Colin Baldwin is the owner of Live Event Services which specialises in production design and management, supply of live production equipment for special events, concerts, festivals, corporates and installations.
Colin has worked in the live events industry pretty much all of his working life. He started out as a roadie/lighting guy spending many years on the road with Australian and International artists until building his production hire business in the early ’80s.
What would you normally be doing this time of year?
At this time of the year, we would be working on or providing production for Galderma Conference for Synergy, Lee Kernaghan national tour, State Of Origin at a local venue and working on pre-production for the Country Music Awards.
What’s a fairly normal day at the moment for you?
We spend several hours in the office on business development and marketing plus pre-production on the few jobs we have coming up.
Are you learning anything to improve your skills set?
We are extending our skills with projection mapping and learning about the latest trends in AV, lighting and staging equipment for installations.
What bad habits have you slipped into?
It’s taking longer to get up and go to work and we tend to knock off earlier than usual.
How are you coping financially?
We were fortunate to have had a big 2019, so for the most part, we have been doing okay. Part of our survival plan meant we relocated our business to cheaper warehousing and work partly from our home to cut costs. We have received NSW Government grants that were available to us and deferred business loans.
As things drag on with the pandemic and with JobKeeper being reduced, financially we are starting to feel the pinch and don’t have many more levers left to pull.
When do you think live entertainment with return and in what format?
Great Southern Nights is about to unfold in NSW venues, which is good for some artist and crew that work those venues, however, may not help many production hire services or freelance crew. I believe our industry won’t start to normalise until there’s a vaccine. The professional crew landscape will have changed dramatically as many people will have left the industry permanently for more secure employment.
Do you have any words of encouragement?
To all of my industry colleagues and friends doing it tough, please look after yourselves and your families, this thing will pass, it’s not the end of days.
What makes you happy at the moment?
Knowing we have confirmed upcoming work, but at the same time feeling uneasy knowing that should there be another big Covid outbreak, the government could shut things down, which could place our pending events in jeopardy.
