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[Mark Scrivener]

Although I pretty much am “above” this guys demographic, I still subscribe to his channel because I think he has some pretty good videos on how to light things on a budget, and his explanations are pretty straightforward.

https://youtube.com/channel/UC1waxWgPLQJv7UVBe9dr5cg

Yep, his Onyx tutorials are very useful if you've never used Onyx/M-PC before. But the way he parses his sentences drives me nuts.

[Heath Eldridge]

Yep, his Onyx tutorials are very useful if you've never used Onyx/M-PC before. But the way he parses his sentences drives me nuts.

I’ve been recommended the same.

The comment a couple of you made about “appearing on an invoice” is an important one. The answer is “nothing”. And that’s very much a problem. I do think it influences “amount of work” though.

[Scott Holtzman]

there...someone said it.. "what are your customers paying...." 
over the years I've found that lighting isn't a money maker for me, I've used it as a selling point but seldom been able to charge for it.  the big weddings etc, there's usually already an uplighting being provided by the pipe n drapes vendor etc..so I only get the actual stage biz. that said I always offer what I describe to the client as a "stage wash"..so that they can actually see the band. As space allows I'll place a T-bar each side of the stage with (4) thin Par DMX (RGBW) per side and then I also add a 5th Par to face out on to the dance floor to at least provide some wash light. basic DMX controller lets me change scenes..ie a slow dance might go down to all blue or cyan..rockin the house is going to go full on, chase maybe..and then if it is a dance floor I'll also provide some basic DJ fx lighting...usually a couple of Kinta multi units is enough..gives me strobe, lasers, gobes, etc in one nice box..and, unlike DJs, I don't just put them on ramdom and let them go all night long ... if my stage scene changes to slow dance, all blue example, the FX lights will stop their crazy and hold blue as well.  I'll usually add a couple bars for uplighting behind the stage..again, if it's a good paying gig, I'm happy to make it all look that much better, if it's barebones..then they will still get some lighting. 
my biggest concern has always been that speaking DMX is like a black art or something...so if I'm sending out a smaller PA with crew and I'm not on the job, then I tend to run a much simpler DMX 4 channel fader unit that the guys usually can operate.. the larger programmed rig without someone who can make changes during setup day-of...that's just asking for trouble.

Wedding market is same here in Cleveland. We have a lighting vendor that has that market locked though we do a lot of pipe and drape business that they light!


I am really sick and tired of them.  I worked for months on a 400 person bespoke wedding at the art museum.  We had pre-event space, the ceremony outside and our stage.  I sold hard and convinced the planner to please rent our Stageright state that the ridiculous sum the museum gets for their roached out Intellastage that our Stageright would look better and the musicians would not complain about the stage all night.  We put a lovely ground package together of lighting and our audio and video plan worked great.  We got a nice check and a thank you.  I was raging inside.  The lighting provider who is competent brought 100 or so uplights, 6 movers (they were pretty but without haze just basically gobo projectors) and pin spots for the floral arrangements.  For some unknown reason they rolled in an MA4 for this and had a full rate union LD at the helm. Nothing against the union of course.  The wedding planner left her clipboard and I could not help myself.  The top earner for the night was not catering as I would have expected it what from the furniture and linen provider, these guys are another level of pricks, we think they grease the security at the dock, it's bad enough it's slow because the museum has a huge man trap you have to stage through but these guys show up with their fleet of detailed freightliners and hog the dock until they are out.  Production is never allowed to idle at the dock as the end of the event comes up.  We also don't get budget for a driver so the crew drives the truck(s).  That night we had bessie the 30 year old uhaul truck that the box final exploded on and a Penske we rented.  As Tim advised me once, the people signing the check aren't at the dock.  Oh yeah back to my story, so lighting was paid over twice what an 11 piece wedding band with full production and a ground lighting package, a three piece string (2 were from the band) group for the ceremony and a 3 piece jazz act (3 were from the band) for the pre-event space.  We also brought 5 65" monitors on stands with full dress kits, pipe an drape for behind the stage, a lectern, 4 channels of QLXD, a DJ, tons of Coax for the SDI on the monitors and a small switcher and playback computer. 


So thanks to COVID we haven't had a chance to start operation death star for this lighting company.  It's  drop in the bucket to them by Happy got himself some magnetic pin spots, lots more uplights and made arrangements with two great LD's.  I am going to win this lighting business at a fair rate.  I don't care if I have to hand out "free lighting" coupons (that way I can still bill the job and instill the value, I am not sure I am serious about this but I would not put myself above it).  I have earned the trust of a few wedding planners that I will get one or two of these jobs and I will show them that they have been charged nothing short of usurious rates for way too long.


 

[Tim McCulloch]

Scott - don't under-sell the price of the lighting to get the work, offer a "total package discount" or something similar if they book all the pipe and drape, staging, lights & sound, etc from your shop.  The money for bright shiny objects is there, don't leave too much of it on the table to only grab a smaller portion of it.

[Paul G. OBrien]

Like most people in that role I guess, my interest is primarily in sound, but I have a bit of a lighting setup.

As others have indicated there definitely is money to be made with lighting in the corporate and wedding market, they will even overpay for it in some cases though I suspect those customers would still welcome a better deal. There is the potential to be a complete one stop shop for these customers if you are so inclined, so maybe you just have to decide if you want to go down that road or not.

