A clear place to start
Creator Studio Audit
A focused review of your room, cameras, lighting, sound, signal flow, staffing, and production rhythm.
- Remote or on-site assessment
- Prioritized improvement plan
- Budget and sequencing guidance
Creator Studio Consultant · Silicon Valley + Los Angeles
Your studio should disappear into the work.
I’m Lucky McNulty, a creator studio consultant helping YouTubers, podcasters, and media teams design professional studios, simplify production, and build systems their people can actually run.
20+years in production
9professional studios built
200+artists & live productions
The hidden production tax
Better gear doesn’t fix a broken system.
Creators often outgrow their setup before they realize it. Each shoot starts with troubleshooting. The room works for one format but fights the next. Knowledge lives with one person. Expensive equipment sits underused.
The answer is not more complexity. It’s a studio designed around the content, the team, and the pace of the business.
Watch: 3 minutes
Before you buy a camera, answer five questions.
What are you making, where does it go, who runs it, what happens when something fails, and what does it cost to keep running. The same brief I start every studio build with.
Watch: 1 minute
Before you go live, check three things.
The inputs, the destination, and the recovery. A one-page checklist where every check has an owner.
Watch: 90 seconds
On a budget, fix the three things that ruin the show.
Sound, tally, and talkback. The most expensive camera can't fix a room you can't hear in, or a crew that can't talk to each other.
Watch: 90 seconds
ATEM or TriCaster? And where NDI fits.
A hardware switcher with fast, simple cuts, or a whole production system in one box. Pick for your team and your show, then plan the network like it's part of the show.
Watch: 2 minutes
Game day inside an OB truck.
Live sports is one of the few shows left that's truly live. Here's who does what inside the outside broadcast truck, and how the crew practices and plans backups so nothing goes wrong.
Watch: 4 minutes
Every seat is the front row.
How to plan IMAG and big screens for a festival stage: sightlines, long glass from front of house, separate cuts for the screens and the livestream, low delay, projector lumens vs. LED for day and night, pixel pitch, and comms. From the VJ for Daft Punk's 2006 Coachella set.
Watch: 2 minutes
Studio lighting vs concert lighting: light for the lens, or light for the room?
In a studio you light for the camera: three-point lighting, softboxes, and contrast the camera can handle. On a stage you light for the audience: the McCandless method in theatre, and moving lights, haze, color and backlight at a concert. Here's the difference, and what both teams do when a concert goes on TV.
Watch: 1 minute
How to go viral (according to the internet)
Eight rules of viral video, acted out the hard way: the one-second hook, the cat on the switcher, the near miss, oddly satisfying cable coiling, the trend, the glow up and the big reveal. Under the jokes is a real formula for social video: hook them in the first second, make them feel something, keep it short, post consistently, and make it loop.
Watch: 1 minute
Bells and lights: how studios keep monsters off set
A Halloween look at the warning systems that protect every take. The flashing red wig-wag outside a soundstage door means cameras are rolling. Inside, one long bell means rolling and two short bells mean cut. In television, the On Air light means you're live, and the red tally light on a camera shows which one is on the air.
Watch: 2 minutes
How to use AI in production: generated vs hybrid vs VFX
Every frame of this show is made with AI, so here's how it actually works. Fully generated video for explainers, pitches and previs; hybrid productions that mix real hosts and product shots with generated B-roll and set extensions; and the AI already inside VFX and post, from rotoscoping to captions and translation. Plus when to use a platform, when to move to APIs like OpenAI's for images and speech, and three rules: consent, labeling, and a human on quality control.
Watch: 3 minutes
Touring logistics: how a concert tour really moves
The show you see is two hours. Getting it there takes weeks of planning and one very long day. The advance, the rider (and why Van Halen banned brown M&Ms), riggers at dawn, the truck pack, arenas vs stadiums vs theaters, flypacks, touring crew vs local crew, testing before doors, and how a Super Bowl halftime stage goes up and comes down in minutes.
