How To Turn Your Garage Into A Studio For Under $500

Ryan E Walters offers up a detailed break down of how he turned his garage into a working studio.

I’ll be the first to admit nothing replaces a professionally built sound stage or studio. I’ve had the opportunity to shoot on a wide variety of stages and I appreciate what they bring to a production. However, I have also needed a space where I could shoot some of my stock footage, as well as record my training videos. And I need that space to be affordable and accessible to me at any time. So I converted my garage into a mini “studio.” To learn how I got this done for under $500, continue reading …

Defining The Objectives

Before you begin any project, I highly recommend clearly defining the objectives you want to accomplish. A set of clear goals will help you plan so that you can meet all of your objectives when the project is done. And more importantly, it will help you to figure out if the project is even attainable before you start spending money. My objectives were:

• A space that is always available to me
• Have complete control over the light
• Able to store equipment
• Have multiple circuits, and be able to run up to 80 amps worth of light
• Maintain the use of the garage door (not block it off)
• Be able to hang lights from a grid
• Be able leave some lights set up and ready to go for my training videos
• Keep costs to a minimum, but spend money where it is needed
• Audio is a secondary issue, as MOS* stock footage shot will be the primary use of the space
• (*MOS = Without sound)

Having completed this project, I can say that I have met all of my goals and then some. I even stumbled across some handy tools that I have repurposed for daily use on some of my productions, which I’ve listed at the end of this article.

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