Practical writing on cameras, lighting, audio timing and control room routines for television and live media.
Our articles explain how studios, galleries and live productions work in practice, from camera matching to audio timing. A new piece appears about once a day, and each one is written for working crews.
Training
A practical guide to setting up a training day for a studio crew: choosing what to cover, preparing the room, running the session and checking afterwards that routines have changed.
Helen Marchetti
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Workflow Audit
A practical list of questions to settle internally before asking anyone to review how your gallery team, vision mixer and graphics systems work together, so the written review is useful.
Tom Whitfield
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Camera Systems
Most camera matching problems start before the first cable is plugged in. This note lists the mistakes we see most often in studio and field camera chains, and the habits that prevent them.
Tom Whitfield
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Studio design
A plain account of how studio design consultancy is priced, which parts of a project add time, and what to settle with a consultant before any floor plan is drawn.
Tom Whitfield
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Case story
A short account of one regional studio where presenters seemed slightly out of step with their own voices, and how a methodical review of the audio chain found the cause.
Helen Marchetti
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Stage Lighting
Mid autumn is the time to review lighting plots, power loads and rigging checks before winter schedules and seasonal shows fill the studio and stage calendar.
Helen Marchetti
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Training
A plain-words explanation of signal flow, the term every training session starts from, and how following one signal from source to screen helps a crew find faults faster.
Tom Whitfield
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Control Room
Two ways to examine a control room: a written audit built from observation and logs, or a live walkthrough with the crew. Helen Marchetti compares them and says which she recommends.
Helen Marchetti
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Camera Systems
A look at what actually happens on site when we configure and match studio cameras: the order of checks, the tools on the bench and the decisions made along the way.
Priya Nair
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Studio Design
The question we hear most from new studio owners: how big must the room be? Tom Whitfield answers it from the lighting grid down, with ceiling height, set depth and cable routes in view.
Tom Whitfield
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Company news
After the first survey comes the measured work: timing checks through mixers, embedders and playout, and a written report your engineers can act on without a further visit.
Daniel Okafor
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Lighting Methods
Tom Whitfield explains the instruments, measurements and drawing habits he relies on when planning lighting for studio sets and live stages, from light meter readings to power load sheets.
Tom Whitfield
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Training
A practical list of questions to settle before commissioning on-site workshops for your production crew, from fault finding and signal flow to scheduling around live output.
Daniel Okafor
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Control Room
Most gallery problems come from habits nobody wrote down. Here are six common mistakes we meet when auditing control room workflows, and the plain changes that prevent each one.
Tom Whitfield
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Pricing
A plain account of how camera chain setup is priced, which parts of a studio or field job add time, and what to settle before asking for a written quotation.
Helen Marchetti
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Case story
Tom Whitfield follows Marcus, a studio manager who asked for a layout review and ended up moving the control room, and explains what the floor plan changed in daily work.
Tom Whitfield
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