Watch: 3 minutes
Control room design: who sits where, monitors, comms, and the CAR
The show happens in the control room. Who sits where on the production desk, why the monitor wall became a multiviewer, how one HD-SDI cable carries picture plus sixteen channels of audio, comms from party line to IFB, why stage announce is the voice of God (and what happens when you forget it's on), the Central Apparatus Room, and HD-SDI vs IP with SMPTE ST 2110.
Watch: 3 minutes
Shooting for Vision Pro: how immersive video actually works
In immersive video there is no frame. Spatial video vs 360 vs Apple Immersive, why 180 degrees, stereo lenses at IPD spacing, 8K per eye at 90 fps, foveated rendering, vergence-accommodation conflict, 3DoF and parallax, hiding lights and crew, world-locked graphics, and live sports in Apple Immersive. Also: why you never yell "pan left."
Focused engagements
Solve the constraint.
Keep the momentum.
Start with the problem in front of you. Each engagement produces a practical system, not a shelf full of recommendations.
From blank room to first shoot
Studio Design Consulting
Production-minded planning for creator studios, podcast stages, control rooms, and multi-camera environments.
- Room and equipment plan
- Lighting and signal flow
- Vendor and build guidance
Repeatability without rigidity
Production Workflow Consulting
Turn the way your best people work into a faster, teachable production system.
- Show and scene templates
- Operating procedures
- Automation opportunities
Senior leadership, right-sized
Fractional Head of Production
Ongoing guidance for teams that need experienced production leadership without another full-time executive.
- Roadmap and budget ownership
- Hiring and vendor direction
- Production quality systems
Built around the show
A production system is successful when the team stops thinking about it.
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01 / Listen
Understand the content
Format, cadence, team, audience, ambitions, and the friction slowing everything down.
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02 / Design
Engineer for reality
Build around your people, room, budget, and repeatable production, not a theoretical spec sheet.
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03 / Operationalize
Make it teachable
Document, simplify, test, and hand over a system that keeps working after the consultant leaves.
Your Production Studio Evangelist
Built in high-stakes production environments.
“Evangelist” means more than recommending gear. Lucky McNulty helps creators see what their studio can become, then translates that vision into a production system their team can operate every day.
He is a production and studio engineering leader with more than 20 years across broadcast television, real-time production, spatial media, and global marketing operations.
His experience includes studio leadership at Bunim/Murray Productions, infrastructure design across nine professional facilities, technical direction for major broadcast formats, and production operations supporting Apple marketing campaigns.
Company and program names indicate selected professional experience and do not imply endorsement.
System status Ready
Studio infrastructureDESIGN + BUILD
Multi-camera productionLIVE + RECORDED
Spatial workflowsIMMERSIVE
AutomationREPEATABLE
Practical answers
Creator studio consulting, without the mystery.
What does a creator studio consultant do?
I design the camera, lighting, audio, signal flow, control-room, and operating workflow around your content, team, space, and budget, so production becomes faster and more reliable.
Who is this for?
Established YouTubers, podcasters, creator-led companies, agencies, and media teams that publish regularly and have outgrown an improvised setup.
Do you only work in California?
No. On-site consulting is available in Silicon Valley, San Jose, and Los Angeles, with remote diagnostics, design reviews, and workflow consulting available anywhere.
Do you sell production equipment?
No. Recommendations are driven by the content and production requirements, not a reseller relationship or a preferred equipment package.
A strong fit if you’re...
01Publishing regularly and losing too much time to setup or troubleshooting.
02Moving into a permanent studio or upgrading one that evolved by accident.
03Growing a team and needing production knowledge to live outside one person’s head.
04Building a more ambitious show, channel, podcast, or creator-led media business.
San Jose · Los Angeles · Remote
Let’s make your production setup feel invisible.
Tell me what you’re creating, where the workflow gets difficult, and what you want the studio to make possible.
Start a conversationPrefer to talk? 818-355-7934