How a turnkey soundstage saves you time and money.

BY KARA VEDDER

How do you want to spend your time—being creative? or managing minutia..? With an ’empty warehouse’ soundstage, you can spend your precious time sourcing lights, lenses and folding chairs. A better alternative might be working with a turnkey soundstage.

Here’s why leveraging your soundstage’s onsite offering helps you stay under budget, and spend more time on what matters most:

THE WORK.

Save time and money TWICE.

Using a turnkey soundstage protects your production against wasted time and money, upfront, by sparing you some of the sourcing. Then, you save AGAIN, onset, by being ‘preventative’… At a turnkey stage, you are aligning yourself with vendors who have already thought through & prepared for last-minute emergencies that can occur. Even better, the spur of the moment rigging pinch, it helps if a studio has rigging components available. Having these last minute capabilities, keeps you from needing to put your production on pause. Seriously, what happens if someone has a creative idea in the middle of lighting design?? It really helps if you can just ‘grab something’ from the in-house inventory…

Start from scratch? Really?

More tools and amenities, onsite, also means a lot less to worry about. If you’re shooting food, don’t construct a kitchen. Find a soundstage that has one! If you’re making a film, shoot where there’s more of what you need, long-term. How about ample production space, office supplies and generous internet bandwidth, to start? If you’re building a practical set, don’t rent another entire space to do it. Find a place with a woodshop if you’re building a physical set. If you’re building your set, virtually, find a place that has VSet ready to go. And if you’re working with celebrity models or actors, see what amenities are offered for talent. Comfortable chairs, robes, and slippers really DO make a difference.

Use more, pay less.

We saved the easiest for last! The simplest way to save on below-the-line expenses is by working with a turnkey studio, and taking advantage of economies of scale. In addition to comparing what tools and amenities are offered, in-house, ask what kind of package deals each soundstage has to offer. You can save exponentially on time and money by negotiating a volume discount.

The Takeaway

It’s simple. Your soundstage’s onsite resources shouldn’t be an afterthought. When you factor in the time and labor of sourcing, transport and last-minute surprises, it almost always makes sense to work with a one-stop shop that offers more of what you need.

ABOUT KARA VEDDER

 Stages Owner and President Kara Vedder has spent most of her career working in television, film, photography, and commercial production as an actress and producer. This experience inspired the creation of Cobalt Stages, a by-producers, for-producers turnkey soundstage in Hoboken, N.J., and now Woodstock, NY, offering state-of-the-art production solutions, onsite and on location.