A number without the room is a guess with an interface.
This is worth saying plainly, because the alternative is common and it wastes everybody's time.
Two events with the same guest count, the same date and the same city can differ by a large multiple, and the reasons are physical. One is in a ballroom with rigging points and a loading dock; the other is on a lawn with no power, no cover and a gate a truck cannot get through. One loads in overnight; the other has four hours. One is a lectern and slides; the other is a band, a video wall and a stream.
A tool that turns a headcount into a figure has to assume all of that away. The figure it produces is then either too high, and a real client walks, or too low, and the conversation that follows starts with a correction. Neither is a good first impression.
So this page gives you the questions instead. Answer the ones you can, skip the ones you cannot — not knowing yet is a normal state and it is never a reason to wait before getting in touch.
Four questions about where it is happening.
These change more of the answer than anything else on the page, and they are usually knowable long before anything else is.
- Indoors or outdoors
Indoors, the room is the problem — reverberation, a ceiling, a house supply to reach. Outdoors there is no room, so the problems become distance, weather, and the fact that nothing at all is provided. They are not degrees of the same job.
- How far back the last row is
Not the headcount — the distance. It decides whether the audio system is one position or three, and it is the number most often discovered on site rather than asked for.
- Ceiling height, and whether anything can hang
A room that will take rigging points and a room that will not are different productions at the same guest count. Ask the venue for the ceiling height and the rigging capacity at the same time you ask for the capacity chart.
- What can physically reach the stage position
Gates, turning circles, docks, steps, soft ground. On an outdoor site this decides whether a stage rolls in on a trailer or gets built by hand, and that is one of the largest single swings on any estimate.
Three questions about the show itself.
- Speech, music, or both
They want opposite things from the same room. A system specified for presentations and then asked to hold a band is backwards, and the first thing that suffers is not volume but clarity.
- How many people are on microphones, and do they move
Every wireless channel is finite radio spectrum, coordinated on the day against whatever else is transmitting in that building. Channel count is a design input, not a detail.
- Is any of it on camera
A stream, a recording, IMAG or a press position changes the lighting from an aesthetic decision into an exposure requirement, and adds a second audio mix that is not the room mix.
Four questions about time, which is the quiet one.
Time is where budgets move without anybody deciding to move them, because the equipment is the same and the crew is not.
- When can we get in
A four-hour window and an overnight are different crew sizes for the same rig. On a public site the permit decides this, and the production schedule is written backwards from when the site reopens.
- How many days on site
Rehearsal days, dark days and multi-day runs all carry crew whether or not anything is happening on stage.
- Is there rehearsal
A rig that arrives on show day with no programming time looks like a rig that arrived on show day with no programming time. Where the schedule has no room, the design gets simplified to match rather than attempted and fumbled.
- When does it have to be out
A curfew, a venue hand-back, or a site that becomes a park again at eight in the morning. Load-out is planned before load-in on anything with a hard end.
Answer what you know. We will ask the rest.
A person reads it, not a form. Anything that changes the shape of the job comes back in the reply.
You do not need answers to all eleven. The venue and the date are usually enough to start, and the rest can be settled on a call. What is worth including if you have it: where it is, how far back the last row sits, what is happening on stage, and when you can get in.
Call 561-750-4070, or write to sales@allonstage.com. If it is easier, the form on the contact page asks for the same things in seven fields.