For those of you in school for theatre, it is not too early to start thinking about summer employment. Even though snow is still on the ground and it gets dark at 4 pm, this is the time of year that many summer festivals, theatres and operas begin recruiting for their production positions and internships. To my international readers, I am sorry this post only deals with US jobs and internships.
Whether looking for summer work or for immediate work, Backstage Jobs should be one of the sites you check daily. By now, most of the major and legitimate theatres have learned to post any and all technical and production-related jobs to this site. It is completely free to view every job posting. The site admin also does a bang-up job of keeping spam and unrelated postings from appearing.
Speaking of spam, the Society of Properties Artisan Managers maintains a list of which of their member theatres offer props internships. This is a comprehensive list of all internships, not just summer ones, so be sure to check the commitment dates for the theatres you are interested in.
Artsearch is another big mainstay of technical theatre job postings. Though you should avoid job posting sites which require you to pay to view listings, this is the one exception. If you are currently in school, your school will probably have login information you can use (this is often true if you are an alumni as well).
In addition to job listings online, you may wish to think about applying and interviewing for jobs during one of the two big conferences. Though these are held in March, now is the time that you should be registering for the conferences, booking your hotel and making your travel arrangements. The two major conferences for theatre technicians are USITT and SETC.
This year, USITT is held March 20-23 in Milwaukee. The conference is meant for technicians and designers for all aspects of live performance. Part of the conference includes a massive stage expo, where companies and employers have booths to show off what they do. This is where you can meet and greet with the people in charge of these companies; many of them use USITT to do some of their recruiting for summer internships and apprenticeships.
The SETC conference will be held March 6-10 in Louisville, KY. SETC is meant for all aspects of theatre, including acting and directing, so it is not focused on just the production side. While the exposition hall is much smaller than USITT’s, it does have a job fair you can sign up for. Companies have small tables where they list the job openings they have, and you sign up for times to interview. You then spend the rest of your time meeting with employers all over the convention center to interview for these jobs. You can interview for as many or as few jobs as you have time for. I actually got hired at the Santa Fe Opera for the first time at the SETC job fair.
These websites and conferences have jobs at all skill and pay levels; even the internships can vary widely in how much you are paid. While it may seem your acting friends are constantly taking low-to-no paid internships, as a technical theatre person, you should always be paid for your work. Plenty of paid opportunities exist at all skill levels if you look for them.
If you ask ten prop makers how they began building props for film, you will get ten different answers. It usually involves some combination of luck, timing, and knowing the right person. While theatre has seasonal employment, apprenticeships and internships which you can find advertised as well as job fairs which feature employers that regularly hire prop people, the world of film has no such thing. You can’t learn about it in a book (believe me—I’ve looked). So how do you get started?
I also want to add that I am writing this as I figure it out; I am pretty much a prop maker for theatre, and my film credits are, well… I haven’t done any film. But this is similar to how I began to get work in the display and exhibition world, and that kept me fairly well employed for a few years. So if any of may readers have advice to add, I’m sure all of us, myself included, will be grateful for it.
What does it mean to do a project “at cost”? Simply put, when a client orders a project, you deliver it and charge only enough to compensate what you spent. It differs from a project where you add a markup to the costs or add a profit margin. So the price is the cost plus the markup plus the profit. Sometimes you might not mark up the costs, and other times you do not add in a profit, but in either case, you are charging more than what you spent.
The confusion comes from the “costs”. There’s the cash you spend – materials, shipping, gas money to drive to the store, overhead and maintenance of your shop – and then there is your labor cost. Some may argue that you should not charge for your labor when you are doing a project “at cost”. This is not only erroneous, but it is damaging to our industry, as I shall explain in a bit.
I’ve even heard the suggestion that the cost of your labor should be considered “profit.” This is absolutely absurd! If you get overwhelmed with other jobs and have to hire someone to do the project, you do not get to keep that money; it becomes a labor cost. When a company sends out it’s weekly payroll checks, it does not get that cash back, nor can it count it as profit. Why then should you count your own labor as profit?
The cost of labor is already factored into all the materials and tools you use. The cost of a gallon of silicone rubber includes the cost of the scientists who invented it, the people who manufactured it, the people who packaged it, the drivers who transported it, and the salespeople who sold it. You can’t count any of their labor as a profit; it’s all part of the cost. Why would your labor not also be a cost?
