Building a Temporary Gallery: How We Plan a Control Room for Your Venue

Why the gallery needs its own plan

A control room is easy to treat as an afterthought, a table and a few screens in whatever room is left over. In practice it is where the whole show is decided, and the room it sits in shapes how calmly the evening runs. Over the years at entertoly we have learned to plan the gallery before the camera plan is final, because the position of the gallery decides cable lengths, power needs and how the team talks to the stage.

This autumn we have been refining how we present that planning to organisers who have never commissioned a gallery before. The aim is simple: no one should arrive on the day to discover that the room is too warm, too small or too far from the stage.

Control room setup is the part of our work that happens mostly before anyone is watching. When it is done well, the show simply starts on time and nobody asks about it.

Starting with a site visit

Every gallery we build begins with a visit to the venue or festival site, usually led by me with a colleague from production. We walk the route from the stage to the proposed room and note doors, stairs, ceiling heights and anything that could block a cable run or a radio link.

We look at the room itself: how many people need to sit in it, where the heat will go, and whether there is a second exit. A gallery holding a technical director, a vision mixer operator, a graphics operator and an engineer needs more space than most people expect, and the monitors need a wall that is not lit by a window.

We also ask who else will be working nearby. A gallery next to a noisy dressing area or a catering route is a gallery where instructions get missed, so we try to find a quieter corner early.

• Route from stage to gallery, measured on foot
• Power supply and a separate circuit for the racks
• Seating, sightlines and room for the monitor wall
• Ventilation and a sensible place for the team to take a break

Designing the signal path

Once the room is chosen, we draw the signal path from each camera position to the gallery and on to the output. Every source gets a label, a cable run and a spare. The drawing is not a formality: it is the document the whole crew works from, and it is what we check against during testing.

We decide early where the programme output goes. For a broadcast it may leave the building on a link; for a stream it goes to the encoder and then to the platform. For a venue screen it goes back to the house. Each destination needs its own monitoring so that a fault can be traced to one part of the chain rather than the whole.

Intercom is planned at the same time. The crew should be able to reach the camera operators, the stage manager and the stream engineer without shouting across a room, and the talkback layout is drawn before a single cable is laid.

Building and cabling the room

The build usually starts the day before the event, sometimes earlier for a festival with several stages. We unload racks, vision mixer, monitors and routing, and place them according to the drawing so that the operators' positions are settled before anything is powered up.

Cabling is where care pays off. We run signal cables away from mains, label both ends, and secure everything that people might walk past. A tidy gallery is not about appearance; it is about being able to find a loose connector in thirty seconds when something goes wrong during a show.

Where a venue already has a fixed gallery, the work is different: we assess what exists, bring in only what is missing and test it against the demands of the specific event, rather than rebuilding what already works.

• Racks and routing placed first, operators' desks second
• Mains and signal cables kept apart wherever possible
• Every source labelled at both ends, with spares to hand

Testing before doors open

A gallery is not finished when it is built; it is finished when it has been tested with the show running through it. We check every camera feed, every graphic, every audio route and every output, then repeat the checks with the talkback live and the crew in position.

We also rehearse the awkward moments: a camera dropping out, a feed freezing, a switch to a backup source. Knowing in advance how the room reacts is far better than finding out in front of an audience, and it gives the operators the confidence to stay calm.

The client signs off the programme output before the event. Hannah Whitlock, our production manager, handles that confirmation so that what was agreed in writing matches what the gallery is actually sending.

What we need from you

The most useful thing an organiser can give us is access: early entry to the venue, a named contact who can open doors and answer questions about power, and a clear running order. With those, planning is straightforward and the build can be quiet and unhurried.

It also helps to tell us what the gallery has to serve. A concert filmed for later release has different needs from a live stream with remote contributors, and the room is arranged differently for each. We would rather ask a dozen questions at the start than adjust cabling on the afternoon of the show.

If you are weighing up a temporary gallery against using a space the venue already has, send us the details through the contact page and we will talk it through before anything is committed.

• Venue plans or photographs of the proposed room
• The running order and number of stages or stage areas
• A contact on site who can authorise changes

A well-run gallery rarely draws attention, and that is the measure we work to. Planning the room, drawing the signal path, building carefully and testing under show conditions all happen so that the evening itself is uneventful. If you have a venue or festival in mind, get in touch through the contact page and we will arrange a visit to look at the space together.