runing your own gigs

[unjulation]

the artical i wrote in vj central content section was going to be a three part artical but unfortantly i've got side tracked with outher things like my vj workshop and the vj central gig so i thought that i'd try and kick start the second part of the trillogy hear and use it as a spring bord for the artical.

basicly what i'd like to know is how meny people are working in crews of party people and organising there own gigs, and seting up the whole sh-bang as it were and how meny people gust get hired to do the vj'ing.

what are the diferances that you've found between the two aproches?

is one better then the outher and if so why?

unj

:)

[labmeta]

I`ve been involved in putting our own events on before and i gotta say its so much more enjoyable, as a performer its takes all the money issues out of it. Sure, you gotta make it happen so you dont lose any money but your vjing for the love of it and of course you can influence what music , djs you get to listen to and you get to think about the overall visual appearance of your bash and not just focusing on that iddy little screen, id even liken it to putting on your own public art exhibition.

Most of my work is where i`m hired in as a vj and this can put a differnent spin on things because its not always gonna suit you, although i think its oftenly down to the promoter and of course the vj. If you got a good promoter who is open and straight up but willing to listen to you then great, but the opposite can be very fustrating. But from the vj p o v you gotta become a bit more compromising and have an open attitude, i mean some people like swirly shit although i would never use it if i put the foot down.

Most of the nights i perform at i love but all the ones i make money out of i dont. its a shame its panned out this way.
Sometimes its hard when your stuck in a night with music you hate and a room full of bruisers and you got a greek club manager yelling at you to play charlie chaplin clips. This is an extreme, but being hired in to events you aint interested in can sometimes make things a bit of a chore and you have to adopt a bit of a more professional approach to get you through the night and still produce good work. The alternative is to turn it down but with such little work around you gotta take it.

[unjulation]

i'm not sure of the greek/geek referance but i think i got most of the outher;)

[MoRpH]

Hmmm personally I haven't been involved right form the get go with a lot of parties but I find the ones I just VJ @ to be better as it leaves me more free time to concentrate on just the vide and yes you have to make compromises sometimes but you can still find ways to inject some creativity into the most boring promoter requests (remember it is a REQUEST!!)

I can see the point of being involved with more but persoanlly in the past (which is only a couple of times I admit) it was more trouble than it was worth, better off just trying to "advise" the promoter on what would work....

[unjulation]

i serpose i take the opisite veiw, i think that the more that the whole group has the more power "per-say" you have which in tern alowes you more power over what is created within the whole, and then you can start playing with the space that we find our selves within.
just a thought :)

[vjpixylight]

I have been up and down both sides of this road, and I must say,
it is much better to be one of the Promoters, than the Hired VJ hand..
But as good as it is to do your own thing cause you are promoting, noone can promote event after event all the time without getting burned out....
I would eventually like to see tours of VJ's travelling for 1-2 months doing clubs in the winter, and festivals in the summer...
With all that kind of exposesure, one could host a few events(promote) and then fall back on the tour with groups that you used for your events...It really could follow how DJ clicks that sprung up in the early 90's to help promote each other..:p

[unjulation]

truely
i'd go with "be careful of the "bern out" of who and what you are", outherwise you're mommer might of been right.
and i would say that the summer/winter feal is a good one.
so same as the "D.J."-yhe?
sounds like a plan stan

[spook]

I am the co-founder of nine09 records, specialising in the promotion and publication of Australian independant electronic music. We also run a touring arm of the company - nine09:Touring Management and an event production arm - nine09:LivE. I also do a whole range of multimedia work to pay my rent, from code to video and everything in between (except databases - I DONT DO BACKEND (code that is)).

I actually began VJing because we were putting on a party and we couldnt afford to pay anyone to do visuals, so i built some simple sampling software in director, rendered some clips, and did the gig. This was before i knew of the existence of software based VJ tools, up untill then, i had thought all VJ's used hardware to create what i saw.

Since then, probably around 80% of the gigs i have played have been my own, with the other 20% only being recent gigs, and reletively unpaid.

I actually prefer just being a performing artist to being the event organiser, as it frees my time and energy up to be more creative with my set.

As far as groups go, im all for it! i had heaps of fun last friday night jamming with MoRpH, its great to bounce stuff off one another.

I too would love to see some VJ festival touring action on our side of the world, but unfortunately, at this stage, the only way to successfully pull that off is to include some popular dj/band in the show (wassupwidat?) :confused:

spook.

[wellREDman]

we do some shows with the soundsystem collective that spawned us and some where we're just vj's bought in,
our own shows are the ones we do for the creative love and the others we do to bring in the dosh to pay for the kit to do our own shows.
it's definately hard to get into it when the music isn't your thing and the brief isn't your thing but i find it helps to concentrate on the challenge of finding something aesthetically pleasing in a brief
that is a long way from what you wanna do

[Jorjo]

Morphs point on " just a request" and the thread leaning to the "Some gigs suck" got me thinkin.

Years back on the road as a mobile, it was the same story. Promoters wanting it one way and the crowd wanting it another, Ya'd please the crowd and be a star, or please the promoter get paid and loose the work in the end.
.. every time it came down to a judgment call.

For those who never DJ'd, The doorstaff, the bar staff, the everyfuckinother staff, All requested X,Y,Z. Demanding a Rave Hit on A rock theam night or Steps be played on a Rave.

So where the VJs stand point?
Promoter wants charlie chaplin? OK you arrive with charlie chaplin (and a gameboy) but what if Charlie isnt workin?

