Thanks for all the ideas. The building I'm looking at is wide with a large roleup door in the front next to the office enterance. It's a warehouse space so it has enough ceiling hight to actually build a loft over the office area. I thought of placing the dressing room and lounge and a store room to the left side next to the office giving plenty of space to shoot left to right. A cyclorama will be to the right side and with the door right there it will be very easy to pull a vehicle in for shooting. The loft over the office will provide a great overhead shooting spot looking across the open floor to the cyclorama.
The loft over the offices/dressing room/lounge, might be big enough to place a room set designed generic enough that with a change of furnature it could look like a bedroom, office, bath, etc. Although without reviewing the local building codes it might run into issues with handycap accessability with only a staircase going up to it.
Here is a question on the dressing room. I planed to build it with a full bathroom/shower in it but generally speaking is one dressing room enough? Should there be two? Or maybe one with enough room for several models to change kind of like the theaters have. I mention this because I did see one studio with one large changing room once before. I'm kind of leaning to the idea of two small individule changing rooms.
Also when you offer extras like lights, props, backdrops do you usually charge per item or a flat hourly fee to cover all lights and another to cover all props?
Is it a good idea to keep a list of local makeup artists and services like caterers, camera stores, local restaurants that deliver, at hand just in case?
And here is another though that I need to start planning, what is the best way to market the studio? I plan to make it known to the local PPA and drop fliers at the area camera stores. I also plan to list it everyware I can. Would a yellow pages ad be of any value? How about ads in some of the better camera mags. like shutterbug, etc.?
Wow, my head is so full of stuff to think about. Is there anything I'm overlooking that anyone can think of?
Thanks for you time.
Scott
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