How to Film a DJ Set in a Studio

A filmed DJ set is an odd shoot. Very little moves: one person, one booth, an hour or more of hands, headphones and the occasional look up. What makes it worth watching is decided before the first track: where the cameras sit, where the sound comes from, and whether the light still looks good forty minutes in.

This is how to plan it, whether the set is a mix video, a live stream or a session for a label channel. If the treatment is a performance video with a band or a story, start with how to shoot a music video in a studio instead.

Plan the cameras around a booth that does not move

A booth is a fixed object, so the shots are known in advance. The job is to cover them without any camera appearing in another's frame. Four positions cover most sets:

• The wide, from the front: the DJ, the whole booth and the backdrop. This is the shot the edit returns to, so it never moves.
• The hands: a tight shot on the mixer and players, from the side or above, for the transitions people watch DJ videos for.
• The DJ's view: a small camera on the DJ's side of the booth, looking down across the decks.
• The profile: side-on to the DJ, which catches the head-down, headphones-on moments the front camera sees only as the top of a head.

Match lens height and headroom between the front cameras so the cut does not jump. At Scope, the booth in the DJ room is hand-built concrete and built to be shot from the front, with a one-of-one canvas behind the decks, so the wide has its backdrop before anyone has dressed a thing.

Take the audio off the mixer, not the camera

The mix is the product, and a camera microphone in a room with the monitors running records the room, not the mix. Record the master out of the mixer to a dedicated recorder or interface, and treat each camera's own sound as a guide track only: it is what lets the edit line every camera up against the clean recording by its waveform. Clap once on camera at the start, and again after anything stops.

Set the recording level with plenty of headroom. DJs push levels as a set builds, and a mix recorded into the red is distorted for good. If you want the room or a crowd in the final sound, put up a separate microphone on its own track and blend it in the edit rather than relying on the cameras.

In the DJ room, the DJM-A9 has the outputs to take a clean feed off the master, and you are welcome to record it. Bring your own recorder or interface: we have not published a capture chain for this room, so ask before the day rather than assuming one is waiting.

Lighting that still reads an hour in

Professional film lighting is rigged in the DJ room and included in the rate, the only room at Scope where lighting comes with the booking. So the work on the day is checking how that light reads on your cameras rather than building it.

• Watch the screens. Player and mixer displays are light sources in their own right and can read far brighter than the face beside them, so expose the wide for the DJ and check the hands shot on its own.
• Set white balance manually and lock it, so colour does not drift between cameras or across a long take.
• Look for flicker or rolling bands on the displays before the set starts. The shutter and frame-rate rules are in camera settings for studio shooting.
• Dress the booth to camera. Cables, drinks, phones and bags on the booth all end up in the wide.

Keep every camera rolling for the whole set

A set is one continuous take, far longer than most cameras are usually asked to roll, and stopping and starting is how the best transition gets missed. Before the day, check every camera for:

• A recording limit or an overheating cut-off on long takes, especially at high resolutions and bitrates.
• Card space for the whole set plus a margin, worked out at the bitrate you are actually recording.
• Power: a battery that outlasts the set, or mains power with the cable dressed out of shot.
• Manual exposure and manual focus on every locked-off position, so nothing hunts halfway through a track.

What to bring, and what to ask for

The room supplies the rig: two AlphaTheta CDJ-3000X players either side of a Pioneer DJ DJM-A9, monitored on a pair of Yamaha HS8s. Two white Reloop RP-7000 turntables and a microphone go on the booth on request at no extra cost; say so when you book and they are set up before you arrive. Cameras are not included, so bring your own, with tripods, recorders, cables and cards.

Streaming rather than recording? There is high-speed Wi-Fi throughout the building, but measured connection speeds are not published, so send your platform and bitrate and we will confirm in writing whether the connection supports it. And if the set is going online, check the platform's current rules on DJ mixes before the day, not after the upload.

How long to book

The DJ room is £75 an hour with a four-hour minimum, so £300 for four hours and £575 for eight, with set-up and pack-down inside the booked time. Four hours suits a single set of an hour or so with time to rig, test the feed and pack down; back-to-back DJs, or a set plus press content, is where eight earns its keep. The room is not part of a whole-building buyout and is booked separately, even on a buyout day, and everything else about it is on the DJ studio hire page.