In 2003 this post appeared:
I am looking for work in the concert touring around industry. I have heaps of experience and have worked with some really good LD's. Please ring me or send me a msg for a resume.
Thanks...
What followed were some fabulous but harsh reality check posts from Ship, Wolf825, and JoJo-TheSoundDog. I've edited it down a bit as there was some rambling, off topic chatter, and a little arguing. If you are thinking about a career in tech theater, I know it's long but you need to read this. While the original post was about lighting for concert tours, the follow up posts contain a lot of great principles that are true no mater where you want to work in the industry.
-Gaff
Ship:
This might seem harsh abut I hope it will give you a strong reality check and not only help you get a job somewhere, but possibly make a career of it. I write it for your benefit as I could be cooking dinner right now. Very harsh at points, but this is business, real business not just "take a chance on me - I had fun working on a few shows."
Where are you, where are you looking to work in basing your operations out of, what other similar type companies have you worked for before, etc? Working for Pro Advantage, Fourth Phase, Upstaging etc. as a project manager/crew chief much less even a similar position that could be verified with your perspective employers at smaller companies would speak a lot more of you than just being on the local crew in hanging a few lights on a few shows - thus working under a designer defacto. Even working in the cable aisle for such companies and going out on an occasional show will speak highly of you past beyond being on the crew at your college when the occasional show came to town.
If you live out in Alabama, you probably wouldn't want to be commuting to New York, Chicago of LA given I in Chicago even had a job for you. This is a national or even international forum much less job you request - you might want to refine your pooling area some. We have a crew chief that gets flown in from England, and a designer that lives out west and can afford two houses. Much less when Sting does a tour of Russia the crew follows on with him, but you have to establish yourself before it's worth while to bring you on. Advertising your services here, I'm about guessing you are not well known enough in the industry to be one of those types that are flown to the job yet. I’m also probably the only tech person on this website that works for one of the companies you would seek to work for so I’m attempting to set your wish into a bit or reality. I think even if this were the place to apply, you are still asking in the wrong place and manner. I'm, sure a few others here have been out and about or find their careers with places that house or do similar gigs, but none I expect are currently working for a touring lighting company. As I will say, it's a nice experience, but not one that you will be able to retire from unless part of a small percentage.
Do you seriously believe that by a resume alone you get hired and go out on the next stage of the Peter Gabriel tour? We have guys out on Metallica that had to put up with me and others for six months in just becoming qualified to possibly go out on tour with them. One was kicked off the tour by the time it left rehearsals and the rest of the kids at the top of the list of kids wouldn’t have any key positions - just running the spots at best given a lot of practice. You know that guy at the dimmer packs and doing nothing during the show really does have a function, what is it?
During the install and with lots of supervision, such crew people would be in charged of ensuring the local crew when installing the truss can count the stripes of colored electrical tape and match up like pieces of truss to each other. Only way such people make it on tour is by spending months in the shop learning, prepping gear and installing that tape on the truss only after they cleaned off the tape from the last tour properly. Structural integrity of truss, what’s that? If they do it well as shop labor, get some training from the master follow spot tech person in how it works and how to operate it up to our standards, much less how to change the
lamps in it properly, than can get through me in wanting a new HMI 1200 lamp for it but needing to know and understand what exact lamp amongst at least 12 HMI 1200 lamps on the market that only one of which would work with they were looking for, do they if they are at least decently competent, do they get to go on tour.
