Hey I’m Scott Brandon Hoffman, AKA “BRANDON AF,” the Host and Creator of The (Mostly) Conscious Late Night Show!
Have you ever wondered what would happen if Oprah, Ellen, Jimmy Fallon, and SNL had a baby? My guess is probably not, but I did, (because I’m a little weird), and that’s how my show was born.
I’m the guy who delivered the baby that’s using Ecamm to make this cool show. Confession time, the baby’s not really old enough to know how to use Ecamm YET, (but I’m teaching him every day and he’s almost ready to run solo and wear the producer hat), but in the meantime, I’m doing it, just don’t tell anyone.
I’m very honored and excited to be here and share my journey of using Ecamm for the creation of this show with you.
It’s truly been mind blowing. I LOVE Ecamm. It’s been a TOTAL game changer for me, my show, my business, my brand, and everything I do, and I freaking love it!
Did I say how much I love it?
And by the way, I LOVE IT!
Let’s take a little ride behind the scenes?
How It All Started
A few years ago, I had the idea come to me for The (Mostly) Conscious Late Night Show.
WHY?
Because it’s a playground where I can do EVERYTHING that I love…
Connect to and talk to amazing humans who are doing EPIC things in the world, share their stories, and my music, songs, spoken word poetry, comedy sketches, inspirational videos etc, AND a place to showcase and collaborate with other AMAZING artists, creators, performers, and high level entrepreneurs, and other cool humans…ALL while having outrageous fun, dropping wisdom bombs, and doing our best to change the world.
In the first iteration, (AKA BEFORE ECAMM), I was using Zoom.
Looking back at my first attempt at this show, it kind of makes me cringe a little. Two people staring at each other for the whole show, the awkward pauses, the side by side never changing positioning for the full one to 2 hours of my show, etc, it’s a real hoot. I was definitely a new host and had never done anything like this before, but I had a lot of passion and courage to just start and go for it.
It turned out ok, the “content and conversations” were pretty good, and people seemed to like it because it was authentic, fun, and from the heart. And I know a lot of people still use Zoom for their podcasts, I totally get it.
BUT I’m a live wire AND I had a different vision for my show that did not include just being a talking head podcast like everyone else had. I wanted to do something BIGGER, BOLDER, MORE CREATIVE, MORE VISUAL, and DEF MORE ENTERTAINING and TV style.
The BIG vision for the show is to be a one of a kind, NEW and INNOVATIVE kind of TV show: a talk, late night, entertainment, and variety show all in one, reaching, impacting, entertaining, and making a difference in millions of people’s lives around the world, and doing it in front of live audiences online AND ultimately in person in theaters.
After I sat on the sidelines for a bit, (OK, confession #2, it might have actually been three years, because quite frankly, I wasn’t excited about the show “quality” and “flow” with that old style, look, and feel that I had).
I decided that I was ready to jump into the next iteration of the show.
I had scheduled a big private event launch, we were going out to millions of people via a JV email campaign with my speaker/guest partners, and was under a VERY tight deadline with A LOT of pressure to get it done quickly. (way to up the pain level Scott!)
I could have EASILY done the next episodes on Zoom again like last time, and kept it easy BUT…
ONE DAY, ( I love how the Universe works), I came across a video, and I was like WHAAAAT is that??
How are they doing that??
And more importantly, WHERE can I get that coolness for MY SHOW??
After a bit of research and a little synchronicity, I found out that they were using a software called Ecamm.
So with just a couple of weeks BEFORE I was supposed to record my next 22 episodes, I made a decision to pivot, so I COMMITTED and got me some Ecamm and WENT ALL IN!
I got everything up and running with some creativity in the backend studio, started a little messy, experimented a bit, hit a few walls, but there it was, I had a show and a flow that looked AMAZING and I was ready to ROCK out of the gates.
And then the MAGIC HAPPENED!
Why I LOVE Ecamm!
Ecamm allowed me to have a beautiful, cool, custom background with my show branding and logo and the ability to create individual scenes, while doing live interviews and solo recordings, where I am able to pop in and out of one shots, two shots, animated lower thirds and images, videos, and promos by just pushing a button or clicking a mouse etc.
Being able to do all these edits on the fly is cray cray!
I turned my show into a full on Hollywood TV style spectacular production AND attracted big awesome guests right out of the gates (because of my unique show idea AND the production quality thanks to Ecamm.