If you make something “at cost” you include the price of your labor. If you don’t know how much that is, you should charge the same amount for your labor as it would take to hire someone else to do that work. You can charge an hourly, daily, or weekly rate, or just set a flat fee for the project as a whole. If you are trying to control the costs of the project, you certainly have some leeway in how much you charge for your labor, but you should never charge too little for it; if your price is still too high for a client and you are trying to do them a favor, you can always add a “discount” to your final price, so you maintain the integrity of your own labor costs.
Prop masters and artisans with experience know that labor is often the most expensive part of a prop. A foam sculpture may only use about $15 in materials, but it can take fifty hours to complete. Even at a very modest $15 an hour, that is still $750 in labor.
Imagine than, a market where some prop makers are saying $15 is “at cost” while others are saying $765 is “at cost”. That kind of disparity drives down the price of props and devalues the labor which goes into it. It is very skilled labor as well, the kind that is frequently at a shortage, even in a large market like New York City. It takes a lot of training, skill and practice to be able to make props. Clients who want the “costs” of a project kept to a minimum will point to the $15 examples, thinking that the $765 estimate is somehow inflating the price or using more expensive materials. Even if you are just an amateur prop maker, your pricing can have ripple effects throughout the industry.
If you want to charge someone just for the materials you use and throw your labor in for free (because it is for a friend, or because you really love the work and would never get paid for it otherwise), that is certainly your right. Everyone does it at some point. But make sure you are saying you are only charging “for materials”, not that you are doing the project “at cost”. It’s a world of difference.
If you are a prop artisan, and you find yourself freelancing (or wishing to freelance), you may wonder how to make money, or more appropriately, how much to charge for your work. In my experience, it has been most helpful to calculate the costs of the project as accurately as possible beforehand, including a set rate you charge for your own labor. My favorite tool for this is the computer spreadsheet, whether it’s through Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, or Google Docs (or whatever Macs use).
Materials
The first, and easiest, cost to estimate is the materials you will use. I include every single bit and piece, even if I already have the materials in stock; if I use what I already have, I will still want to replenish my supply. I literally check the website of where I want to order my material, or visit the store, and use those prices to make my calculation. Make sure you include every single piece of material, no matter how minor you think it is. I was recently estimating a chandelier for a Broadway show. I knew I would need electrical cords to run from the light bulbs to the plug, but I figured it would only be a couple of bucks. Luckily, I decided to play it safe and actually estimate it for real. It turned out I would need nearly 700 feet of cord, which came out to $350. That’s not the kind of cost you want to miss in your estimate. Count up all the screws, nuts, bolts and washers. Don’t forget about taxes and delivery charges. The idea here is that you want to present your client with a realistic estimate of what the project will cost. If the project actually comes under budget, that’s great; people love hearing that they will pay less than they thought. If you don’t want to tell them you saved money, that’s great too, because you can pocket the difference. What you want to avoid is a project that costs more than what you are getting paid for. You don’t want to beg the client for another $350 because you forgot to figure in the electrical cord; that is desperate, and the client is in no way obligated to pay you it, because it was part of the original bid and it’s just your own dumb mistake in overlooking it. You can pretty much count on having to eat any costs you neglect to include in your original bid.
If the client changes something about the project, that’s a different story. Feel free to charge extra for changes.
After you add everything up, you want to make sure and add a contingency. Though you may be absolutely sure you have considered every possible material expense, there is sure to be something extra that you need, or the price of something may inexplicably rise between the time you check it out and the time you actually purchase it. For whatever reason, I like to take the total cost of the materials and add 20% to it. This is usually enough to cover the unforeseen costs.
In the commercial world, especially when it is a business rather than a single person making a prop, it is common to also charge a mark-up on materials. If the prop you are building includes a light bulb, you don’t just charge for the cost of the light bulb, you charge them for the light bulb plus a bit of profit. In other words, it is like you are a store that is making money by reselling the light bulb. This is not to be confused with the contingency cost, which should always be factored in. Adding a markup to your materials is entirely up to you; as for myself, if I am doing a job for a non-profit theatre, or a friend, or any sort of client that I already have a relationship with, I do not add a markup. I’m telling you about it just so you are aware that such a thing exists and is utilized by prop-making companies.