Hmm, have a road box full of spare lamps and you are hanging upside down in your repelling gear that you provide have to ask some local roadie for a spare lamp to the Mac 2K, which HMI 1200 do you ask for unless you know and understand specifically that it’s a HMI1200w/S or a DI-12s or MSI 1200w/S, as opposed to a HMI 1200/GS or HMI1200w/SE, UMI 1200GS, DMI1200GS or many other lamps that are just as likely to be in the road box amongst other 1200w HMI or similar lamps for the local crew person to be choosing from minutes before the show. The more experience you bring with you as a local crew member or better yet having worked for a smaller but quality shops, the more steps and months you can skip given knowledge and ability. You don’t just start by going out on tour. Even kids that go to Full Sail (A very highly recommended training school) and can take apart a moving light blind folded have to spend months proving themselves and learning both proper techniques and our way. Granted all touring companies don’t have the same standards, but the tech people working for them eventually will have to at least figure it out as a professional if they want to become one. Yea, you know what you are doing, just wait until you ask for a ETC lamp and get a 150CL/DC lamp to install in the S-4 fixture. What’s that, it’s an ANSI coded Clear 150w halogen lamp of BA-15d lamp base commonly used on 3" Fresnels or Inkies for a lamp. It’s what you asked for isn’t it? Know what a ANSI code is in respect to lamps? How about a L21-30P plug? Very common if not L21-20P. L14-20, What’s that? It’s pro talk and a standard chain hoist 4-pin power plug.
Had a Master Carpenter or two I worked under over the years that gave an awesome resume and interview but was fired before the production was done because in reality they just were not all there both in leadership and knowing what the heck they were doing professionally. They couldn’t even hold a staff carpenter job subsequently at a real scene shop. At least for the one hapless person, I don’t know what ever happened to him but he certainly isn’t making much of a living if as a crew chief once the people that hired him and it’s a small world, caught on to the fact that you can have a really cool sounding resume or interview and even embellish it, but in reality, it doesn’t mean anything what so ever about you as a tech person. On the other hand, I worked under one or two that started their own businesses and became successful because they were both training wise and leadership wise able to do what they wrote. Even kids ten years my junior and with out the college degree saying I can do this. They didn’t necessarily know more much less know how many watts equal 15 amps, but they had the ability to lead and get stuff done. Heck, I even know of a tech person that has a new Humvee based only upon his own earnings much less respect in the industry as a reality. Wouldn’t trust him to re-wire a CamLoc plug, though he might have learned even better than I have in the years back, but he has people for that literally now such as me given heaps of experience, or others while out on tour to do it for him. Guaranteed, this person started sweeping floors just as we all have, but he doesn’t need to have a resume much less offer heaps of experience, he has a name for himself in reality that upon first contact for a real job will get him in the door.
You could be an exception, but this is big business. We are talking about a tour paying many hundreds of thousands of dollars for our services, the crew provided had better be worth it or the next tour will go to someone else. Who would take the risk on an interview much less just a resume. Tour Production Manager sees just one AC distro blowing up during the tour and it’s game over! You get some idiot that’s out smoking cigs with the security while he is supposed to be doing his job on the pyro much less putting out the fire he started and not only does it cause a major tragedy but effectively runs you out of business as the company that hired you after the lawsuits. No, that’s not you? Just drop your crack pipe from your follow spot position onto the head of someone in the audience and see what happens to the company you used to work for. This is big business, big lawsuits, and liability and total professionalism. I spend on average $1,000.00 per day just on lamps and similar supplies. We buy a half a million dollars a year on moving lights and a million plus on trucking. Based upon “Heaps of Experience” would you hire you for the next tour??? (Yea it’s writing is making you feel small and not up to your build up or self esteem, but this is not meant to hurt, it’s posted to help you find your way before you have to resort to becoming a gas station attendant roadie has been because you just didn’t make it or others didn’t recognize or respect your talent. Sorry, but I have to bow to you later after I’m done building the next set of 37pin DMX data distro truss cable for the moving light on X show - who cares which beyond the fact they need it and it keeps me employed and I get to go home at night as opposed to going back to the hotel. You wrote a very short in comparison request for employment, and this isn’t a very nice reply, but I at least hope that it helps you get beyond the curtain of coolness of being a roadie lighting tech. It’s glamor being a road tech person, but believe me when I say with very few exceptions, that the people on the real tours and making a living at it especially between the tours and especially as free lance are there for a reason besides just knowing which end of the C-Wrench is the right one to turn the bolt towards. Or do you trash bolts with Robo Grips or Channel Locks, because they are so universal?)
