Every studio brief eventually arrives at the same question: what goes behind the presenter? The answer decides the look, a large share of the budget, and how much can go wrong on the day. Here's how the three main options compare from the gallery's point of view.
The built set or cyc
A physical backdrop: a white or coloured cyclorama, a designed set of panels, furniture and lighting. Strengths: nothing to fail technically; presenters are comfortable in a real space; lighting creates genuine depth; easy to reconfigure with light colour. Weaknesses: what you see is what you get — changing the look means changing the physical set; branding is static unless you add screens. Cost: from a few hundred pounds for a lit cyc in an existing studio to several thousand for a bespoke build. Our own studio's white cyc is the workhorse for exactly this reason — it's the cheapest thing on the list that always works.
Green screen (chroma key)
The presenter stands in front of a green (or blue) backdrop and the gallery replaces it with any image or animation. Strengths: unlimited looks for almost no set cost; change the background per session or per client; great for branded virtual environments. Weaknesses: it must be lit evenly and the presenter separately, or the key has fringing and holes; fine hair, glasses and green ties are trouble; presenters are working in a featureless space and can't see the world they're apparently in; poor keys look unmistakably cheap. Cost: low on materials, but you're paying for the lighting skill and gallery time that make it invisible.
The LED wall
A wall of LED panels displaying content behind the presenter in real time: a designed virtual environment, live graphics, even a remote guest at scale. Strengths: the presenter sees the real background and reacts to it; camera and content are genuinely in the same space, so the depth and reflections are real; instantly rebrandable; spectacular in a wide shot. Weaknesses: cost — hire, structure, processing and content creation add up fast; technical care needed for moiré, refresh rates, colour matching and brightness; small panels look small on a wide, and big walls need a big room. Cost: from a couple of thousand pounds a day for a modest wall to five figures for a large one with content.
Side by side
| Built set / cyc | Green screen | LED wall | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Look | Real, depends on lighting | Anything, depends on key quality | Anything, premium |
| Technical risk | Very low | Medium (lighting, edges) | Medium (processing, moiré) |
| Presenter comfort | High | Low | High |
| Rebranding | Physical change | Instant | Instant |
| Typical day cost | £ – ££ | £ – ££ | £££ – ££££ |
| Best for | Interviews, town halls, podcasts | Branded virtual studios, multi-client days | Launches, flagship events, shows with big wides |
How we'd choose
A clear, single-brand event with talking heads: a well-lit built set or cyc, every time. A production company running several clients through one studio in a week: green screen, with a lighting rig set up once and left alone. A product launch or annual flagship where the wide shot is the hero image: LED wall, budgeted properly, with content designed for it. And a mix is common — a built set with an LED panel as one element gives most of the flexibility for much less of the cost.