Set Building in a Hire Studio: Flats, Props and the Strike

Building a set for a studio shoot covered the design argument — build what the lens sees, brace everything, plan the strike first. This guide is the other half: the logistics. How the footprint is planned against a cove, how flats get from the workshop to the floor, and how it all comes down again before the booking ends.

It is written around Studio A, the room at Scope that set builds go into: 1,200 sq ft, a white drive-in infinity cove, full blackout curtains and a roller door at ground level from the yard.

Plan the footprint against the cove

A cove is a curved wall, and a set is usually a set of straight ones. Decide early whether the build stands in front of the cove, using the white as a horizonless backdrop beyond a window or a doorway, or on the open floor, ignoring the cove entirely. The first saves a wall — the cove is your fourth side — but puts the set close to the one surface in the room you must not damage. The second leaves the cove clean as a lit white ground for the other set-ups in the day.

Draw the ground plan to scale before anything is cut, with the camera and lighting positions on it, not just the walls. Then send it to the studio. Cove dimensions and ceiling height at Scope are given on request rather than published, so ask for both and check your tallest flat and your widest camera move against them. The set build hire page is the place to start that conversation.

Flats, and how they travel

A flat is a timber frame skinned in ply or hardboard, painted and dressed to read as a wall. Flats are built in standard widths so they fit a van, a door and each other. Set designers think in flats for a reason: a wall that arrives in three pieces goes through a roller door, stands on braces and weights, and comes apart in minutes at the strike.

• Build to the vehicle first, then to the door. Measure the van’s load bay; a flat that fits the room but not the van never leaves the workshop.
• Label every flat, brace and fixing by position before it travels. The order they come off the van is the order they go up.
• Pack the fixings, the filler, the touch-up paint and the tools in their own crate. The hour spent looking for the right screws is the hour the shoot loses.

Pre-build off site, or build in the room?

Pre-building off site is almost always right. Paint dries in the workshop rather than in your booked hours, mistakes are found where there is a saw bench, and the work in the room becomes assembly, which is fast, rather than construction, which is not. The studio day should be erecting, joining, filling the seams, touching up and dressing.

Building in the room makes sense only when the set cannot travel — a very large piece, or something built around a vehicle — or when the production has booked enough consecutive days that the studio becomes the workshop. If you do build on site, ask first about dust, paint, cutting and waste, and agree it before the materials arrive.

The build and the strike live inside the booked time

This is the line that decides the schedule. At Scope, set-up and pack-down are inside the booked time, and a built set is set-up. The clock starts when the roller door opens, and the room has to be clear when the block ends. That is why a built set is a full-day booking at £620 rather than a half day at £320 — the two-hour block at £160 is for a set-up that fits in a bag.

If the set is bigger than a day, book consecutive full days, or take the whole-building buyout from £1,500 a day so the set can stand while nobody else is on site. A set stays up only for the time the room is booked; two separate days do not make the room yours overnight. Plan the strike with the same care as the build — quicker, but still a crew, a van and an hour or two before the end of the block. Planning a studio shoot day shows where it sits on the call sheet.

Protecting the cove

The cove is the room’s seamless white, and it is the thing most easily spoiled by a build. A leaned flat, a brace on its curve or a dropped tin leaves a mark that is somebody’s problem after you leave. Treat the curve as out of bounds, and if the design needs anything to touch the cove — a fixing, a flat butted to it, a painted change — agree it with the studio in writing before the day. Lay floor protection where the build stands, keep a route between the door and the set that does not cross the white, and brief the whole call about it before the first flat comes off the van.

Load-in through the roller door

At Scope the van parks in the yard in front of the unit and the set comes in at ground level through Studio A’s roller door — no stairs, no lift. Even so, it is a door, and its dimensions are on request rather than published, so ask before you commit to the size of your largest piece. Studio load-in planning covers the van, the yard and the running order; the short version is to unload in build order and stage flats along a protected route.

Dressing, props and lighting the set

Once the walls stand and the seams are filled, the set belongs to the dresser. Props arrive in labelled crates by set and by scene; hero props travel separately and are unpacked last. Dress to the camera, checking each set-up through the lens rather than from the door. The building’s dressing and prep room is where wardrobe and make-up work while the art department finishes.

With no grid in Studio A, everything rigs from stands on the floor, so leave the gaps behind and beside the flats that the lamps need, and run cables so they cross neither the set nor the cove. In every room but the DJ room, lights are charged separately from the room rate — please enquire about our lights and we will quote for what the set needs. Studio lighting fundamentals covers lighting a built interior, and the short film guide covers playing a set as a location.

The build is on the call sheet or it is not happening. Write it down with a start time, a crew and an end time, exactly like a scene.

What to ask before you cut timber

• Ceiling height and cove dimensions — on request at Scope.
• The roller door’s clear opening, for the largest piece.
• Power — what is available and where. On request; do not assume a figure.
• What may touch the cove, the floor and the walls, in writing.
• Whether you may paint, cut or sand on site, and who takes the waste.
• Whether consecutive days or a buyout fit the build better than one long day — how to budget a studio shoot has the arithmetic.
• The lights quote — please enquire about our lights — so the prelight is costed alongside the build.