Never say you have Heaps of Experience, unless you do, in which case you shouldn't be needing to look for work. Would you say you have more experience than I do? I'm a Master Electrician for a very major rock and roll lighting company and even I just Friday had to sit back and draw out a 208v phase distribution diagram for four strobe lights when teamed up with some sound equipment and a fog machine on a 3-phase thirty amp service. While at the same time a crew chief in charged of the project was just doing it in his head. While he had me on doing a simple 208v patch in why I had to have one duplex L6-15 receptacle with breakable links and another that could be non-splittable and cheaper in being closer to a balanced load than my initial thoughts of just two sets of duplex non-bridge broken. I had him on NEC regulations for how to install the service distro to the fixtures, but he understood distro better than I did because he has to do such things every day. How would you rate in distributing the load on 4 Martin 3K strobes, one HES F-150 fog machine and an estimated 10 amps worth of sound speakers that would be providing at least in theory enough energy to force out that smoke from the machine as opposed to a fan? Come on, I’m just a roadie, I don’t have to understand VxA=W yet as it relates to how many amps a 5Kw Fresnel will be drawing with and with out the safety factor and thus what gauge of wire you need to feed it with, much less other things. Send me out on tour, If I get a 5K Fresnel that has melted wiring, it’s someone else’s problem. This other heaps of experience person that can preform 208v power in addition to fog machine power distro can program a Hog on the fly and even has rock stars over for dinner - they are his buddies. (No fair, I’m not some tech person god, I’m able to hang a fixture on a truss, and like to travel, that’s all that’s needed.) On the other hand, this crew chief I example, had to have me come over to wire his house much less fix or build stuff for his shows that's beyond his own abilities in the detail or time. In other words, experience and knowledge is very specific and what you might think is heaps might be nothing much to others. What is the size of screw holding together the body of a S-4 Leko? Better know when you come up and ask me for one or you are going back to figure it out. I already know, but it's learning for your benefit. On the road, if you loose a screw in said Leko, what are you going to do call ETC and ask them? Current head of Leko Land I’m working on power formulas and getting him over calling stuff like 1/4" as one fourth. He isn’t yet ready for touring. What do you phrase a 1/4-20 screw as, and as opposed to a 1/4-28 or 1/4-32 screw? Ah, what’s the difference anyway? Wait a minute, this fixture was made in Denmark and it’s thus using Metric screws. What’s the difference in overall look of a metric screw verses a standard screw? Given it looks like a 1/4" in size, it has to be a M6x1mm pitch screw. Or was that Korea or some other Orient based light that’s either using metric, standard or old English standard such as a screw with a ½-12 pitch screw as opposed to a ½-13 screw or M12-1.75mm screw? Might not know the difference, but you had at best know what to expect and how to figure it out.
Those some LD's you have worked for would be another source for work. Contact them if they remember you and have them pull you onto their next crew if they trust and can vouch for your abilities and need. Happens all the time that really good LD’s will bring their core of people with them on a tour. Usually, people with "heaps of experience" don't have trouble finding work because they already have established both a name for themselves and networking contacts in the industry, if not at least sources to ask directly for work or if they have projects coming up and can use help. They don't have to ask for work in general in places like this. This is not mocking you. You have to do what you can to get into the biz, but you might be better focusing your message directly to production companies rather than a high school based theater advice website. (Below will be a few to start with)
There are hundreds of companies out there doing gigs. Could be as simple as getting a copy of PLSN or Live Design than sending out a cover letter to the companies you feel you would like to work for in asking for an interview and if they would like you to send them a resume. Even a dialog of being rejected at this moment is a start. Could start at a local company or union house and gain contacts with larger or touring companies they work with for later work given those people you work with remember you and are suitably impressed with your ability to vouch for you in being hired. Hired someone from a smaller but national lighting company for tent type events after he applied. Having done a few rental deliveries to us, the person that hired him at least knew of him. Just a question of getting known in starting small or starting out in the shop at a touring company and moving up the ranks if you are within the area of one. That person was long gone, had his chance but he didn’t have the ability to make it. Seems he didn’t expect to have to know anything about what he was doing, he expected like so many just to go out on tour and drink all night with the band.
