Ever seen one of those kiosks at the mall where you can make CDs of yourself singing karaoke? No? Yeah, I don’t know about it either. It was some guy I know who recorded himself singing there every night of the week and kept all the optical discs for his personal collection. Oh yeah, the guy just happened to scrawl my name with a marker on the discs and dumped them at my house too.
Anyway, with that chapter of my life over, it’s time to turn over a new leaf. Like shooting videos of myself for later uploading to YouTube. And MyStudio, a self-service video recording kiosk, offers a heck of a way to do it, capturing you in HD video with studio-quality sound and a hefty lot of choices in both background music and scenes.
Want to film yourself singing You Belong With Me with a naked Taylor Swift in the background? I don’t think they have that in the options, but you can choose from over one thousand others, including cityscapes and nature scenes.
MyStudio is a stand-alone recording studio that you can use to give your YouTube uploads an impeccable level of sophistication. It uses Hollywood-style green screen technology with adequate background-specific lighting, so you can prance around like a dork while boasting professional-level production quality. Later, you can edit the videos online, download it, order DVDs, print stills and even share it with the world at large.
Aside from recording yourself singing acapella, you can choose karaoke music from any song on EMI’s catalog (there’s an eye-level teleprompter inside if you don’t know the lyrics), supply your own music or plug in your own instruments (there are five available ports). Up to ten people can fit inside the sound-proof kiosk, which means you can shoot your whole band playing live or produce your own telenovela with a full cast of characters.
Recording a five minute video in MyStudio costs $20. Relatively new, they currently have kiosks at only four locations in the US. You can check the website for more details.