At the main campus of film equipment rental house VER, construction workers put the finishing touches on a new camera prep building, part of a multi-million-dollar consolidation at the company. The Glendale building contains 20 camera bays, with one side of the room for episodic television and feature films and the other side for reality programs. The bays are used by production technicians to make sure lenses are calibrated and cameras function properly. It is a process that can take up to two weeks. Chief Executive Steve Hankin said that VER never before had a building for camera prep work. An upgrading of space last month allowed for that, in addition to dedicated space for the company’s audio, broadcast systems, video, fiber transmission, R&D and lighting divisions. “It is major change in how we operate and the quality of the facility we have here,” Hankin said. A global company with 33 offices in North America and Europe, VER houses one of the largest inventories of production equipment for television, feature films and live events. There are more than 1,600 employees with about 550 of them in the Los Angeles area. The consolidation at VER required closing locations in Glendale and North Hollywood. The company now operates out of three places: the main campus at 757 W. California Ave. in Glendale, which is made up of 11 buildings; a second location in Glendale about a mile away dedicated to LED lighting, and the brand new “light lab,” which is in a 67,000-square-foot building in Pacoima. Hankin would not give an exact figure on what the consolidation process cost, but said it was in the single-digit millions of dollars. He also declined to disclose the revenue of the privately-held company. Broadcasts from Rio Baz Halpin, chief executive of Silent House Productions, a Los Angeles firm that does production design for television, live events and tours, said the segment of the entertainment industry that VER operates in is built on relationships and the Glendale facility promotes them. “Having this campus of different disciplines in different buildings helps to maintain those relationships,” Halpin said. Among the inventory offered to its clients, VER has 2,800 cameras for rent, from simple video to 4K broadcast-quality cameras. The audio building contains cables, mixing boards, wireless microphones and speaker systems among other equipment that gets sent on tours by such acts as Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber and used at large festivals such as Coachella. Last month, VER sent a team of 32 employees to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to support broadcasts of the Olympic games. In July, it supplied the network news booths and the main stages at the Democratic and Republican conventions. For years, it has been involved with the Super Bowl halftime show. The rationale behind upgrading its facilities is an easy one – VER was running out of space. Additionally, the space it did have was outdated and could not handle the needs of customers, Hankin said. But while expanding its footprint, the company decided to upgrade the marketing impact of its space. “We made a conscious decision to advance the state of the technology supporting our team and to make customer-friendly spaces to share the technology in a better way,” Hankin said. The camera prep building is a good example of that, as is the “light lab” in Pacoima, housed in a building that VER bought from a bankruptcy asset sale. The lab includes three pre-visualization rooms and prep space where production crews can set up lights, make sure they are operating correctly and make any last-minute corrections. “That facility is really advanced relative to where it was,” Hankin said. Silent House’s Halpin has used VER video, audio and lighting equipment for the Las Vegas show of Britney Spears, the Emmy Awards and the MTV Video Music Awards. His firm will do things that have never been tried before, and to achieve that, it needs a partner willing to go along and meet the challenge, he said. “Having people who understand the creative as well as the technical aspect is vital and that is what’s great about working with the guys at VER.” Halpin added. Combining the technical and creative sides is the result of VER having a dedicated R&D division, which Hankin said makes the company unique. The division focuses on the mechanics of productions and the easiest, quickest ways to ship equipment out, set it up and take it down. “That reduces labor costs and clients love that,” Hankin said. The facility upgrades are finishing just as VER is entering into its busiest time of year – the fall TV production season. Hankin said most architectural projects take longer when you give everybody a seat at the table – and the consolidation was no different. The company committed nine months to doing the upgrades, he added. The work had to be completed at the same time Hankin was overseeing a growing business, keeping up service levels and communicating with customers about the facility changes. “It is a big logistics challenge for us to coordinate the movement of equipment from one location to another, educating employees about how to tell customers where to go,” he said.