I have a college degree, what the heck am I doing slinging feeder cable day after day and earning pennies? Loose any attitudes you might start with if you get a job. Not a tour job mind you if you want a real tour job, just slinging cable and painting truss. If you know what you are doing such tasks won’t be long in lasting but you have to start at the bottom unless you are known and have done such things elsewhere at an equal company. Even than, until you make it where you currently are, you will still be expected to come to an “everybody to the dock to unload the truck” call until you reach a status with the company you shout be at - given you get to bypass the cable aisle since you are above it. We have someone that immigrated from Europe with an electrical engineering degree and was a higher up at one of the largest lighting companies there. He still loads trucks for now at least, as opposed to his boss in moving lights that worked for Diversitronics but just as a manufacturing person, but like me has become recognized as having more important things to do with his time than loading trucks. Put your time in at least so that when you tell people to un-load a truck or sling some cable you have the authority behind you or respect of your status that you don’t have to do that anymore.
That’s not even getting into your future in the business. Going back to the has been gas station attendant. What happens when you hit 40 and your joints just won’t allow you to be sitting atop a ladder all day long during a focus, much less living on a tour buss most of your days while your family at home misses you? Given you make enough money to support the family and house, and have people to climb ladders for you, what if you don’t make it, or get injured and can’t do it anymore? What’s your back up plan when you hit 40 or 50 and don’t get a cushy job requiring less physical effort and more brain work? I can count on one finger how many tech people I know of that’s over 50 but still just a tech person and not even supervisor. Say both hands plus some digets for those in their late 30s or better for management, and in the many dozens for those in their 20s and 30s as just tech people. Consider the math. What happens to those general tech people that just don’t make it to management? Do you have a fall back plan or is this just a kind of selling your wild oats for a while type of concept? I could retire at this, it’s fun to sit atop a ladder all day long and pull feeder cable.
Even if a company isn't hiring - sorry but you missed touring season by about three months so it's probably getting slow about now - (next month when all the college kids go back to school there might be more work, but not tours - too cold for outdoor events) an interview if you can get one, or at least a resume sent might get you a call back later or at least for underhire work. Check with your local union also, instead it might be the way to go and gain retirement with. Could also go to the website of the touring companies you choose and E-Mail your cover letter and resume to the person listed on the website who takes such things. Could send out a CD Rom of your work, resume etc., post cards with some great work you did and can take credit for in saying, Hi - I'm out here and I do great work. Can you use any help?
Go to the book store and pick up a recent title called "The Business of Theatrical Design" by James L. Moody ISBN #1-58115-248-5. I'm somewhere in chapter 7 now having just finished a chapter on how to get jobs and network. Not very useful for me any more but still interesting. Very good read and advice to any tech person much less designer, especially those that are just starting out.
How I got my job with a major rock and roll lighting company. I hit up both the phone book and the regional business to business directory and sent out 50 resumes and cover letters to all production companies in the area after having called each of them to find out who to address it to. I had about 3 cover letters and resumes going that refined the skills I was showing to that of the company I was sending my info to. Got back about 10 to 25% of the resumes sent either saying sorry, we will keep you in mind but are not hiring, or sure come in for an interview in about the 5% ratio. The place I finally decided upon I had never heard of, kind of fell ass backwards into my position because it sounded good during the interview and there was room for growth. I brought some stuff to the interview that I had created beyond the portfolio such as fluorescent starter random flicker effect control gear that wowed the interviewer even if not quite up to their million dollar a year budget for gear. This was something I had developed into a working model and one that was very presentable and professional that was just theory otherwise and a good example of not only my abilities as a tech person, but what even if not quite up to their level, what I would bring to the table once I did get up to their level. I was a proven quality even if small in comparison. What I could do, bring to an interview as very special and memorable made me unique in addition to the resume that the interviewer had to re-read during the interview.
