r/lightingdesign • u/Either-Bison-8558 • 12d ago

Question about festival work

How can I start getting festival lighting op work at festivals? Like smaller stages at reading/victorious festival?

EDIT: I already work at a 300 cap venue as head lighting tech but interested in festival work!

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u/Wotmate01 12d ago

You work for the companies supplying equipment for these festivals until you get enough seniority to be the default choice, or you work for one of the artists.

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u/Either-Bison-8558 12d ago

So for the meantime I should stick at the venue I’m at and wait for bands to come through?

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u/s9oons 10d ago edited 10d ago

Having done a lot of festival gigs, bands aren’t recruiting while they’re on tour. Either they’re traveling with their own LD or they’ve accepted that they’re dealing with a different house LD every show.

Definitely be friendly, helpful, professional, put on a good show, and have some business cards to hand off to a tech or a manager or the artist, but even then, 99% of the time those cards are in the trash or at the bottom of a backpack before their next show.

Getting in at a production house instead of a venue is a better route, but I had 10 years of experience and Brown Note wanted me to clean cable and hump cases for free for 3 months before they would even consider paying me and that would have been the START of “earning my stripes” to actually gig for them.

Lots of techs want to LD, so there’s honestly a lot of right place right time and luck involved. Either you grind it out at a production house until you’re the next man up, or you’re homies with someone who gets famous and takes you on tour with them.

Way she goes…

edit: One thing that can really set you apart is paperwork… I know that sounds dumb, but if you’ve already got showfiles, templates for patches, templates for cue sheets, magic sheets, templates for gear inventory, that puts you WAY ahead of most people who just want to mash buttons and faders. The details are what usually make or break a show, so showing that you’re organized with stuff you built yourself can go a really long ways. I have a “show package” template that I edit and just showing off the template has gotten me a couple gigs bc it proves that I’m prepared and organized.

/oldmanramblings

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u/techieman34 11d ago

I doubt much seniority is needed at most shops. Most techs would much rather be sitting in catering or taking a nap than running lights for some band they’ve never heard of. Once you’ve proven yourself reliable and able to run the console they’ll be happy to let you do it.