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As production people, we spend a lot of time planning how the show is going to run, sound and look, as well as creating an environment that is safe so the audience will enjoy themselves. Just last month, I was working on one of our largest shows of the year, 2,500 tickets sold. We would be converting our recreational space into a concert hall.
After a month of planning, the day of the show finally arrives. Surprisingly, everything is going according to plan, contractors are arriving on time, the volunteers are showing up, even the artist’s advance team has arrived. We are a couple hours from doors, heading into the calm before the storm. Dinner is being served to the production and entry team, then a call comes over the radio. A quick unplanned meeting, nothing new, this happens all the time as logistics change, it’s part of the job.
However, the message I received during this meeting was not expected at all. I was met with somber faces and one simple sentence. “They’re not coming.”
The headliner never got on the plane. Thirty minutes before 2,500 guests come through the doors and there will be no show. I’m sure you can imagine the curse words that came out of my mouth at that time. I’m now in my 6th year of being a production professional, but I have never had a show cancelled. I’ve heard of shows being cancelled before, seen it happen around town; just never expected that it would happen to me.
Our first step becomes identifying and telling our key players about the situation. We inform our campus police chief, head of security, the facilities manager, and our ticket manager to break the news. Everyone is emotional and reacting differently. Once the shock of the cancellation begins to fade we started to put together action plans.
First, draft an email to send to students (a majority of the ticket holders), the radio station, and to post on social media providing notice of the cancellation, the reason, and to hold on to tickets. Getting this information out was critical considering the event was scheduled to begin in just minutes. Once the communication was out, we could determine if we would reschedule or refund tickets.
Second, tell the rest of our teams about the cancellation, and ask them to patiently wait for further direction. Additionally, request their professionalism when posting messages on social media or texting friends.
We needed to ensure a clear and complete message had a chance to circulate before the rumors flew.
Third, we determined that we would not open the venue for the evening, but would post people at the entrance doors to communicate the cancellation. This was a preventive step to ensure that a potentially angry crowd would disperse without incident. This allowed us to move onto our fourth step, taking the set-up down.
The students, the team and myself learned a lot from this experience.
We must take this into consideration when making the cancellation announcement, and dispelling the crowd gathered at the entrances. Safety and crowd control becomes the priority.
We finished our jobs for the night and took the rest of the weekend off. Nothing more could be figured out until Monday morning. After all that surprise, emotion, and expense, we decided to see if we could re-negotiate with the artist. As a result, we will be holding the same show next month, this time with a cancellation plan in mind.
Article by Sound Girl: Heather Holm
Another great article by SoundGirls: Motherhood And Returning To Work In Entertainment
Published in cooperation with Soundgirls.org
The mission of SoundGirls.org is to inspire and empower the next generation of women in audio. Our mission is to create a supportive community for women in audio and music production, providing the tools, knowledge, and support to further their careers. SoundGirls.Org was formed in 2013 by veteran live sound engineers Karrie Keyes and Michelle Sabolchick Pettinato and operates under the Fiscal Sponsorship of The California Women’s Music Festival, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. In 2012, Karrie and Michelle participated in the “Women of Professional Concert Sound” panel at the AES Conference in San Francisco. The panel was hosted by the Women’s Audio Mission (WAM) and moderated by WAM founder Terri Winston. Terri brought together five women working in live and broadcast audio. The groundbreaking panel (which also included Jeri Palumbo, Claudia Engelhart and Deanne Franklin), provided young women and men a glimpse into life on the road, tips and advice, and a Q & A with the panelists. More importantly though, was how incredibly powerful the experience was for the panelists. We had all been in the business for 20 years or more, yet most of us had never met before that day and within minutes we bonded like long-lost sisters. We were struck by how similar our experiences, work ethics, and passions were and wondered why our paths had never crossed and how our careers would have been different had we been there to support each other through the years. Each of us are strong on our own, but together we were even stronger and a powerful force. We were empowered. Each of us had been asked hundreds of times in our careers: Are there other women doing sound? How did you get into sound? How would a young woman go about getting into sound? Through creating SoundGirls.Org, we hope to establish a place for women working in professional audio to come for support and advice, to share our success and failures, our joys and frustrations, and for empowerment and inspiration.
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