I used to tell the barstaff/doorstaff/everyother fuckin staff TO FECK OFF, As in, Im payed to play and your (STAFF) payed to do whatever the hell it is your payed to do. The punters choose the content since they are the ones who are paying to be there. SO MR Barman/Doorman Your paid to do your thing, not to have an opinion.
If the promoter books me to play charlie chaplin. He gets charlie chaplin. (and Im a monkey with a vcr)
but If he books me to VJ,,, If he then Tells me "PLAY CHARLIE CHAPLIN" I would have the urge, to tell him to Fuck off back to his office and count money and keep his nose out of my job till hes qualified to do it. (vjs PMS?)

I figure theres only two types of GIG, One is where you get paid well to play Shyte, and the other is where you get let loose but theres no cash. ONE DAY..........


Ok so theres a grey area between, but on morphs point a request is only a request. and for some strange reason the only people who ask for requests tend to be the screwballs.

In the DJ game the equivilent is the DJ putting a night in doing a wedding disco for cash to buy new toys.. hes playing country music, 80% of the crowd are having a ball, and some twit is stood at the DJ box demanding "FIRESTARTER" cause all his friends will dance. The DJ gives in, The dance floor clears 30 ppl sit down, and 4 ppl give it large, meanwhile grandma has her coat on along with the rest of the guests who hve just decided its bed time.
"firestarter" ends the 4 sit... the DJ looks up, 20% of the crowd left, But wait,,,,, There all going on to a club, since youve put them in the mood. and the brides YELLING youve ruined her disco.
OK VJs dont have such an impact (unless you try porn/snuff) but as a rule of thumb, I figure its way safer to avoid requests.

Its just posable to tell a promoter "SOD OFF, I Dont tell you how to fetch beer, but now that you mention it,,,, Two pints off etc etc" :)

HAPPY VJ. send everybody that enters your booth, on a mission to the bar before they can speek.. If that dont work cause the guys VIP, tell him to "hold the fort while you go to the toilet" and leave him there for 10mins, he'll be so damn glad to see you return he'll have forgot his daft request (then send him for beer:) cause now he thinks hes an honorary VJ)

BIG SMILE... The guy paying you to VJ arrives with beer and is happy your on the flight deck... now who can we send for cigs?

[complexvisuals]

My way of dealing with it is to make that person out to be stoopid.

"You are asking me for a dancing baby?, please, just think about what you have said, peadophile"

CASE CLOSED.

"Charlie Chaplin?, you have paid me to bring thousands of punds work of gear with me, only to be asked to play a film made a hundred years ago? It didnt even have fucking sound, I ask ye"

CASE CLOSED

"Organic Fractals? Do you use fractels on your flyers? Didn't thinks so, and why? Tacky, yes. Enough said"

CASE CLOSED

[Kontinuum]

I began VJing when I started Krachmacher (Melbourne dark Drum'n'Bass party krachmacher.com.au (http://www.krachmacher.com.au) ) with a couple of friends. I am a graphic designer/illustrator and so my role was to come up with the look of the party, all the advertising and web site. And just for something a bit different than the rest of the DnB parties in Melbourne I decided I would do live visuals as well.

At the time I had no idea about the whole VJ thing and so with a bit of advice from my video editor friends I worked out a basic performance set up and spent about 2 months shooting, sampling and producing content to mix with.

The whole thing went off so well that I continued, took on a partner (who knew far more than i did about the video art / performance scene) and we have been working together for over a year now performing at various raves, galleries, festivals, parades etc.

The dance party I co-promote is going strong and i really enjoy being in control of my own show, it gives me a lot more freedom to experiment and to add even more to the production; the music we play is the music i am most into and if the party does well i get paid more. The draw back is that being a smaller party my partner and I have to do most of the set up ourselves (which takes about half a day - we lug in all the sound and decor - including a stack of 20 old TVs). The other thing is i take the risk so if the party goes down i go down with it.

We do a whole range of other gigs from well paid large scale dance events to unpaid gallery events.
Half the dance parties we do are not very well paid and i usually don't like the music, but the up side is we get to walk in, do our set up and not have to worry about anything else (except of course if no one shows up and we have to chase the promoters for money).
Part of what we do is custom content so i am fine with doing logo and title animations, ppl book us because of our style and so we never have the problem of being hassled for twee content, we do get requests but it is just from ppl who know our stuff and want to see one of our clips again (which is a bit of a buzz:) ).

We most enjoy collaborating with music producers to come up with synergistic music / vision shows. The audiences for these are not just there to get off their faces or purely for the music and so there is a much greater level of appreciation (though at the moment they are still not very well paid - one day ;) ).

[fluchtpunkt]

as a teenager (& long before i started vj'ing) i was part of my school's student-organization for 3 yrs, where i was responsible for parties & events. i learnt a lot regarding the 'party-business' in that time. after school i took a one year break in taking an active part in nightlife (i went to spend some time overseas :) ). being back in switzerland i soon tried my luck as promoter again. even though the parties turned out te be quite a success, i soon quit (this i decided one beautiful sunday morning round 11am, cleaning up the remains of the night before all on my own & after almost 24hrs of non stop running :confused: .... you prolly get the picture ;) ).
...soon after that i got into visuals. after having worked my arse off several years in providing a space for nightlife it was incredibly rewarding to now - as vj - get the chance to fill such a space myself :):):).

much of my experience as a promoter early on has proven to be invaluable for my work as vj.
...
though i work together very closely with some promoters & though i have been asked to - i don't take part in the organizing of parties any more. i found that preparing content, rigging, running a 6 to 12hrs live show, derigging.... i.e. the vj's part of the party... is work enough to concentrate on!
.......
...to be perfectly honest though i have to admit that i've started to dream of running 'my' own, more visuals-oriented club(-night/festival) ;) :rolleyes: :D