Studio Hire for a TV Commercial: A Producer's Checklist

A commercial is a short film with more people watching the monitor. The creative is usually settled by the time a producer is looking at studios; what is not settled is whether the room can hold the day the agency has sold. That is a logistics question, and it is answered before the recce, by checking a short list of things against the storyboard and the schedule.

This is that list, written from the booking side of the desk. It applies to a thirty-second spot, a brand film and a set of social cutdowns alike. Where it mentions what Scope does and charges, those are the published facts; where a number is not published, it says so.

Count the set-ups before you pick the block

Go through the boards and count lighting states, not shots. Three shots in one set-up are cheap; three shots in three set-ups are three rigs and two relights. Then remember the organising fact of a hire studio: at Scope, set-up and pack-down sit inside the booked time, so a four-hour half day is four hours including the rig and the strike. A commercial with a product table, a presenter and a lifestyle vignette is three set-ups, and three set-ups is a full day, not a half.

• One or two set-ups, one look, no dialogue: a half day of four hours can work if the lighting plan is drawn before you arrive.
• Two to four set-ups, or any wardrobe or set change: price the full day of eight hours and stop arguing with it.
• More than that, or a second unit, or stills running alongside video: look at the whole building so the set-ups can be pre-rigged in parallel rooms rather than queued in one.

Studio A is £160 for two hours, £320 for a half day and £620 for a full day; Studio B is £120, £220 and £420. The gap between the two blocks is smaller than an overrun with a crew of ten on the clock. The running order that makes those hours work is in planning a studio shoot day.

The pack shot wants seamless white

Almost every commercial ends on the product, usually on clean white with no horizon. That is what an infinity cove is for. Studio A has a white drive-in cove, so the pack shot, the hero product and anything that needs to float on nothing can be lit on a surface with no edge in it rather than composited later. If the brand film is on a coloured world instead, Studio B has a colour-washable cyclorama, and the choice between a cove and a keyed background is worked through in green screen or white cove.

Ask who repaints the cove between bookings; scuffs on a white floor are a grade problem, and the grade is where commercial budgets go to die.

Presenter dialogue needs a treated room

If a presenter speaks to camera, or the brand film is built on interviews, the big cove is the wrong room for the sound. Studio A is not sound treated. Studio B is the room-within-a-room built for exactly this, with blackout, an edit and playback area and make-up and styling zones alongside. A common commercial day splits across both: product and movement in A, the talking in B. The same reasoning governs documentary interviews in a studio; the sync, wild track and ADR side is in sound for video in a studio.

Book the room for the sound you need to record, then make the picture work in it. The reverse is how ADR sessions get booked.

Where the client and the agency sit

A commercial brings people who are not crew: the client, the account team, the creatives. They need a monitor, a chair and Wi-Fi, and they need to be out of the eyeline of the floor. Ask any studio where that is. At Scope, every booking comes with the client lounge, the kitchen and the dressing and prep room, so video village can sit in the lounge and the floor stays a floor. If the day needs privacy — an unreleased product, an embargoed campaign — the buyout puts nobody else in the building.

Voiceover the same day

An offline edit with scratch VO is fine; a scratch VO that becomes the final because nobody booked a booth is not. If the script has a voice on it and the artist is on set anyway, record it on the day. Scope's music studio has a treated vocal booth and a large-diaphragm condenser, hired dry from £80 for a half day or with an engineer at £140 a half day, so the voiceover can go down while the floor is being struck. Bring the script in its final approved form.

Load-in, parking and the door

Commercials travel heavy: a product table, flats, a dolly, cases of grip, the client's stock. Where the van parks decides the first hour. At Scope the parking is on site in the yard in front of the unit, and load-in to Studio A is at ground level through the roller door — no stairs, no lift. The door dimensions are not published, so if you are bringing a vehicle, a large build or a flat that does not break down, send the measurements when you enquire and have them confirmed. The full method is in planning the van, the yard and the door.

Lights are a separate line

Do not read a room rate as a lit room. In every room at Scope but the DJ room, lights are charged separately from the room rate — please enquire about our lights and we will quote for what your shoot needs. There is no published in-house kit list, so tell the studio what the gaffer has drawn and get what is on site confirmed in writing before you hire in duplicates. The same goes for grip, stands and the screen if you are keying. That line belongs in the budget next to the room; how to budget a studio shoot lays the items out.

What to ask when the numbers are on request

Some studio specs are published and some are given on enquiry. Scope publishes its room rates, the floor area of Studio A and its block structure; it does not publish ceiling heights, cove dimensions, power supply, door dimensions, opening hours, overtime or deposit terms, so those are asked for, with your specifics attached, and confirmed in writing.

• The tallest thing on the day — a stand at full height, a flat, a vehicle — and whether it clears the ceiling and the door.
• The total draw of the lighting plan, and whether the room's power will carry it or a generator is needed.
• Call time and wrap time, and what the overtime rate is if the day runs past the block.
• The deposit and the cancellation terms. Scope's notice period is 48 hours; same-day cancellations and no-shows are non-refundable. Deposit terms are not published on the site, so ask for them when you book.
• Insurance. Scope's terms require the production to hold appropriate cover, and the paperwork guide covers the releases and clearances that go with it.

When a small stage is the wrong size

Honesty from the studio side: Scope is a small stage. It is not a sound stage and it has no lighting grid, so lights go on stands and the floor fills up accordingly. A large-format set build with a flying rig, a car commercial that needs the vehicle to drive through frame, or a day with three simultaneous units are the wrong shape for 1,200 sq ft, and a producer who books them in anyway will spend the day fighting the room. What a sound stage is and when you do not need one draws that line properly.

What the small stage is right for is the majority of commercial work that never needed a grid: product on white, a presenter in a treated room, a vignette on a dressed corner, social cutdowns alongside the hero. The commercial shoot studio page describes how those days run here, and shooting a short film or commercial in a studio covers the creative case for control over location.