How a small regional studio found room for a second set

The studio Marcus brought us

Marcus manages a small streaming studio in a converted warehouse unit outside Taunton. When he first rang us in the early autumn, his team was recording interviews and short magazine programmes in a single room that had grown around them over several years. Cameras sat wherever there was floor space, cables ran across the walkways, and the desk used for interviews doubled as storage between shoots.

His request was modest. He wanted the room to hold a second set, so that a presenter could record a segment on one side while the other was being reset. He did not want a rebuild, and he could not close the studio for weeks. That limit shaped everything we did afterwards, and it is why I wanted to tell his story as the lighting designer who joined the planning visits.

Our first job was simply to listen to how a normal recording day went, from the first arrival to the last cable coiled away.

Walking the room before drawing anything

We spent a morning in the unit while Marcus's crew ran a real recording. Nobody stopped work for us. We measured the floor, noted where the ceiling dipped under a ventilation duct, and watched where people actually walked rather than where the old plan said they would.

Several things became clear quickly. The main walkway crossed the interview area, so every reset meant stepping around a camera. The power came from only two wall points, so extension leads were doing the work of a proper distribution. And the room had a hard echo that the crew had learned to ignore, though it was plainly costing them in the edit.

I made my own notes on the ceiling height and on where daylight crept in through a high window, since that would affect how we placed lamps.

• Measure the room while the team works in it
• Mark every walking route in use during a shoot
• Note power points, ducts and any daylight sources
• Listen for echo before anyone mentions it

Dividing one room into two working areas

The layout we proposed placed the interview set along the long wall and a standing presenter set at the far end, with the camera positions arranged so each could shoot without seeing the other. The walkway moved to the edge of the room, leaving the middle clear. A low folding screen, stored against the wall when not needed, gave the crew a way to separate the areas for sound.

We drew the plan on paper first and talked it through with Marcus and his two operators, who corrected us twice. One of them pointed out that the presenter would turn towards the door during a handover, which changed where we put the monitor.

That kind of correction is the reason we draw plans with the production team and not for them. The final layout was better for it, and the crew trusted it because they had shaped it.

Taming the echo and tidying the cables

For the sound, we proposed absorbent panels on the two side walls and a heavy curtain across the rear of the room, rather than covering every surface. The aim was a controlled space, not a dead one, because presenters speak more naturally in a room that still has some life. A few panels hung at the first reflection points made the biggest difference.

The cabling plan was less visible but mattered just as much. We specified fixed floor and wall boxes at each set, carrying power, audio and network lines, with labelled runs back to a small rack. The old loose leads were removed from the walkways entirely.

Marcus told us afterwards that the first thing his crew noticed was not the picture or the sound, but that nobody tripped any more.

• Absorbent panels at the first reflection points
• A heavy curtain behind the camera positions
• Fixed wall and floor boxes at each set
• Labelled cable runs back to one small rack

Lighting two sets from one grid

My part was to light both sets from a single overhead grid, so the ceiling did not become crowded. Each set received its own key and fill, with a shared back light that could be angled towards either side. Everything was placed so that no lamp spilled onto the neighbouring set or into a camera lens.

I kept the rigging simple and within the load limits of the existing ceiling fixings, which a surveyor checked before we hung anything. Programming was also kept plain: a handful of saved looks the crew could recall from a single panel, with manual control left available for the occasions when a guest arrived in a bright jacket and the settings needed adjusting.

Daylight from the high window was managed with a blind, so the picture stayed consistent from morning to late afternoon.

What changed and what we would repeat

The work was done in stages across weekends, so the studio kept recording on weekdays. By the middle of the autumn the crew was running both sets in the same room, and a reset between segments took minutes instead of the best part of an hour. Marcus has not asked for a larger room since.

If I were to name what made the difference, it was the early morning spent watching real work, and the willingness of the crew to argue with our drawings. Not every studio has the same constraints as Marcus's, and a different room would have produced a different plan.

What we would repeat anywhere is the order: observe first, draw with the team, treat the sound, fix the cables, then light the space.

Marcus's studio did not need to be bigger; it needed to be understood. A clear walkway, controlled sound, fixed cabling and a single sensible lighting grid gave his team room for two sets in one space. If your own studio feels cramped, begin by watching a normal day of recording. The plan usually starts to appear on its own, and our team is glad to talk it through.