Building a new Work/Grading/Screening Room

[Frank Weeks]

This is a fun thread. I hope to be designing a new post area in the next year so I'm listening. Best of luck guys and keep the pics coming.
Love Bjorn's post #52. I wasn't a Psych major but he makes a lot of sense. Especially about talking down to your clients.

 

[Brad Allen]

Time for another update!

I've now run the wiring for the speakers through the baffle wall and to the back of the room where the Amp (Procella DA-2800) will be mounted in the Rack Unit. Still waiting on delivery of the Storm Audio DSP. Unfortunately this throws a little spanner in the works, because I need the DSP in order to be able to calibrate the speakers and find the ideal position for the sub woofer acoustically in the room. And I need the ideal position for the subwoofer before I can cut the hole in the baffle wall for it to go into. End result is that I've got to live with the acoustic screen I've made pulled out a bit for the next few weeks until the DSP comes and I can do all that testing properly. So pics for the next while will have that acoustic screen pulled out which will make things a bit ugly.

Also got the plasma screen mounted yesterday. Here is the bracket in place. There is a stud I built directly behind the wall to stop this bracket ripping the plasterboard straight out.

In the above pic you can see that the acoustic screen is pulled out from the main wall while all this work goes on (and also for the reasons mentioned at the beginning of the post). You can also see that I have laid the same material throughout all of the cavity where the plasma is going in. This will help the feel of the entire cavity match up with the acoustic screen. Plus it's also less reflective than the paint on the plasterboard which is a bonus. The black that runs top to bottom in that cavity is actually rigged on an angle which is hard to tell from the pic (and in real life). This is so that when a balanced 6500K light is sitting in the cavity (to cast a neautral light when grading TVC work), it's easier to have it cast evenly over the whole thing.

Pretty awful pic, but the plasma is in, on and working its magic streaming youtube when no other inputs exist for it in the room yet

 

[Marc Wielage]

Before you build this setup, most important, are you sure you want to sit behind your clients? I tested the same setup, same as you tested in 3D models and it all looked great, I also thought it would be super nice to sit above the clients. But that was a huge mistake I learned the hard way. It's a psychological thing, because the clients wants to see you and what you do, and the last thing they want to do is turn around and look up and when they do so all they see is the wall behind them, or best case the back of your monitors and you looking out behind them....

I personally think it depends on the room and the facility. All of the big-screen D.I. projection rooms at CO3, Deluxe, eFilm, Technicolor, Fotokem, and Modern Videofilm do put the colorist at the back of the room, mirroring the approach done at film color timing theaters at labs. It's a longstanding tradition, plus because the room is nearly pitch-black, it avoids the problem of having lots and lots of monitors, displays, readouts, illuminated knobs, and scopes flaring out and disrupting the visual path of the client. The colorist is used to it; DPs and directors are not.

I do think if you're doing work on large monitors, like a 40" or 50" HD display, then having the clients sit along side of you behind the console is fine. That's exactly what's done in LA for commercials, network TV series, music videos, documentaries, sitcoms, and so on. That tradition goes back at least 35 years that I know of, and people are used to it and expect it (though some still complain about the distraction of UI displays and scopes).

In the projection rooms, typically there are no more than about 10-12 seats in front of the colorist, and the rooms are quiet enough that you can hear conversations pretty easily, even from 15 feet away. And of course, clients are free to come back and sit with the colorist if they want to, or if the DPs are technically aware enough that they want to personally see what the scopes and histograms are doing. I've never seen a room where the clients are elevated over the colorist, but I've seen many rooms where the colorist is elevated about four or five steps over the client.

If you had a dual purpose room that had to do both, I think one approach is going to be compromised over the other. I'm not convinced one room can be optimized for both D.I. and broadcast. I have seen many D.I. rooms that have had 40" or 50" monitors on a riser that could be used by the colorist for a trim pass for home video, but it's not ideal.

Come to LA sometime and you can see it for yourself. I know of NY facilities that do the exact same thing.

 

[Brad Allen]

Hey Guys,

Next update! Room has still been coming together - it's now in a barebones working state. By that I mean there are still things to be done and improve but I've now moved in computer gear and will now be working from here

Next stage is to run some black cinema curtains from the desk down to the front wall which will create a black void from the viewing position as well as improve acoustics further. Also waiting on the DSP for the Procella speakers and have been told it's still about a month away which means I've just brought in my old computer speakers as a temporary fix. Also going to acoustically treat the rack mount to help reduce the amount of hum coming from the back of the room

 

[Frank Cueto]

Any updates?

 

[Brad Allen]

Hey Frank - unfortunately pretty much no updates!

Work has been unusually slow over the past few months which has dried up any spare cash that could go towards continued development of the space.

After many delays, the DSP is supposed to ship this week I've been told so I'll hopefully be installing that soon and actually getting the sub mounted in the baffle wall. I'll try and remember to take some pics of when I do that