or for general access problems, please submit a Service One request (Facilities > Building or room access) requesting access to the required recording room.

Remember: This room is accessible by anyone so please ensure you do not leave your personal belongings in there as it is not secure. This also applies to your USB stick.

Booking the rooms

You are able to manage your own bookings for these rooms using the following process:

Using your Outlook calendar, find a day and time that you’re available and create a new meeting request.
In the To field, enter the room name below to invite the room to your meeting. Add any other meeting attendees.
- Room - U_FMC_5E206_Meeting Room_(3)
- Room - U_LIB_109a_Recording Pod 1 (2)
- Room - U_LIB_109b_Recording Pod 2 (2)
- Room - U_LIB_109c_Recording Pod 3 (2)
- Room - U_LIB_109d_Recording Pod 4 (2)
- Room - U_SSS_374_Recording Studio (5)
- Room - U_STN_N331_Quiet room D_(2)
- Room - U_STS_418_Recording_Studio (4)
- Room - TON_T1_4.18_Recording Studio _(16)
Click on the Scheduling assistant tab to check the availability of the room and other attendees. If the room is already booked at the time you’ve chosen, you will need to adjust the date/time.
Complete any other details associated with your meeting and click Send.
If the room is available at your chosen time your booking will automatically be accepted. If the room is already booked, your request will automatically be rejected, and you’ll need to send a new one.

If you have made a booking and can no longer make it – please cancel your booking so other staff have the option to use the room at that time.

Arranging a familiarisation session

If you are unfamiliar with the room, a member of your local eLearning team can run a session in the room with you. This session should take no more than 30 minutes. Please submit a Service One request (Education > Recording room familiarisation session) to arrange this and a member of the eLearning team will book this for you at a mutually convenient time.

Once the familiarisation session is booked you may want to consider booking a recording session directly after your familiarisation session to practice recording something.

Preparation before you arrive

Create your PowerPoint slides

Set the aspect ratio of your presentation to 16:9 (widescreen mode) to fill the screen in the room and prevent black bars from appearing down both sides of your final recording.
Leave a blank area in each slide to provide you with space to stand without obscuring your information.
Make your slides visually interesting yet neat, tidy and clear. Limit the number of words and use sharp, high-quality images. Complicated and busy slides will overwhelm your audience.
Use colour but consider visually impaired audiences and make your background and text visually contrasting.
Ensure a minimum font size of 24pt to ensure readability on a small screen (phone or tablet).
You may want to use some of the Flinders corporate PowerPoint slides. If so, use the Recording Studio Powerpoint slides.
Maintain a consistent look across all slides (background/fonts/colours).

Plan your message

We suggest preparing a clear and concise script to keep yourself on track and prevent you from forgetting anything important.
Most rooms don't have teleprompter/auto-cue technology so make sure you rehearse beforehand. This will help you to appear relaxed and natural.
Keep your message generic to ensure your video is reusable. Don’t include dates/times (of assessments for example) as these will make your video single-use only.
Aim for your recordings to contain shorter snippets of information (<= 7 minutes if possible). If a concept takes longer to explain, find natural breaks and create multiple videos.
Consider adding questions or prompting reflections within your video, giving the appearance of 1:1 dialogue, making the video more personal and possibly promoting deeper-level thinking.
Ensure any resources you did not create yourself are copyright compliant and can be rebroadcast e.g. a YouTube clip cannot be recorded and then published in FLO. You can submit a “Copyright for my teaching material’ or a "Copyright for research" request in Service One if you have any questions about your material.

Dress for success

Consider what you wear to ensure it works well on camera and with your slides.
If using the green screen room, don’t wear any green as you will be replaced by your backdrop.
Aim for a bold single colour that contrasts with your slide background colour.
Avoid thin stripes and plain white (it’s too stark under the lights).
Be aware of lanyards or shiny jewellery that can rattle or reflect the light.

What to bring with you on the day

An empty USB (16GB USB 3.0 version is recommended. This will store approximately 3 hours of recording time).
Your presentation on a separate USB or available via the network.
Your mobile phone in case you need to authenticate with Okta when you log into the system.
Your staff ID card to access the room.

Tips to produce a professional recording

Engage your audience

The camera is the connection to your audience – good camera interaction is important.
Use body language and expression to connect and engage with your audience.
Show enthusiasm for your subject through facial expressions, voice and hand gestures and include humour where possible (making sure it is culturally inclusive).
If you use a script, consider how you are going to read the script and maintain eye contact with the camera. Do not read large slabs of a script looking down at notes on the lectern etc. eLearning support staff can provide support in mimicking a teleprompter/auto-cue, but it is still better to be well-rehearsed than just reading multiple paragraphs of text from paper or screen.
Motivate your audience by explaining what they will get out of watching your video.
If recording two people conversing (for example an interview with an invited content expert), the presenters can alternate between looking at each other and the camera – this engages the audience as the 'third person' in the interview/discussion.

Don't be the distraction

Make sure you maintain eye contact with the camera keeping your head still. It is distracting if your eyes are roaming.
Speak clearly at a consistent volume, and at a moderate speed.
Don't constantly move around, stay in position in front of the camera so that your audience can focus on you and read your body language. Although moving back and forth across the stage can add to the entertainment value of your recording, try to avoid overusing this stage effect

Creating visual engagement

Use explanations of concepts that have worked well with your students in the past, preferably with strong and relevant visuals as support.
You can use annotation and animation within your presentation to add to your explanations and the visual engagement.
An alternative to always being in shot is to have some slides where you leave the stage (get out of shot completely), so your slide is the focus. When ready you can step back into shot and continue your presentation. This allows the audience to focus on different things, and not on you constantly.

Don't rush

When explaining or demonstrating websites or specialist software, move your mouse slowly and allow time to show hover hints or popups. The mouse cursor in your final video may end up being very small, so the added benefit of the room is that you can point to items.
If you muddle your words, start the sentence, or even the whole section or PowerPoint slide, again. You can edit the mistakes out later. When restarting, compose yourself and leave a few seconds of silence and no movement before starting speaking, to facilitate the editing process later.

Setting up when you arrive in the room

Try to prevent unnecessary interruptions

Place your phone out of sight and switch it off or turn it to silent.
If you have any other software open on the computer, close it to prevent pop-up or audio interruptions (e.g. email notifications)
Pop-up interruptions may be an issue if trying to demonstrate/record websites. You can contact your eLearning team for advice.

Make things readable for your audience

Magnify the text size of the computer screen you are using as background to your recording whenever you can.
This is particularly important for web pages and Excel.

Know how to navigate your presentation

If possible, learn the shortcut key commands to navigate through your presentation during your recording.
Avoid going back to previous slides to re-explain a concept – students can review the video as many times as they need.

Good audio is crucial to engagement

Always check the microphone is working correctly before starting your recording.
Some rooms have fixed room microphones, or you will need to attach one of the lapel microphones to yourself and switch it on.
If using a lapel mic, place the microphone cable under your clothing if possible, to hide it from the camera and avoid getting tangled with your hands during your recording and place the radio transmitter unit in a pocket/belt using the attached belt clip.

Technical support

As these are self-service recording rooms, on-demand technical support is not always available. If you encounter any difficulties, please contact your eLearning team on 15000.

If there are problems with your recording, you can book another session in the room.

Room help guides