Small pond, Few fish

[carbonhobbit]

    I haven't ranted for awhile so.......

    I live and work in a small market here in the midwest. Out here, sound people with equipment are few and far between. In my town, there are only two of us with NLR's and another sound person I sub rent to. In our world, some months there is not enough work to go around and the next day every production wants to shoot on the 15th, the date is set in stone, can't be moved and they are calling two days before the shoot. I've survived this for the last 20 years.

   

    So here's the rub. Guy from LA calls, he's in another state 170+ miles from me. He can't find a soundperson to save his life. The city 50 miles from him with sound people is all booked up, that is why he is calling me. It's Thursday and his shoots starts on Saturday. He shooting PSA's on 16mm. He wants a DAT Machine. Mine was last used 6 months ago. He has make-up, wardrobe, camera assist, gaffer, a couple of grips and a PA. He's just missing a sound person with equipment.

   

    We're from the midwest, we go out of our way to help productions out of binds like this. Then he drops the bomb. He only has 350 a day for sound. I know he heard the pin drop. Excuse me? Didn't he just say he was having a problem finding a sound person. I think I know why! Where do these people crawl out from? Sure in LA you can pick up some sound people for that, but out here we can't survive on that. It's hard to keep up with what's new and improve and only come home with 350 a day. Lets see, I have to buy the equipment, insure it, keep it up, buy a car, have a place to stay, eat, save for my retirement and save money for new equipment that I seem to need every year just to stay in business. And in the time I've been doing this, average just 12 days of work a month. I have a hard enough time just making it on 600/day and retiring is out of the question.

    I'm an independent contractor. Shouldn't that mean when someone comes to me for work, I get to set the rates? If that person doesn't like the rate, they go onto the next person, but there isn't another person to go to. So they have to come back and pay my rate. But it just doesn't seem to work that way in the land of film oz. They throw out the line of "I can get a sound person out here for xxx." Well, bring him out with ya, and I'll just go slap burgers at the king.

    I see it as you're selling your house, you're having an open house on Saturday and the drain in the basement has just started flowing the wrong way at 3 am. After finding a plumber willing to come out, you ask him to do it at this set price because your neighbor is a plumber and that's all he would charge you. Have a nice day........I'm booked already.

              Scott

[Sergio Sanmiguel]

Scott,

I had a similar scenario also somewhere here in the MidWest. I applied for a 1 day gig on a 35mm music (playback) video but was turned down by some LA producer. Next day got a call at 6 am asking if I would be willing to rent my smart slate, since the guy they hired didn't had any. Obviously I said NO. They called back again at 8 am, at 10 am, at noon; and finally got to talk to this (infamous) LA producer lady. I tried to explain to her that I'm not a rental company & that she had her chance to hire me but she decided not to. She went off on Me with all her contained frustration and finally said "YOU ARE NEVER GOING TO WORK IN THIS TOWN AGAIN"... Unbelievable!!!

:-)

LOL

[Noah Timan]

She went off on Me with all her contained frustration and finally said "YOU ARE NEVER GOING TO WORK IN THIS TOWN AGAIN"...

Wow.

[curleysound]

She was having a moment of self realization, it wasn't directed at you