Years ago I was doing a corporate show with some friendly clients who produce multi million dollar events. Over a few drinks I got to know one of the executive producers pretty well. I asked him how his firm got in with these big drug companies he did events for. He explained the process he has to go through to make a presentation to get the gig. After wowing me with details he let me know that his company had spent 40k just in the presentation. I gasped and told him I could not imagine spending that much of my own money just for a chance at getting the gig. His reply was simple. “It takes money to make money.”
So like everyone else in this bad economy I’ve been trying to fill my schedule with any gigs I can get. I’ve been teaching programming skills to young techs who are working their way up in this biz and it’s quite rewarding to help out others at my employers lighting company. I do manage to work on shows a few days a month to at least pay my bills til something breaks, but I can’t just sit around and wake for a break.
So I’m filling my spare time after work drawing up designs to pitch to some of my bands. Rather than wait til I’m under the crunch, what better time than to put on my thinking cap and start doing what I do best. Come up with something that’s witty and hopefully not been done by anyone else before. Or just as good, I’ve been combing thru my memory banks of all the old tours I’ve done and remembering cool ideas others have had, and how I might be able to improve on them now, some years later.
Then this month I got a call from an old production buddy. He has an artist going out on a world tour who is looking for something different that what he’s done in the past. Would I be willing to put some art together and explain a show concept to his client. So I sat down with another friend and started thinking about cool stuff we’ve done in the past and other stuff that we may like to see in the future. After brainstorming for a while I got out my laptop and started drawing. I’ve been doing this long enough to get some good skills in this department, but just as important I’ve made some good contacts who can help me out when I need something.
For this project I needed a few cad drawings of peculiar things. For instance I needed a rickshaw. I also needed a pagoda. I called my friend Chris Tousey. He draws artistic renderings of shows for a living. He happened to have both. I had hired him on a gig last month and he paid me back twicefold by emailing me these symbols. It would have taken me hours to draw these from scratch and a time crunch for my bid was on.
Next I found myself in a bind on Vectorworks. I did not know how to draw some curved pieces of rope and I was stumped. Well thank God I have a friend in Rich Locklin. Rich teaches advanced Vectorworks classes. Rather than him explain to me how to do what I wanted to do, he simply sent me the piece I needed for one of my drawings. While I had him on the line I asked for a symbol for a convertible. He didn’t have one off hand, but 15 minutes later I had one in my email. I help Rich with some programming questions now and then and he reciprocated like a brother in arms.
Once done with my 30 drawings I imported them into ESP, the visualizer program. This enabled me to start turning on video and lights to draw scenes of what I would like to see on this show. After about 100 hours of drawing I rendered about 30 jpegs and will now start the process of putting together a “story book” that will explain the show flow to the artist. But first I had to go to Kinkos. I handed them a USB stick and a stack of laser paper to start making my colorful computer drawings into hard copies.
So now I sit at a bar and write my blog while waiting on them, and it brought me back to what my corporate producer buddy said to me all those years ago. While I did not invest that much money, I did invest quite a bit of time and countless brain cells. It’s all the same. While I may not get this gig in the end, I gave it a good shot. I really haven’t had time to think about how much my hours are worth…yet. But after all, you’ve got to spend time or money, to make money. And I’ve got the time right now.
