Studio Seven Productions

About seven or eight years ago, we leased a downtown loft space for our studio. It was on the second floor of this great old building, and we had about 3,500 sq-ft of space for offices, shooting area, prop storage etc. We maintained a full-time darkroom with a full-time darkroom tech, two full-time photo assistants, a full time studio manager, and a full time delivery/driver, and of course Shelle and myself.

I estimate that the miles driven weekly for staff to and from work, deliveries, location shoot travel, etc would run on the average of 700 to 1,000 miles per week! Unbelieveable! Then of course throw on top of that the heating and cooling for a large space and the carbon footprint was enormous.

Then I saw an article in CA (communication arts magazine) about one of the "biggest" ad agencies in Japan. I don't remember the name of the agency, but they employed some 20+ people and the entire agency was ran in under 1,000 sq ft.

I got to thinking about our space, and decided to look at the workflow. It seemed that the employees were spending as much time going from area to area to communicate with one another as they were working.

Well, to make this story short, because of the digital revolution, we no longer shoot film, no longer make prints for reproduction, no longer have a darkroom nor a tech, no longer have a driver/delivery person and no longer have a studio manager and two photo assistants.

Our studio space is an area of about 700 sq ft.

We're very green!