Day Rate for Club/Theatre Engineers

[AVL Andrew]

I am currently employed full time at a 1,000 cap. venue. I am interested in figuring out the average U.S. day rate for mon. engineers , and foh engineers. I am paid hourly, but I understand many venues pay a flat fee per show.
I know I am currently underpaid, and I plan to use information gathered to apply for a raise, up to the national standard. The venue I work at is in the top 50 for annual gross for its size. So pay me what I am worth bitch!

any and all input is appreciated.

thanks-A

[Jeffrey Avritt]

in vegas being non union and working an 8 hour day in still doing about 225.00 before taxes and that is my rate if i do A1-2 or stage........when i freelance i wont work for less that 500.00 for a 10 hour and then OT to follow depending on the days in the stint and who the company is and if it is a first time gig or not and also depending on how the gig went.....if it went more than 10 but was an easy gig ill just charge 500.00 with expenses if it was a royal pain then i might see how many hours ot and go from there..........it also has to do with cirtification too......l-acoustics is a big cert to have and yamaha pm5d or any digital training and or cert is a huge plus too.....just add a little input from vegas ...........hope it has some bearing on your thoughts..........

[Marty Weiand]

Wow! I thought I was getting the shaft @ 19.71/Hr. you guys should get paid what you are worth!! 200-300 per show is the going rate here in Ct. Mohegan Sun Casino is the $19.71 hr, but i drive 1 hour one way to work, so there goes one hour of pay. Its tough out there boys and girls, i guess we have to count our blessings that we have work at all these days. Stay safe all!

[Tim Mortimer]

I became a LLC and now charge $350.00 a day. I do just about anything in the business, except the boards. Been doing this since 1995 in Phoenix, AZ. When I started I was getting paid $7.00 an hour and living at a homeless shelter. So I feel I paid my dues.
Tim Mortimer

[Chris Wilson]

All my stuff is done with the union .I get almost $15.00 hour and weekend we get overtime pay and medical after a years or so.I do mostly stagehand but I am also foh sound when need .The only problem here you screw up one time with sound thy will never let you do it agin or touch a bord agin. I have done it for over 14 years .I screwed up one thing and thy got pissed off .So you are better off working on your own .

[jay]

Yeah, like many have already said, it really depends on where and what. There is no national standard. I have done local gigs at places a bit larger than that and day rates started around 300. LD, FOH & Monitors all had the same rate (no clue what they paid our stage hands or anyone else-probably something stupid like 10 bucks an hour.) Anyway, we only had larger bands/international acts coming through but that's also LA where most live techs also tour, expect higher rates and have more larger scale show experience than in many other areas so maybe it's just more understood. The cost of living is pretty high here too. Who knows though, there are a ton of music venues around LA where I'm sure they have kids working for dirt cheap mixing local bands, running monitors from FOH on a crappy 16ch board, have to push gear and lucky to make a $100 a show. If it's a club (as in a nightclub) that's a whole other story and can see where they wouldn't pay much. Why not ask around to other guys at some comparable venues and get an idea of what the going rates are like in your area. If there are kids standing in line who can do your job for what they'll pay or in many cases maybe not as great but for less, you might not have much room for negotiations. Good luck and if all else fails start looking for a bigger better gig while your making something for now and when the time is right-bail!

[Flying Ryan]

at least 2 bills a day no matter what...

[Nathan Vacha]

I'll work for under $200 here in Orlando, but only when all I'm required to do is move shit in. ...or sometimes if I'm really hard up for work. I work freelance though and we work on a day rate scale as opposed to hourly.

One question I don't think anyone's brought up is how long are these shifts you're talking about? A standard day rate is for a 10 hour day typically and anything after that kicks in over time, so I don't see how hourly works out better than day rate any where. It's not at all uncommon to work 3-4 hours or even less and get full day rate and sometimes a meal.

I don't think a $200-300 nightly rate would be out of line for a 1,000 cap theatre.

Also, how many inputs are we talking about?

Nathan.

[James]

as a comparison to my earlier posts, i was doing a 72 channel mix/night for celebrity (cruise line) and making ~$5US/hour! (1900US/mo, but it was 80+ hours/week of work, plus being on call 24/7)

never again! i make 4x that pushing cases around arenas, and that's non IA work...

IA here pays retarded amounts...$36/hr for stagehands and it goes up if you're someone other than meat

[AVL Andrew]

What City are you in?

thanks-

[James]

toronto

good luck getting into IA58 though, it'll take you about 5 years to become an apprentice, and another 3-4 to actually get a card

[Evan lineberry]

you should be making at least $20 an hour for a club gig the size of the orange peel

[Kyle"The Icepick" Intrabartolo]

Hey man I never did the club thing before, but I did do some theatre work and I was being paid $8.50 an hour of course this is when I just got in the industry and didn't know much so I thought it was cool. I stuck with it for a while and met some good people and wound up pushing cases, bolting truss, hanging lights etc... in the corporate world for $250.00 a day(10 hours) Again I stuck with that and started doing M.E./basic programming for corporate gigs for good day rates. I look back at where I started and I can tell you to just keep the drive to learn and network your ass off!!! All the clients I have now which isn't that many, but it's enough to live on and I love doing it, all came from the people I met along the way. Good luck to you man and I hope this helps.