Labor
The second half of your equation is figuring out how much time you need to work on the project. This can be very difficult to estimate, as most of us are very bad at predicting how long a task will take. Again, your biggest ally is breaking down the tasks as much as possible to their most basic components and estimating the time those will take. Â While estimating the time it takes to “build a fake dead goat” can lead to wildly inaccurate guesses, predicting how long it will take to “tighten four bolts” is far simpler.
Just like materials, you want to add a contingency to your labor. It is much more likely you will be off in your predictions with labor than materials, as the cost of materials can be researched online or by calling stores. I always err on the side of pessimism when it comes to how long a task will take. Â Though I am not necessarily thinking about absolute worst-case scenarios (if all the power goes out and my tools break, and my car breaks down on the way to the store, and a volcano starts erupting while my wife goes into labor), you do want to consider that not everything goes according to plan. Think back to the last project you undertook, and remember how it took you twenty minutes just to get your workbench cleaned off before you can begin.
Turnaround Time
When you finally figure out how many labor hours it will take you to finish your project, that doesn’t mean you know how long it will take. If you calculate it will take 23 hours to work on the job, that does not mean it will be done tomorrow. First, you have to figure that you do not have every single hour of the day to dedicate to the task. Maybe you have a full-time job, or family obligations. Even if you are single and otherwise unemployed, you still need to leave time for meal breaks and sleep. Further, you need to calculate the time it will take for paint and glue to dry, or other chemicals to cure. If you need to order parts or materials, you need to factor in the time it will take to ship them.
When a project becomes particularly complex, or if you still don’t know how to calculate the time it will take to complete a prop, you may wish to learn about Gantt Charts.
An example Gantt Chart
I’ve never used them for single-person projects, but you may find them handy. Essentially, you break a project into every possible task. If you are building a table, you want to list buying the wood, drawing the table, developing the cut list, measuring the pieces out, cutting all the pieces, gluing the top together, gluing the apron together, attaching the apron to the top, attaching the legs to the table, sanding the table, staining the wood, and sealing the table. Obviously this is a highly-simplified example, but the point is that you need to break apart your project into various tasks and subtasks until it cannot be broken apart any more.
With a Gantt chart, you then put the tasks into order. Some tasks need to wait for other tasks to be completed before they are begun. Others can be started in the middle of other tasks. The Gantt chart sets up the overall timeline of the project, showing which tasks are dependent on others as well as which tasks can be completed independently.
Single-person projects tend to be much more linear, and simpler projects rarely need such analytical breakdown, but the important lesson to take from this is that you want to do as much planning and thought beforehand to ensure you are not promising a complete prop without adequate time to pull it off.
Charging for your labor
I did not mean to get ahead of myself talking about the time it takes to complete a project, but I want to make sure I touch on how much to charge for your labor. Generally, you charge for the time you actually work on a project, as opposed to the time you are waiting for materials to be shipped or for paint to dry. First, let me say something very important:
Your labor as a skilled artisan is very valuable and you should never ever ever ever feel guilty charging for it.
In my experience, labor is well over half the cost of any project. In many cases, it can be the largest cost on a project. This makes sense. If you could get a custom prop that perfectly fulfills all the needs of a client from Wal Mart, than they would have gone to Wal Mart. If, however, they want someone’s face carved into a chair that fits within a specific area of a stage, and is strong enough to support a tap dancer, you should charge them accordingly.
At this point, it seems simple. You’ve already figured out how much time you need to work on the project. You just need to take your hourly rate, multiply it by however many hours you need to work, and that’s the cost of the labor.
But what do you charge for your labor? That’s the rub.
Unfortunately, I can’t even give you an answer. It varies widely with where you are, how skilled you are, what the project is, and even who you are. Obviously you can charge more to a Broadway show in New York City than you can to a children’s theatre in North Carolina. It is incumbent upon yourself to research your circumstances as much as possible. Ask other artisans how much they charge. Find companies in your area that offer similar services and find out how much they pay their artisans. As a freelancer, I’ve worked at a number of theatres, operas, and display companies across the company, so that gives me a baseline idea of what I can make as an artisan.