Still my first advice when I got there was just to shut up, and listen to what I was told for at least the first two weeks, and only than and after I followed the chain of command was I to raise my voice in changing things. Lots of changes since than in how I do stuff thus the company does stuff but the main concept was, learn their way even if I had other ideas or I did differently elsewhere, than improve upon it only after I understood it and consulted others for approval. Just improved some rack mount distro panels I have been building for about two years now for the company last week. Seems in the field, when a tech person trips over the wire feeding it, the panels I have been building get all pulled and warped in the rack and they can use a center support. Even as the designer of the rack mount panels, there is room for improvement by those that have been around the block in using them. I can tell you the gauge of steel I’m using, but the crew chiefs with years of experience that could get a job anywhere with out much effort are still the kings in advising how I modify my products. But you have to get up to that level first, much less earn your way to get out on tour.
Off my soap box, hope it guided you an others some (not to make you stand out or ridicule your posting but to help you and other’s with similar dreams.) First, your school if giving a college theater degree should have subscriptions to places like ARTS Link or something like that which is about the most main posting source for jobs. A few other sites on the Web too that would post tours on.
After that, there is: (And this is only the most minimum of starts both touring and basic production company)
ALPS Advanced Lighting and Production Services (Production Company)
Welcome to ALPS Online
Bandit Lights (Production Company)
Bandit Lites Inc. - Illumination Worldwide
Big Production Services - Wisconsin (Production Company)
hollywood film production tv services at bigproductionservices.com
Clearwing (Production Company)
Welcome to Clearwing Productions
Entertainment Lighting Service (Production Co/Lighting Dist.)
Entertainment Lighting | Stage Lighting | Theatrical Stage Lighting | Film Television
Full Circle (Production Company)
fcli.com: The Best Search Links on the Net
Fourth Phase/Bash Theatrical Lighting (Production/Resale Company)
Fourth Phase
Frost Lighting (Production Company)
Frost Lighting
Grand Stage/Art Drapery (Theatrical Supplier/Rigging Production Company)
Grand Stage Company
High Output (Production Company)
High Output, Inc. - Homepage
ILC/Intelligent Lighting Creations (Production Company/Theatrical Supplier)
Intelligent Lighting Creations
Jauchem & Meeh Inc. (Production Company & Special Effects Mfr..)
Welcome to JMFX | J&M Special Effects
Main Light Industries (Fiber Optic Drape & Production Company)
Main Light Industries
The Show Dept, Inc. (Production Company)
http://www.theshowdept.com/
Star/Lite Productions (Production Co/Dist.)
Starlite Productions Web site
Upstaging, Inc. (Production Company/Lighting Dist.)
Upstaging, Inc. | Theatrical Lighting | Transport Trucking | Mobile Marketing | Production Services | Chicago, Illinois
VeriLite (Fixture Mfr/ Production Company..)
Vari-Lite - Express Yourself. Vari-Lite - Express Yourself.
Wolf825:
Hey Ship,
Don't sugar coat it...say what you REALLY mean on this subject and don't hold anything back. :D :D
On a serious note--hats off to ya, WOW that was great (and very long) well said word or two on the subject, and you drove the many many points home. Tho a bit rough sounding, I agree..but I also understand that, since I've had my fill of interviewing folks who think they are gonna go out for the ultimate party, or hang with their favorite rock star or whatever, and such is not the case. They get on a concert crew and they stare all awe-struck and suddenly they are run over by a road case.
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"If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way to make life more bearable." 
