People are often shocked to find out that Media Melt runs out of an actual office space and not our lounge. Being a small local business, we’re privileged to be able to set up in Adhesion Sealing’s space on Kaikorai Valley Road, giving us somewhere to work out of and store all of our stuff! Dad had this space made for us where the reception area used to be.
We currently have no signage on the outside of the building, we typically meet clients at their workplace. We’re located at 292 Kaikorai Valley Road, Dunedin in the Adhesion Sealing building.
You come inside and down the hall and we’re the first office on the left. As you walk through the glass doors, the first thing you notice is our Media Melt Video Production Company wall – or maybe the skeleton. His name is Fred (because he’s dead). We also have a nice comfy couch which to be honest, is usually covered in props and camera equipment. We typically keep our main camera bag on there for easy access. This holds both cameras, our zoom and lav mic, spare lenses, batteries and SD cards.
To the right of Fred is our storage cubby. Dad said he would make a door for it when the office was made a year ago so I’m sure he’ll get around to it eventually 😂 The cubby stores almost all of our equipment so I’ll break it down into sections.
Starting from the top we have the misc section, we have our special effects make up kit, some extra files and tape. We also have 3M hooks, bungy cords, SD card cases, it’s sort of like the junk drawer of the office.
In the middle we have the charging station, this is obviously where we charge everything. It’s set up with labels so we know what charger is for what camera and it’s all super easy to chuck a battery on charge in a hurry if we need to.
Below the charging station is our pelican case, it holds our LED lights and some other handy things for bigger shoots. Its carry-on size just in case we need to fly it somewhere one day 😉
In between our two shelves we store our longer items like our tripod, light stands, slider and safety sign.
On the top shelf of the second wall we have hard hats for when we have to go on site, Dog Stuff for when Meg is visiting or for when we have pet photography sections (lots of tennis balls, treats and a dog mat), and our props bin. We’ve almost grown out of our props bin, we need to start a new one. In here we have all kinds of wonderful crap. A pilot hat, garden gnome, safety data sheets, a tearaway hi vis vest, old chloroform bottle, severed hand, party hats, roman candle, to name a few. All of which have been used in a video already and will probably be used again.
The middle shelf holds our DJI Phantom 4 drone and our go pro, as well as other awkward sized equipment like our reflector and clapper board.
The bottom shelf holds our portable screens and screen equipment like our hand steamer and clips, as well as all of our generic safety gear which is basically any safety gear that doesn’t have obvious branding on it so we can use it in videos. We also have some camera boxes and manuals as well as the bags that came with the LED lights in case we need to transport or sell anything.
On the third wall we have nothing very interesting, just a picture we never got around to putting up and some file boxes.
Beside the cubby is our photography screen wall, which is super handy and I love it. We have set up the screens on rollers so we can just roll down and steam whichever one we need. We have a black and white screen for photography, a green screen for filming and a grey screen that doesn’t quite work as well as I’d like it to for photography as I can never steam every crease out of it and it just sort of looks like a sheet. The screens were 1m too long for our room so I hemmed them shorter and also added dowels at the bottom for weight so they would roll up and down properly and stay reasonably straight.
The glass doors have our logo on them, and can be closed if we need to. We also have black out curtains for if we need to block out all natural light. They also help block sound if someone in Adhesion is talking on the phone while were filming.
Beside the doors we have a coat hook, and Book’s desk. He’s a certified drone operator. He also does a lot of the post production like motion graphics and special effects.
In the corner we have our whiteboard to keep track of jobs, and our filing drawer. We keep our files in that!
We also have a treat drawer each which we actually refilled yesterday so they look pretty great. Treats are important for motivation I find.
Then it’s my desk, I do more of the pre-production like shot lists, props and admin things like invoicing and filing.
And that is our office! Pretty basic but it gets the job done. We could do with another shelf for our every growing props department but that might have to go in the spare room of our new house!
I forgot about Frank! We made him from old toys and a pair of overalls. He stays on the mezzanine because he’s just too big for the office. He takes up nearly the whole couch!
Talk to you next week!
Eve
Media Melt is a Video Production Company based in Dunedin, New Zealand. If you have any enquires, feel free to contact us here