Mike Lawler conducted a survey of technical theatre earnings in 2006. It’s very informal and fairly incomplete, but it’s the most inclusive survey we have in this area. If we are to assume full-time employment for props people (40 hours a week for 50 weeks a year), the median hourly rate is $10-17.50. Â Obviously, a freelancer can never hope to work full-time, so these numbers serve more as a “you should never charge less than this, ever.” Unfortunately, the best way to determine how much to charge for your work is to see how much work you get each year for several years, figure out how much your living expenses are each year, then charge enough to keep up with your expenses. Obviously, you cannot set your rates based on hindsight; you pretty much have to wing it. Again, I’d like to reiterate that your best bet is to find out how much similar artisans in your area are charging. Your second option is to throw a price out and see if it sticks; if not, you can always lower it if you can afford it.
At this point, I want to mention that you do not need the same rate for every project. I have one rate I charge for “friends”, one for non-profit theatres whose work I find exciting or who have projects I really want to do, and one for commercial people. It’s not for purely selfish reasons; there are actual differences between working for someone you already have a relationship with versus working for someone new where there is a learning curve in the communications.
How much is too much? I’ve seen people who can charge up to $45 an hour for non-union theater work. You have to imagine that film and corporate work can command even higher prices. In my experience, whenever you feel you are charging too much, there is someone out there charging even more.
Putting it Together
At this point, you have your materials cost and your labor cost, as well as contingencies for each one. In addition, you have the turnaround time for how long it will take you to complete your project. If you added a markup to your materials, be sure to include that as well.
If you wish to operate as a business, rather than just as a person making props, you should think about adding a profit margin. In other words, take the total cost of your materials (with markup) and labor (both with contingencies), and multiply it by some profit margin. You may wish to get one and a half times what it costs to complete the project, though it is not unheard of to charge four times what it will actually cost.
Now that you’ve come this far, do not forget to include the cost of moving the prop from your shop to the theatre (or wherever it is going). It would really suck to come up with a sudden $85 charge for UPS to deliver your prop.
As an example, I was recently bidding out a project. I added up the price of all the materials. I used the best materials in order to minimize my own labor time, so it was fairly pricey. I included a contingency for all my materials. I calculated how long it would take me to complete all the tasks. I made sure I was being very pessimistic. I factored in my contingency. I added a markup to all my materials. I decided I would add a profit margin to the whole project. They asked how much more it would cost to get it completed by an earlier time. I called the various vendors to see if I could rush ship the materials and how much more that would cost. I recalculated my labor to include “overtime” and “over night” labor in order to get the project done. In short, it ended up sounding like an extremely expensive endeavor on their part.
At the end of the day, they went with a professional scene shop. Not  because they were cheaper; in fact, I was cheaper. But my price was close enough to theirs, and they were already building the rest of the scenery, so the producers decided to pay a higher price with the assumption there would be greater consistency in the final product.
In other words, even when I felt I was being my most expensive, the client still went with a shop that was even more expensive.
Keep that in mind when you think you’re skilled labor isn’t worth that much.
If you excel at something, it can be hard to describe in words how you differ from someone who is merely competant at it.
A photograph of a finely-made table in your portfolio has a much larger, and much more immediate impact in a job interview than listing the word “carpentry” on your resume.
It can be difficult and sometimes impossible to get photographs from a show you’ve done. Even when you specifically ask someone to take pictures for you, it may take weeks or even months to track them down and get copies of the pictures. The only way to guarantee photographs of your work is to take the pictures yourself; consider the photographs you get from other people to be a bonus surprise.
What goes for production shots goes even more so for process shots. Taking pictures of your prop through it’s various stages of construction are a great way to show an interviewer how you work and how you think. It also gives tangible proof that you know what you’re doing (and eases the mind of those suspicious that you did not do the work yourself). Interviewers love to ask how you achieved something, and having a visual road map of the process in your portfolio can be easier than attempting to describe vague concepts through words alone. Sometimes, you may even teach a new trick or technique to an interviewer, and props people love learning new tricks.
The important thing to remember is that no one will be taking these production photographs for you. You need to make it a habit to take pictures whenever you get to a new stage of your prop’s construction. It will certainly behoove you to learn how to take photographs of your work. It is especially true at the beginning of your career, when you have less of a network and bank of experience to point to your abilities, and the pictures in your portfolio are the sum total of what you have to show for your skills. Sometimes, it can come down to a single interesting and well-documented prop in your portfolio to convince the job interviewer to take a chance on you. That’s certainly happened to me; even when the season has come to a close, the prop master will remember that one prop I had in my portfolio that impressed him.
Making and finding props for theatre, film, and hobbies
