We talk inspiration, technique, and products with London Fashion Week’s hair leads
“You can just turn up and shoot” – Say hello to Grid Studios
“You can just turn up and shoot” – Say hello to Grid Studios
The new content creation space for hair stylists that’s obsessed with perfecting your light.
Located in the heart of London’s Old Street you’ll find new Grid Studios, specifically designed for hair and beauty creatives. It’s run by Danny Mendoza-Hall and Ben Ottewell, hair content creators par excellence… and they’ve even worked with Jordanna Cobella to access her in-depth knowledge of the industry to ensure it was spot-on for the modern stylist.
This 100 sq m-plus studio boasts 3.5m high ceilings, an outside courtyard and a banging coffee bar. There are six fully equipped styling stations and a backwash unit with 360-degree access, perfect for every angle when filming. Yes, you’ll find everything you would expect to see in any top salon, but it’s all the extra touches that the social media savvy stylist needs today that impresses. There’s a shower room for capturing wet looks and products, multiple backdrops, materials, polyboards and all the A/V equipment you could need to host events and education.
Plenty of natural light pours into the space, thanks to the 14m of south-facing windows. But the stand-out element might just be the custom-built lighting system. Hair creatives are always keen to show their work in the best light, and Grid Studio’s lighting system gives an even balanced daylight throughout the space. Its custom system automatically changes the colour temperature of the lighting to match the colour temperature of the daylight, so wherever you are in the space, the lighting and colour is perfect. The lights in the mirrors also change temperature! “We have put this lighting system in place so you can just turn up and shoot without the need to rent additional equipment, meaning you can significantly cut down on the costs of creating high-end content,” says Danny.
There’s also an own in-house production team – Grid Productions – that’s been creating hair content for years, working with some of the industry’s biggest brands. “Our goal was to make high-end content creation accessible both to brands and to hairdressers and beauty professionals,” he adds.
What’s on offer? First, there’s single chair rental, which works in a similar way to a freelance salon – you can rent a chair for the day, bring in your models and use the lighting, equipment and shoot area to create content. Alternatively, the entire studio is available to rent – that comes with all six stations, the backwash and the shoot area, just right for creating branded content and campaigns.
“We created this space to solve the problems we come up against when shooting both in salons and in studios,” says Danny. “Salons often don’t have the ceiling height, they have mismatched lighting, and are busy and noisy. We usually need to bring in loads of additional lighting, and shoot in cramped conditions. Studios don’t generally have styling stations or backwashes, which means you can’t properly capture the creation process. Again, you still need to bring in additional lighting, which is very expensive, making it unachievable for your average freelancer.”
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