[Jeff Lelko]

Wedding market is same here in Cleveland. We have a lighting vendor that has that market locked though we do a lot of pipe and drape business that they light!

Keep us posted!  I'd love to hear how this all works out once business picks back up again.  If I was still in the Cleveland area I'd be happy to network with you on that.

I can certainly agree that pricing can be quite variable.  Corporate lighting and even pyro can be extremely lucrative in the right markets.  I think you hit the nail on the head though with needing to work with the right planners to gain footing in the market.  As I'm sure you already know, sometimes best price wins...othertimes reputation precedes price.  Getting some proven success working with established coordinators will always help.  I know you know this already - it's more for everyone else following along at home.

For me I'd almost always rather not see the clipboard...  So long as I'm being paid what I asked the rest isn't my business.  That said, knowing the rates of others is oftentimes eyebrow-raising and occasionally infuriating!  Good luck!

[Scott Holtzman]

Keep us posted!  I'd love to hear how this all works out once business picks back up again.  If I was still in the Cleveland area I'd be happy to network with you on that.

I can certainly agree that pricing can be quite variable.  Corporate lighting and even pyro can be extremely lucrative in the right markets.  I think you hit the nail on the head though with needing to work with the right planners to gain footing in the market.  As I'm sure you already know, sometimes best price wins...othertimes reputation precedes price.  Getting some proven success working with established coordinators will always help.  I know you know this already - it's more for everyone else following along at home.

For me I'd almost always rather not see the clipboard...  So long as I'm being paid what I asked the rest isn't my business.  That said, knowing the rates of others is oftentimes eyebrow-raising and occasionally infuriating!  Good luck!

The wedding planners I have been talking to have been nothing short of depressing.  Some of the top people in town are taking weddings at the VFW lodge with DJ humpty dump. 


None of our high end event centers, hotel ballrooms, city hall (a lovely building but all marble, we once got to work with the set builders at the community college for a Harry Potter themed wedding in the atrium of city hall) art museum, natural history, rock hall of fame event space.  None of them have a clear path to reopening for private events yet.

[Scott Holtzman]

Scott - don't under-sell the price of the lighting to get the work, offer a "total package discount" or something similar if they book all the pipe and drape, staging, lights & sound, etc from your shop.  The money for bright shiny objects is there, don't leave too much of it on the table to only grab a smaller portion of it.

That message was horribly type on my phone, my apologies.  To be cogent the idea was to offer a one time discount off the invoice for first time lighting customers that would normally call this particular lighting firm. 


I had an interesting talk with another planner and I asked her flat out, what would it take to earn your lighting business too.  She related a story of how she once trusted a band who offered to bring uplights to a wedding.  Apparently they brought a bunch of mismatched wired pars half of them didn't work and filthy orange extension cables.  She said I know that when I call xxx company that I don't have to worry about anything, just like when I hire you to provide entertainment and audio.  So we left the conversation that we bring the same professionalism to our lighting work and offered her a tour of the warehouse to see that we truly have clean, properly cared for fixtures in matching, clean, well maintained cases.  She didn't say no.  My guess is it will only take a handful for the word to get around.

[Heath Eldridge]

As others have indicated there definitely is money to be made with lighting in the corporate and wedding market, they will even overpay for it in some cases though I suspect those customers would still welcome a better deal. There is the potential to be a complete one stop shop for these customers if you are so inclined, so maybe you just have to decide if you want to go down that road or not.

I’m definitely just working for bands - the step up to provide all event hire would be significant.

Never say never but it’s not the plan.

[John Schalk]

I can't really help you out with respect to lighting software or specific equipment, but I can share the two changes to the lighting we made in my old band that had the most impact.  For that band we had 4 light trees with 4 LED pars on each tree and 4 movers.  When I joined the band, the DMX for all 20 fixtures was daisy chained and we always had issues.  We tried some borrowed wireless dongles (they looked like XLR barrel connectors) but they didn't help.  The "secret sauce" turned out to be a powered DMX splitter.  I think it was a 4-way, so each tree got a master run and the lights were already cabled together on the t-bars.  A mover was picked up from there (I think.)  After adding the DMX splitter, our random blinking light issues dropped by 90%.

The second change was with how we stored and transported the light bars.  We started out with them in keyboard type bags and they were loaded in the trailer towards the front, and of course you had to be careful to not put anything else on top of them.  Our band leader got the brilliant idea to mount J-hooks in the nose of the trailer and we hung the light bars from them and got rid of the PITA bags.  The light bars road in and out on top of the subs, which had padded covers on them.  This was so much faster than dealing with the bags and also more secure because the light bars couldn't fall over in the trailer or get smooshed.  When we were on our game, the light trees loaded in first and we set them up in rough position rather than leaning them against a wall.  Then, when the subs rolled in with the light bars on top, it was a simple matter to throw the bars on top of the trees where they were safely out of the way.

From a lighting perspective, the main weakness of our setup with 4 pars at each corner of the stage is that we didn't have a good way to get any light on the dance floor.  Indoors this wasn't a big deal but for outdoor shows, once the sun went down, the dance area was dark. 

[ProSoundWeb Community]