So, I’m going to get the ball rolling by discussing some things that I have found useful in negotiating more than a decade of freelancing.
Tuesday, October 08, 2019
We need to talk about money…
So, I’m going to get the ball rolling by discussing some things that I have found useful in negotiating more than a decade of freelancing.
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I only understood about half of the sound industry specific language used in this article but I think this topic in general is a very important one to consider, and that – like the author states – perhaps people should be talking more about how to make a suitable living on freelancing. From what I have observed and heard – reinforced by this article – it seems like the pay from freelancing is not easy to live on. Freelancers have to constantly working on projects and having multiple jobs going in order to be making a reasonable amount of money. Dom Morley talks about negotiating his own contracts, and doing additional recordings and sound work in his “free time”. It makes me wonder if the trend of theatre people not hobbies or free time is forced upon us because of the economic structure of the industry. It seems that only if you work at a high-paying professional level, or in commercial theatre, that you make money and have time to yourself.
In my time freelancing, I never thought to use the “hold” booking technique. Booking was always a huge struggle for me--I was always getting burned by booking lower-paying gigs that hired early to ensure I would be available, and then later on getting a better offer that I could not take. I would be willing to bet that if I had started asking for a hold, I would have better self-discipline in not booking gigs that I know I would regret, largely because the poorer-quality clients would balk at paying the advance. It also might have helped convey the sense that my work was in high-demand, which could have helped me drive my rates up higher when I felt I was being underpaid. The part of this article that addresses downtime is certainly good advice, but I often found myself making those sorts of professional development plans for downtime that I nearly always let fall by the wayside. I think that, too, comes down to booking--I would vastly overbook during a busy season, then sleep it off during the lulls. Not ideal, but certainly necessary.
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