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Photography studios and video studios share a floor. They don't share a brief. I learnt this lesson properly about three years ago on a corporate talking-head shoot in an east London space that ticked every box on a stills photographer's checklist and failed comprehensively at the things that mattered for video.

Good north-facing light. Beautiful. Wrong. We needed consistent, controllable illumination that wouldn't shift with cloud cover between takes. The kitchen fan in the adjacent room was audible on every boom mic recording. And the 13A ring main couldn't support the Aputure 600d units on full power alongside the client's laptop charging rig. We improvised. It worked. It was expensive in stress and time.

This is the spec list I now run before booking any UK studio for video production work.

Power: the first thing to ask, not the last

Photography can usually run on a standard 13A ring main if you're using flash -- the capacitors charge between pops, peak draw is brief. Video with continuous lighting is a different problem entirely.

An Aputure 600d Pro at full power draws around 600W. Run two of those alongside an Arri SkyPanel S60-C (another 480W), and you're looking at 1,680W before you've switched on a monitor, a laptop, or any catering appliance. That's well over what a standard 13A UK socket can sustain continuously.

For a proper video lighting rig, you want at minimum a 32A single-phase supply -- and ideally a 63A 3-phase board if you're running HMI or a large tungsten rig. Three-phase effectively gives you three independent 32A legs. An Arri M40 HMI draws around 4,000W on its own. Do the maths before you confirm the booking.

The studio's listing might say the space has ample power or is suitable for film production. Neither tells you anything. Ask specifically: what's the maximum amperage of the board, how many circuits run off it, and is 3-phase available? If they can't answer that clearly, treat it as a no until you've had confirmation in writing.

Sound: the spec most listing descriptions ignore

This one matters more than almost anything else for video, and it's almost never in the studio description.

There's a real difference between acoustic treatment -- panels, bass traps, diffusers that affect the reverb and reflection inside a room -- and sound isolation, which is what actually stops external noise from entering your recording. Most studios that claim excellent acoustics mean the former. Some have neither.

For talking-head or presenter work, you need sound isolation. HVAC rumble, road noise, a neighbouring unit with power tools -- any of it will ruin your sync sound recordings and send you into expensive ADR or reshoots. The test is simple: stand in the empty room during a quiet moment and listen for two minutes. Then do it again with the building's HVAC switched on. What you hear is what your boom mic will hear.

Some studios have proper STC-rated walls (STC 50+ is genuinely useful for speech recording). Most don't. The ones that do will usually say so in their spec sheet. If they don't mention a noise floor or sound isolation rating, it's worth asking for the room to be demonstrated before you commit to a booking that depends on production audio.

Floor area and camera movement

Still photography sets can be tight. A photographer, an assistant, a subject, and maybe a client on a chair can work in 40 sqm. Video adds camera movement -- a dolly track, a gimbal run, an operator who needs a clear path behind them. It also adds a director, a focus puller, a sound recordist with a boom pole and a cable running to a recorder, and a video village corner with monitors. The same room that works beautifully for stills feels cramped the moment you add a DJI Ronin on a two-metre slider.

For a single-subject corporate interview setup, 80 sqm is a workable minimum. For a proper production with multiple setups, talent changes, and any kind of vehicle or large prop work, 150-250 sqm is the floor I'd spec. And that's before you factor in the kit prep and storage area you need when the first setup is live and the second is being laid out behind the camera lines.

Check the shape of the room too. A long narrow studio with 150 sqm of floor might work for a stills cyc but won't give you the shooting distance you need for a medium telephoto portrait setup -- typically you want 2-3 metres behind the subject to the background, and 3-5 metres in front for the camera position, plus movement space on both sides.

Ceiling height and rigging

A 2.4m ceiling is fine for product photography. It's too low for most video lighting rigs. You want overhead rigging bars for the SkyPanels or soft boxes, and anything below 3m of clearance starts to compromise your options. A 3.5m ceiling is where video production becomes comfortable. Rigging bars at 3m or above let you position overhead units where you'd naturally place them on a grid, without a C-stand in every shot.

Some studios offer grid rigging -- a proper matrix of ceiling bars with weight-rated drop points. That's the standard for continuous video lighting work. Drop a Litepanels Gemini 2x1 off a grid point and you've freed up the floor from another light stand. On a small studio with five people, that floor space matters.

Ask specifically: are there ceiling rigging points, what's the weight rating per point, and can you bring your own drop arms? Not every studio with rigging bars has thought through the weight certification.

Loading access for a camera package

Film and video kit packages are heavy and numerous. A standard camera package for a corporate day shoot -- ARRI Alexa or equivalent, prime lens set, matte box, follow focus, monitor, media, batteries -- packs into four or five Pelican cases. Add a modest lighting package and you're moving ten to fifteen cases, plus stands and grip bags.

Loading access matters. A level-access door at van height means 15 minutes to unload and stack. A staircase means 45 minutes and a sore back. Some studios claim easy loading and mean there's a pavement drop-off outside. Ask for the specific loading arrangement: is there a bay, a ramp, a lift, or a step? What's the width of the loading door? A standard transit van needs at least 2.1m of door height to load standing cases.

Parking or standing for the vehicle during the day is the follow-up question. If the van needs to move, you're disrupting the day. Studios that get a lot of production work usually have somewhere a vehicle can sit for the duration of the booking.

Monitoring and connectivity

Video productions run a video village -- the director, client, and agency watching a feed from the camera on a larger monitor, usually sat at a table away from the set. You'll need somewhere to put that rig, good sight lines to the set, and ideally a way to transmit the signal wirelessly (or enough cable run) without it crossing the floor and becoming a trip hazard.

A hardwired ethernet connection in the studio is worth asking about if you're doing any live streaming, remote client viewing, or frame-by-frame approval workflows. Most UK studios built in the last five years have at least a reasonable fibre connection. Older or recently converted units sometimes rely on 4G bonding, which works but introduces latency you don't want mid-shoot.

Green room and hair and makeup area

Talking-head and presenter productions need a green room. Talent sitting in a cold corner of the studio floor will not look their best after 45 minutes waiting for the lighting to be adjusted. A separate room -- or at minimum a clearly separated area with decent mirrors, good lighting, and seating -- is worth specifying as a requirement rather than a nice-to-have.

The hair and makeup area needs good, neutral lighting. Fluorescent strips at a colour temperature that doesn't match your studio lights are a constant problem. A consistent 5600K daylight-balanced source at the mirror means what gets applied in the green room looks right on camera. If the studio can't offer that, factor in bringing a portable mirror light.

The brief to send the studio

Write it down before you pick up the phone. Number of people on set. Lighting plan with power requirements. Whether you'll be recording audio. Whether you need blackout. Camera movement requirements. Vehicle access needs. Monitoring setup. Green room requirements. And the day's schedule -- access time, wrap time, whether you need overnight kit storage.

A studio that can't answer your questions from that brief is probably not set up for video production. That's information worth having before you've paid a deposit rather than after you're standing in the studio at 7am with a crew of six and a full lighting package.

Find video production studios across the UK at creativestudiohire.com -- filter by power spec, floor area, and blackout capability to match your brief.

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