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YANS – Yet Another New Studio

Lucky 7.

We have just completed the renovation of a new space, that will soon be the New CIRT Studio.

(Make sure you scroll to the bottom of this post to see the current view of the studio in 360°)

This will be the 7th studio that I been involved in either building, renovating, or consulted on in the last 25 years or so. From the embarrassing first effort of using a green screen – wrinkled plastic or fabric, inadequate lighting, and no sound treatment… To having my first green wall painted…

First studios and Kits

Then to helping with the designing of two studio/theater spaces in a brand new building and the massive frustration of dealing with vendors and the inevitable over-engineering, and outright mistakes made in completing these spaces…

UMW ITCC studio images

Since I have been at UNF, I inherited an existing studio (about a 10×10′ space), moved that studio into a larger space which included a 6×8′ audio booth, and now we move to an even bigger space with a separate control room. The impetus of moving the studio was the need for CIRT to consolidate into one building and the current (soon to be ex-) studio needed to be sacrificed to house a CIRT support team.

UNF studios 1 and 2

I have a fondness for this soon-to-be-ex space because of what I learned while building it, modifying it, and using it on a daily basis with multiple recordings per week.

One thing I won’t miss is that it wasn’t isolated enough from adjacent spaces. Through no one’s fault, the studio shared a wall with a busy center serving students and faculty. This lead to conversations and laughter on the other side of the wall to bleed into video/audio recordings of faculty. There was also the adjacent bathroom with flushing toilets and extremely loud hand dryers to contend with. Obviously, not ideal.

Having said that, the new studio will contend with a noisy air-handling system, but consistent noises like that are easier to deal with.

So, this is “moving week”, and all the planning and thinking, and re-thinking, will reveal itself. However, the approach has always been take what you’ve learned and make those incremental improvements, and then keep iterating. I’ve have learned a ton from playing and tinkering in this current studio. I will be sad to leave this studio-slash-workshop. It has enabled me to do what I came to UNF for – to wildly experiment. The success has been seen in the numbers of how often it gets used. The success of the new studio will be measured in keeping those usage numbers high as well as on improving the quality of the recordings we make. It will be exciting to introduce this latest space to the UNF community.

Wish us luck.

Here’s a 360° version of the new studio before the big move…

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