The Tools We Use to Plan a Gallery Before the First Show

Start with a scale drawing, not a equipment list

When a gallery team asks us for workflow advice, the first thing we request is a plan of the room drawn to scale. It does not need to be a polished CAD file. A measured sketch with desks, monitor walls, door positions and cable routes tells us more than a page of model numbers, because most gallery problems are about people and distance rather than devices.

We mark where each operator sits, what they must see without turning their head, and who needs to speak to whom. A director who cannot hear the vision mixer clearly, or a producer whose sightline to the programme monitor is blocked by a tall rack, will cause delays that no equipment upgrade can fix.

Only after the seating and sightlines make sense do we look at the kit itself. That order keeps the conversation practical and stops a layout being bent around hardware that could easily have gone somewhere else.

• Measured floor plan with door and window positions
• Operator seats numbered by role
• Sightlines drawn to the main monitor wall
• Cable routes and rack positions marked

The signal list that everyone can read

Our second tool is a plain signal list, kept as a simple table. Each row names a source, where it is patched, where it appears on the mixer and which monitors show it. We write labels exactly as they appear on the physical panels, so a crew member standing at the desk can match the paper to the room without translating anything.

This sounds dull, and it is, which is the point. During a live show nobody wants to discover that two people use different names for the same input. We have seen a camera called by its position by the director and by its number by the engineer, and the confusion cost a rehearsal.

We ask the team to agree one name per source and then hold to it across the list, the intercom labels and the run sheet. Where a name has to change, we record the old one beside it for a while.

Run sheets written for the person reading them live

A run sheet is only useful if it can be read at a glance under pressure. We format ours with large type, one action per line, and the cue or trigger in its own column so it is never buried in a sentence. Timings sit on the left, because that is where the eye lands first when scanning down.

We also separate the producer's version from the operator's. A vision mixer operator needs camera calls and transitions; a graphics operator needs captions and timings. Giving everyone the full document means people hunt through rows that do not concern them, and hunting is slow.

Where a programme runs weekly, we help the team keep a master template and strip it back after each show, so lessons from the last transmission reach the next one without anyone having to remember them.

• One action per line
• Cue or trigger in its own column
• Role-specific versions for operators

Walking the room in a dry run

Paper methods only go so far, so we recommend a dry run with the real crew in their real seats before any change goes live. The team works through the run sheet without cameras rolling, speaking every call aloud and following the signal list as they go. It takes less time than people expect and finds more than they expect.

During the walk-through we time how long it takes to move between positions, whether the talkback panel can be reached from the producer's chair, and whether the lighting of the desk makes labels hard to read. Gallery lighting is often set for the monitors and forgotten for the operators.

We note each finding in the margin of the plan as it happens, then sort them afterwards into things to fix now, things to fix next month, and things to simply be aware of.

Written operating procedures for the awkward moments

Every gallery has a few situations that happen rarely and matter greatly: a lost source, a dropped feed, a late change from the floor. We help teams write a short procedure for each, in numbered steps, kept to a single side of paper and pinned within reach of the person who would act on it.

The wording matters. We avoid long explanations and put the first action in the opening line, so a stressed operator does not read through background to reach the instruction. Background belongs in a separate document that is read in calm moments, not in the middle of a transmission.

Oliver Banks edits these procedures for clarity before they go to a client, checking that each step can be done by someone who did not write it, and that no step assumes knowledge the reader may not have.

• Numbered steps, first action in the opening line
• One side of paper per situation
• Background kept in a separate document

Keeping the plan alive after we leave

A workflow plan that sits in a folder goes out of date within a season. Equipment is swapped, a new director joins, a desk is moved to make space. We encourage teams to name one person who owns the documents and updates them whenever the room changes, even if the change seems minor.

We suggest a short review every few months, with the plan, signal list and procedures laid out on the desk and checked against what the room actually looks like. Differences are usually small, but small differences are what cause confusion at the worst time.

Our written advice is designed to be edited by the team itself, in ordinary document formats, so nobody depends on us to change a label or reorder a step.