What our workflow and gallery reviews now include

Workflow and Gallery Consulting is the part of showfyzo where we look at how a programme actually gets made, rather than how it is meant to be made on paper. A review follows the production from the moment cameras and microphones are switched on to the moment files leave your hands. We sit in the gallery, watch the people and the signal, and note where time, attention or picture quality leaks away.

Most producers who ask for a review already have a workable setup. What they lack is an outside view of the small frictions that repeat on every shoot: a talkback arrangement that nobody questions, a monitor wall that forces the director to look away from the picture, a file naming habit that costs an editor an hour. We write those down calmly and in the order they appear in your day.

The first half of a review is spent in the gallery itself, ideally during a rehearsal or a live programme. We look at the physical layout: where the director, vision mixer, graphics operator and sound engineer sit, who can see which screens, and how far each person has to lean or turn to do their job. Cables and routing are traced as well, because a tidy rack often hides an awkward signal path.

We also listen to how the team talks. The shape of the talkback channels, the words used for cues and the way a late change is passed along say a great deal about where mistakes enter. Nothing is judged in the room. We take notes, ask questions between takes, and keep our opinions for the written report.

• Seating and sight lines for each role
• Monitor placement and what each screen shows
• Talkback channels and cue wording
• Signal routing and labelling

A gallery can run beautifully and still hand over a mess. The second half of a review follows your material after the programme ends: how recordings are named, where they are copied, who checks them and in what format they reach the editor, the archive or the client. We look for the quiet gaps, such as a recording that exists on only one drive or a handover note that lives in one person's memory.

This is often where the most useful changes turn up, because they cost very little. A consistent naming scheme, a short checklist at wrap and a clear owner for each copy remove most of the late-night searching that follows a busy shoot. We describe each fix in terms your team can adopt without buying anything new.

Every review ends with a written action list, and this is the change we want to tell you about. Instead of a long report to be read once and shelved, you receive a short document in which each finding is a single action, with a note on why it matters and roughly how much effort it takes. Actions are ordered so that the ones helping your next production come first.

Where a finding touches our other work, for example a lighting position that blocks a camera or a microphone plan that fights the set, we say so plainly, but we do not assume you will hire us to fix it. The list is yours to hand to your own crew, a facilities manager or another supplier if that suits you better.

• One action per finding, in plain wording
• Reason and expected effort noted beside each
• Ordered by benefit to your next production

A review goes further when we arrive prepared. Before we visit, it helps to share a rough floor plan or photographs of the gallery, a list of the people who work in it and the formats you deliver. If a recent programme went badly, tell us what happened; a clear account of a real problem points us to the right corner of the workflow faster than any general tour.

We also ask for a day when the gallery is in genuine use. A quiet, empty room is easy to praise and hard to learn from. If a live run is not possible, a full rehearsal with the usual crew is the next best thing, and we will agree the details with you when you get in touch through the contact page.

• Floor plan or photographs of the gallery
• List of roles and who fills them
• Delivery formats and recent trouble spots

A review is an assessment, not a rebuild. We do not re-cable your gallery during the visit, change your equipment or take over running the show. Our job is to see clearly and write down what we saw, in a form your team can act on. If you decide afterwards that you want help carrying out some of the actions, that is a separate conversation with its own quotation.

We also do not promise particular outcomes from the changes we suggest. Production teams differ, and a fix that helps one gallery may do little in another. What we can promise is that every point on the list comes from something we watched happen in your own room, with your own people.