Studio 101 — West Adams Former Bank Filming Location for Productions

Studio 101 is a West Adams filming location with the bones of a former bank and the usefulness of a working production space. From the street, the Beaux-Arts facade still has that early civic confidence; inside, it opens into a double-height hall with tall gridded windows, repeated structural bays and a broad polished gray floor. What makes it especially practical is the range within the same property: a grand open volume, warm contemporary wood architecture, furnished office rooms and a fenced courtyard with parking access.

Grand Hall With Bank Scale

The main hall is the room that sets the tone. It is long and open, closer in feeling to a historic banking chamber than a blank studio, with square columns and deep ceiling beams pulling the eye through the space. Pale vertical wall panels keep it from feeling busy on camera, while the polished gray floor, with its geometric checkerboard insets, gives just enough trace of the building's earlier institutional life. Because the center stays largely clear, crews have room to build wider frames, move a camera through the space or hold depth between talent and background. For commercials, music videos and still photography, it can read as a creative headquarters, a reimagined bank lobby or an elevated corporate environment, with wall screens and a ceiling projector already in place for practical dressing.

Stair, Mezzanine and Office Looks

The timber staircase is one of the strongest camera features in the building. It cuts diagonally through the hall, climbs to the wood-fronted mezzanine and lands on a platform that gives you a clean graphic angle from the floor. From above, the landing looks back across nearly the whole studio, which is useful for high-angle coverage or establishing the scale of the room. Under the mezzanine, the sightline carries into a conference area, so you can stage formal office action without losing the volume behind it. Upstairs shifts into a more relaxed workplace mood, with green carpet, loose seating, cafe tables and built-in perimeter seating. Glazed meeting rooms, exposed brick, a compact round-table room, a narrow modern kitchen and a marble-topped boardroom let you keep the office story moving without repeating the same frame.

Window Light and Controlled Interiors

Daylight comes in strongest from the street-facing wall and front corner, where very tall black-framed windows lift the light high into the double-height room. The brightest pockets are near the lounge and timber stair, while the opposite wall stays quieter, giving crews options as exterior light changes. The deeper areas under the mezzanine are naturally more controlled and use linear ceiling fixtures, so they play well for office coverage. The enclosed meeting rooms bring in their own track lights, pendants or broad ceiling fixtures. White-painted beams and pale walls help bounce ambient light, while the black window heads and warm wood keep enough contrast in the frame.

Facade, Courtyard and Production Flow

The exterior has a convincing former-bank presence, with fluted pilasters, ornate capitals and a detailed cornice across the one-story Beaux-Arts facade. The tall gridded glazing lets you understand the size of the interior from outside, and the corner position gives camera departments long street perspectives as well as a clean look at the formal entrance. The fenced courtyard is a useful second look, with pink-and-gray paving, clipped hedges, scattered olive trees and movable white dining sets, low loungers and red chairs under string lights. One side gives you an octagonal window and a simpler masonry wall for a cleaner reverse angle. For production, the practical advantage is the access: ample parking, multiple entry points, gates to both the sidewalk and parking area, and a layout that lets crews fold FilmLA permit coordination into arrival and staging plans.