“Lights, camera, action” is a lot easier said than done when you’re a college student working on a budget. Luckily, CSUSM has a hidden gem on campus for all your video and audio service needs.

Located on the second floor of the Kellogg Library is Kellogg Studios, an entire section of the library fully equipped with soundproof recording rooms, filming studios, cameras, lights, green screens, backdrops, live streaming capabilities, an array of recording equipment and anything else you’d need to put on a full production.

For those who need a little help, the studio team is ready and willing to help. Whether it’s setting up a studio for filming, teaching you how to use equipment or being your photographer, if you ask, they are there to help you.

Student assistant Brian Leonardo said it could be “as simple as [needing to record] a snippet for a homework assignment to as complicated as ‘I’m dropping an album’ or ‘hey, I just need a quiet room to go over my class lectures’.”

While Kellogg Studios used to offer the services of two fully equipped studio spaces, Studio B has been closed now for some time.

“Unfortunately during a majority of my time spent at the university, one of the only two studios was used as storage space,” said CSUSM student John Muehl.

Studio Manager Blake Schilling said this issue is soon to be fixed. “Probably around the end of summer, we’re supposed to upgrade.”

All of the studio’s cameras are to be upgraded from 1080 HD to 4K. The studio will also receive new virtual reality (VR) cameras, motion capture technology and 3D printers.

“Whether it’s kinesiology or biology, we’ll have a lot of courses coming down creating stuff with VR and using it to learn,” Schilling said.

But if you’re not a video or science major, don’t worry Schilling said that “It’s all open to any student.”

The benefits of this studio do not end there. If you’re a soon-to-be-graduating senior or you just need a profession photo for your LinkedIn profile, you can get senior portraits and headshots done right here at CSUSM for free.

“They don’t have to go out and pay some fancy guy to get photos,” Schilling said. “They can just come down here and we’ll take them for free.”

So next time you’re trying to film a class project, record a new track for your SoundCloud or just take some cool pictures, save yourself some money and time and go down to Kellogg Studios. It is a readily available service on campus that your tuition already paid for so you might as well take advantage of it while you can.

To make reservations for studio time visit https://www.csusm.edu/ats/media/servicerequests/studio_request.html