Fulfilling her dreams of running a small film studio, Grishma Batra will soon open Bright Screen Studio in West Midtown after receiving site selection assistance from Invest Atlanta.
With construction nearly complete, the studio will soon offer rental space for doing smaller-scale shoots. Their target customer will be production companies making music videos, commercials, PSAs, or video interviews, as well as photographers. The grand opening will take place on Thursday, June 28.
She found the space on North Avenue with the help of Invest Atlanta’s Economic Development team. After weighing her budget options and deciding to rent rather than purchase, Batra began scouting locations with a focus on the West Midtown area.
“I was just really struggling with finding a perfect location that would be in my budget,” she said. That’s when she reached out to IA’s Kent Spencer and Cesar Vence, whom she described as being “amazing” and “really helpful.”
“I told them my budget, and then beam heights because a short ceiling height would not have worked for me,” she said. “They narrowed it down and sent me a list of buildings for lease.”
She chose one of the locations on the list Invest Atlanta provided—a building owned by equipment rental company Keslow Camera. The two companies will work in partnership to provide those who shoot there with the cameras and studio space they need.
Bright Screen Studio has much to offer customers. For one, they have a Cyclorama, or “Cyc,” a feature that’s important for productions that don’t want to build large sets, instead adding backgrounds and other visual elements as part of the post-production editing process. The Cyc is 90-feet wide, 18-feet high, and shaped like a “U.” The unique U-shape allows for panoramic shots to be taken from multiple angles.
“Nobody in Atlanta has that actually,” said Batra. “There are a lot of Cycloramas, but they’re all L-shaped with one corner. What we have is a U shape, so you get two corners.”
Bright Screen also offers high-quality lighting options: Kino Flo Image 80s that can light the entire Cyc wall.
“It helps when a smaller production company’s coming,” she said. “They don’t have to worry about bringing their lighting equipment because they can use the pre-lighting options that I have already.”
Batra wants to encourage other women who want to pursue their passion and launch an entrepreneurial venture in the City of Atlanta.
“It's important that I kind of give back to the community, especially to women in the film industry or in production,” she said. “I would say to them, do your research and obviously follow your passion, but also make connections with people that are really going to help you, not just in your business, but take you further in life.”