My guests include Multiple Grammy Nominated and Emmy Award Winning Artists, top comedians, TV producers, influencers, mega CEO’s, International best selling authors, and other rockstars who all just LOVE the show and the Ecamm setup.
These are people who would have normally said no to me because I don’t have an audience yet, and didn’t even have ONE episode up on the internet yet, BUT they said HELL YES in a heartbeat, count me in! AND I had a ton of other people PITCHING ME to be on the show happening right away!
Having this caliber of guests right from the start gave me instant credibility and helped me stand out from the crowd, the status quo, and the same ol’ same ol’ look and quality that everybody else was using.
ALL of this without being a tech geek AND before I EVEN had ONE episode up. I have to say that again, all this BEFORE I even had ONE EPISODE up on YouTube, that’s how excited they were to be on the show and how using Ecamm stands out, PLUS it makes THEM look great and gives them credibility as well!
When my guests come in and are waiting in the greenroom while I’m doing my intros, I smile because they are ALWAYS giggling, laughing, and have BIG SMILES on their faces, EVERY SINGLE TIME.
They are blown away with Ecamm because they see the uniqueness of the show, the production quality, and all the cool edits and promo pieces happening in real time like a TV show.
I am able to showcase and WOW my guests from the start and it’s GAME ON!
And when I bring them on to the opening two shot, they are automatically warmed up and excited to ROCK! It’s instant rapport building.
They feel happy and at home and KNOW that this is going to be something different than another typical Zoom style show. Nothing against that kind of show, but Ecamm takes it to a WHOLE NEW LEVEL where the sky’s the limit, and my hosting skills and energy are pretty epic these days too, even if I do say so myself!
How I Use Ecamm
Having a greenroom where the guests can chill out while you’re doing the intro AND they can see the whole live show production from their end is REALLY COOL!
Also the ability for me to be able to push a button on my Stream Deck or with a click of a mouse and be able to instantly hop to a one shot, two shot, animated book graphic, video, even promo graphic, or a song etc, in REAL time is DOPE for me AND the guest, that is what blew me away initially when I saw Ecamm.
Here’s the way that I have my scenes set up and the flow for the show that happens during each conversation/interview…
- Cold open where my name flies in along with the logo, and I do a little teaser.
- The show video intro, where I play my late night show video and music along with announcing me as the host and tonight’s special guest, (them), all in a super cool voice over audio of a crazy late night announcer, AKA ME, and THIS is where they usually start giggling and smiling BEFORE I introduce them and bring them onto the stage. You can hear it on all the recordings too!
- Then onto a solo shot of me with a voice over audio jingle that says “BRANDON AF” in a funny voice. (that would also be mine haha)
- Next onto the two shot where I bring the guest on with me with animated name tags, logo, and a super cool dropping moon since it is a late night show.
- Then throughout the show I go from a guest solo, two shot of me and the guest, and a solo of me, that all happens back and forth while we’re in our conversation.
- After the main segment, I take them into the “wrap up room,” also with cool animations. We finish up, I acknowledge them, ask for a last piece of wisdom to share etc, and I tell them I’ll meet them back in the green room or the green juice room as I call it haha. If they have a book, film, TV show, event, or music to promote, I will pop to a scene that has that in there again as an invitation to the audience to go see it, get it, etc.
- Then I drop into an outro, where I talk to the audience, thank them for watching, and say something beautiful, encouraging, and inspirational to them so they can leave with a positive feeling and good energy.
- Finally I go to my show poster with cool music and I say please subscribe to my channel, like, comment, do all the things…
And that’s the flow!
If I Was You, I’d Get Some Ecamm!
My take, I absolutely LOVE using Ecamm, there’s something about the software, there is NOTHING like it out there anywhere.
And for me it’s ALSO the CULTURE, the live streamers and podcasters, the support team, the Facebook community, and everyone that I know and work with behind the scenes are just EPIC and the BEST humans ever, total positive energy and big beautiful hearts!
So what I’m sayin’ is…
Go get you some Ecamm, you won’t regret it!
I’ll wait here…
Did you get it?
I hope so.
Thanks for reading and going on this journey with me.
And I hope to see you on the inside of the Ecamm Fam!
This article was written and submitted by Scott Brandon Hoffman from The (Mostly) Conscious Late Night Show. You can learn more about Scott by visiting his YouTube channel.
