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I've run enough e-commerce product video shoots to know that the studio brief is genuinely different from a product photography brief — and not just because there's a camera rolling. The floor plan matters differently. The power requirements are higher. The turnaround between setups is tighter. And the biggest mistake I see people make is booking a studio that works brilliantly for product stills and then spending the first two hours of the day working around its limitations for video.

Here's the actual spec checklist, and the reasoning behind it.

Why e-comm video is harder on studios than stills

Product stills can be shot in a room with two lights, a shooting table, and a good photographer. You can pull a six-product catalogue shoot out of a 30sqm space with a couple of Profoto B10 units and a MacBook running Capture One. The requirements are genuinely small.

Add a camera that records video and the brief expands: you need a consistent lighting setup that doesn't drift between takes, which means continuous light rather than flash. Continuous light — whether you're running Aputure LS 600d Pro units (≤720W each), LED panels, or anything with a dimmer — adds significantly to your power draw. Run two 600d heads plus a background light and a practical, and you're at 2kW+ continuous. That's not a 13A plug-in situation.

You also need consistent colour temperature across all your sources. LED panels at different dimmer percentages, daylight coming through a window that isn't perfectly controlled — these things don't matter much for a stills shot you can colour grade independently. They matter a lot when you're cutting between product takes and the colour temperature shifts 200K between clips. Either commit to full blackout and matched LEDs, or commit to the daylight source and add no artificial light at all. Mixing without proper control creates two days of post work for what should have been a clean catalogue delivery.

Floor plan: the spec the listing never mentions

Product video setups come in two main shapes. The first is a tabletop or shooting table setup — camera overhead or at a low angle, controlled lighting rig, sometimes a motorised turntable. This doesn't need a big room. It needs a room with a ceiling high enough to hang a top-light overhead, independent power circuits for the rig and the table, and enough space around the table for the crew to move without bumping into each other every thirty seconds.

The second is the hero product setup — standing a trainer on a seamless for a lifestyle-adjacent video, shooting a tech product on a 9ft paper roll, doing a cosmetics hero against a clean white cove. This needs more floor. Not enormous — a 6m x 8m clear shooting area is usually enough for a typical e-comm hero setup — but enough that you can get a camera on a slider or dolly without crowding the talent or the product.

The one thing most listings skip: floor flatness. For tabletop product video with a motorised turntable, even a slight tilt means your product appears to drift during the rotation. Most purpose-built studios have flat floors. Most converted industrial spaces don't. Ask, and if the studio isn't sure, go and check with a spirit level before you commit to a turntable-heavy brief.

Power: what you actually need

For a contained tabletop e-comm video setup — two continuous LED heads, a background light, monitors, and a MacBook running capture software — you're drawing 2–3kW consistently. Any serious studio should handle that on a standard 20A dedicated circuit without drama.

Where it gets complicated is the multi-setup day. If you're shooting three different product categories across the day — cosmetics, homewares, tech — you may be completely redesigning the rig between each. That means your gaffer needs to move lights, swap out modifiers, possibly change the colour temperature of the whole setup. Having all your lights on a single circuit makes this slower and harder. Having two or three independent circuits — so you can independently control and adjust without killing the whole rig — makes it significantly cleaner.

The questions to ask the studio:

What is the dedicated power supply for the studio floor? You want at least two independent 20A circuits for a mid-scale product video setup.
Is the power on a ring main shared with other studios in the building, or a dedicated feed?
Is there a 32A commando socket on the studio floor, or do I need to bring adaptors?
What's the fuse protection type? MCBs are fine. Rewireable fuses mean someone needs to know where the fuse box is and have spares.

The blackout question

Product video on a catalogue brief almost always wants full control of the light — clean shadows, consistent colour temperature, no variance between takes. That means blackout. Not "we have curtains" blackout. Actual blackout curtains or shutters that seal the windows completely and keep the room at zero ambient light when the studio door is closed.

The problem: lots of studios describe their curtains as "blackout" when they mean "heavy enough that you can't see outside clearly." In a room at 3pm in July, the light coming around the edges of inadequate curtains will wreak havoc on your footage if you're relying on consistent artificial light. Go in person, pull the curtains, turn off the studio lights, and check the seal. If you can see daylight around the edges, that's a problem for a product video brief.

Genuinely good blackout is more common in purpose-built studios than in converted spaces. Some of the better London and Manchester studios have proper roller shutters rather than curtains — these seal completely and don't billow when someone opens a door. Worth asking about specifically if blackout is critical to your brief.

Turntable and overhead rig setups

If you're shooting 360-degree product video — rotating the product on a turntable for the product viewer on an e-commerce page — you'll need a specific studio setup that most general hire spaces don't offer out of the box. You need: a perfectly flat floor section, a ceiling rig point or overhead arm for a top-light position, and a way to run the turntable motor off a circuit that's genuinely separate from your lighting rig (otherwise the motor interference can create noise on your audio if you're running ambient sound).

Some e-comm studios in London and Manchester now offer turntable setups as add-ons — the equipment is on site, you pay per day for it rather than bringing your own. This is usually the cheaper option for one-off jobs. For a weekly catalogue shoot, bringing your own kit is the better call — you know the rig, the setup is faster, and you're not adapting to someone else's system every time.

Rates and what to expect in 2026

For a dedicated e-commerce product video studio — proper blackout, two independent power circuits, a ceiling overhead arm or hanging point, and a flat floor — rates in the UK in 2026 sit roughly as follows:

London (East, South): £300–£500+VAT for a full 10-hour day
London (Central, Shoreditch): £400–£650+VAT
Manchester: £250–£400+VAT
Leeds, Birmingham: £180–£300+VAT

These are for mid-size spaces — 50–100sqm shooting area. Smaller tabletop-only studios can be found for less. Larger production spaces with a full cove and extensive rig cost more.

Half-day bookings often represent better value for a contained e-comm brief. If your shoot is 20–30 products of similar category and setup, a good team can clear that in 5–6 hours. Half-day rates at most studios are around 60–65% of the full-day rate, so the saving is meaningful.

Post-production setup on the day

One thing I've started including in my studio brief that I never used to: post-production support space. E-comm video is often delivered with a same-day or next-day turnaround. Having a desk, a calibrated monitor, and a space for an editor to sit and start assembling during the shoot itself is enormously useful. Some studios offer this as part of the day rate. Others charge an add-on. Worth asking about before you book, so the editor isn't sharing a make-up chair with the stylist at 4pm.

Browse UK e-commerce product video studios at creativestudiohire.com — filter by region and check the power spec details on each listing before you pick up the phone.

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