When you’re planning an event, your budget is a key consideration. Catering, production, venue hire and more, all slowly begin to add up. So it’s important to try to keep the costs down wherever you can. Entertainment can often seem like a natural place to start cutting; you might soon find yourself asking “do we really need music?” (to which we’d say yes) “We could plug a phone into a speaker…” (*shakes head*) “Alan knows a few jokes, maybe he could…” (absolutely not, Alan.)
Good entertainment rarely comes cheap. When you book a top musician, circus performer, magician, or anything else, you’re paying for a set of skills most of us just don’t have. You’re also helping support the arts in a way that’s more valuable than dropping a couple of pounds into a collection box at the theatre by making sure that talented, creative people can continue to earn a living.
But if you’re working to a tight budget, there are ways to push down the costs without haggling professional performers out of their fees. Here are 5 ways you can save money on the entertainment at your next event.
Timing is everything
It’s important to remember that when you book an act, you’re not just booking for the time they perform. There’s set-up and pack down to consider, as well as any time they might need to wait around in the green room.
With that in mind, the timing of your performance can make all the difference to the pricing, but there are also ways to make timing work in your favour. Try to make life as easy as possible for the act; time spent on-site or travelling is time they could be playing another gig, so bear that in mind.
Then think of performance times. Performances finishing in the wee hours of the morning are likely to cost more than those finishing at a reasonable hour. It’s also possible to book performers mid-afternoon on a weekday for cheaper than it would be on a Saturday evening as it allows the artistes to fit in other work afterwards.
Check the rider
Many acts – like function bands or circus performers – have a technical rider which details the equipment they need to perform. Anything from sound to lighting to props can feature in a tech rider and so, if an act needs to provide all of this equipment, it can mean a lot of extra work (and a lot of lugging flight cases up and down stairs).
To save acts a bit of hassle, you might want to ask them what equipment they need and cross-check it with gear that you might already have at your event. Your production company might have some of the lighting gear they need for example, or a venue might have a small PA for a microphone if an act needs to amplify their voice.
Once again, it’s all about making the event as smooth as possible for an artiste. The less they have to bring, the less work they need to do and the less time they need to spend on site. It’s not a foolproof way of saving money, sometimes the fee is just the fee, but it can make it easier to negotiate.
Scale it down
We all know how it is, you start off with grand plans of 18-piece swing orchestras with dancers and an acrobat in a cage suspended from the ceiling, then somewhere along the line things get downsized. Before you cut out the entertainment all together, it’s worth exploring whether there’s some way to achieve something closer without quite so much… stuff.
See the trouble with 18-piece orchestras is that all 18 of them expect to get paid when it’s all over. It might sound obvious, but it’s possible to get comparable results from smaller ensembles; trios, duos or even solo performers can often be just as captivating, provided they’re good enough.
Then there’s gear. it’s possible to find acts who take the idea of travelling light to heart. Fully acoustic acts, for instance, bring a fraction of the gear a normal band might bring (see previous point) and therefore spend much less time on site setting up (see previous, previous point).
Double up
The thing about talented people is, they’re often multi-talented. Makes you sick sometimes, we know. But what that means is that it’s often possible to double up on your act’s talents to get the most out of your booking.
Function bands are often able to provide a set of background music in addition to their full band set; a great option for weddings. Circus performers frequently have more than one “act” that they can deploy at an event, so your Contortionist might also be able to do a Cyr wheel show and so on.
This isn’t to say you get an extra show “free” if you pick the right act, but it can save on the cost to reuse the performers you’re already using in different guises to add variety.
Buy in bulk
This last point isn’t of use to everyone, but useful to know nonetheless; performers love regular, reliable bookings. So if you have a string of events coming up where you’re able to use the same act, you can usually come to an arrangement that benefits both sides of the relationship.
This is particularly good for multiple bookings at Christmas parties, hotel or bar residencies or repeat events, but even with as few as two or three events, it makes life easier for your act and makes them more amenable to a bit of negotiating.