Gobo Studios · a DBA of Monterey Skates LLC · Monterey, CA · (831) 264-8797 · gobostudios.com
Holiday parties, awards nights, company picnics, conference AV. One vendor for the sound, the lighting, and the person on the microphone, and an invoice your finance team can actually process.
Show hours only — counted from the first track to the last. Setup and teardown are ours, not yours. A four-hour party is a four-hour invoice, even though it is a seven-hour day for us.
It sets speaker count and coverage. A bigger crowd is not harder to entertain, it is harder to reach.
Outdoors needs more PA for the same headcount, because there are no walls giving you anything back. It also needs a weather contingency in writing.
A loading dock is cheaper than a service lift and 200 feet of carpeted hallway. This is a real line item everywhere, including at hotels.
Dinner in one space and dancing in another is two systems, not one system moved.
Sound-only is a smaller number. An awards stage needs light. A picnic does not.
If there is no reliable circuit where the gear has to live, someone has to bring one.
Inside Monterey County is the base. Beyond it, mileage and sometimes a room.
Some hotels and conference centres require their own crew for anything patched into house systems. That is set by your venue contract, not by me, and it belongs in your budget before it surprises you.
If dinner runs late, the night runs late. The hourly overtime rate is on the contract before the event, so nobody is negotiating at eleven at night in front of your CEO.
Packages and starting points are on the pricing page. Everything above is either included in a package or itemised on the quote. There are no day-of line items that were not on the paper you signed.
The one with a bar, a photo backdrop, and an executive who wants two minutes at eight o’clock. Dinner volume people can talk over, a microphone that is tested before it is needed, and a floor that fills when you want it to rather than at 10:40. The music skews to the age spread in the room, not to whatever is charting.
A timing job with music attached. Send the recipient list ahead and phonetic spellings are welcome. Walk-on stings, a stage lighting state that is not the same as the dance state, a handheld that still works at the back of the room, and video cues hit on the beat they are supposed to be hit on. Long lists get boring fast, and keeping the pace up is our problem, not yours.
Outdoors, daylight, and power that is usually a long run from the nearest building. Coverage across a lawn behaves nothing like coverage in a room. Announcements for the raffle and the games, a plan for wind, and a rig that packs down fast. Lighting earns nothing at two in the afternoon, so do not pay for it.
A lectern mic, a handheld or two for Q&A, playback for a video, a mixer that does not arrive with a hotel AV bill attached, and a person in the room who can fix it while it is happening. Breakouts and mid-sized general sessions. If you are planning a 2,000-seat general session with a video wall, I will tell you that you want a production company and I will say who to call.
Coverage is being placed through the ADJA and is not bound yet, so I am not going to claim it. Most hotels and conference centres require a certificate from every vendor before load-in. If yours does, tell me at enquiry and you will get the honest status. I would rather lose a booking than misrepresent that.
Load-in, cabling, everything taped down, sound check finished. Your staff should never watch a vendor still building at doors.
Music at conversation level. The microphone for the eight o’clock speech gets tested at seven, whether or not the person speaking thinks they need it.
Awards, speeches, video, all to your cue sheet. Names read the way you spelled them. Stage lighting state up, floor state down.
The lighting changes and the room stops being a banquet. Moving heads and wash bars run on DMX from SceneRig, our own engine, locked to the track. Stage look to floor look is a scene change, not a rewire.
Quiet load-out. Cable off the floor before your staff has to work around it, and nothing left in a hallway for facilities to find in the morning.
Send the date, the venue, the headcount, and the rough shape of the evening. You get availability and a written quote back, with the overtime rate and the cancellation terms already on it. December Saturdays go first, and they go early.