{"id":12923,"date":"2018-12-13T11:03:07","date_gmt":"2018-12-13T19:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/Becomeimmersed.com\/?p=12923"},"modified":"2019-12-11T19:05:35","modified_gmt":"2019-12-12T03:05:35","slug":"cost-immersive-interview-justin-fix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/becomeimmersed.com\/cost-immersive-interview-justin-fix\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cost of Immersive Theater – A Conversation with Justin Fix"},"content":{"rendered":"
Below is an interview with Justin Fix of Just Fix It Productions<\/a>, detailing the cost, risks, lessons, and recommendations that all go into running an immersive company and producing an experience. Use it as a primer or do your own thing\u2014this is only meant as a helpful document for those who want to learn from someone who has seen success in this space. <\/em><\/p>\n Thank you to Erik Blair for transcribing the initial interview, to Lacey Rae for helping organize quotes, and to Justin Fix for providing his expertise that I think will prove essential to the immersive market for years to come. <\/em><\/p>\n Immersive theater is growing exponentially in Los Angeles\u2014and across companies, it varies in production costs, number of actors, locales used, and audience size. But despite the differences, the one unifying theme is that they are businesses<\/a> and need to be run as such. This includes hiring a staff, securing insurance, dealing with the city, managing public relations, holding auditions and rehearsals, finding a space, renting props, and much, much more.<\/p>\n This article addresses some of the most common questions we receive at Immersed and utilizes the expertise and experience of Justin Fix of Just Fix It Productions<\/a> (CreepLA<\/a><\/em>, Entry<\/a><\/em>, LORE<\/a><\/em>, Awake<\/a><\/em>, & The Willows<\/a><\/em>) to provide in-depth insight to these issues and to the cost of immersive theater with real numbers.<\/p>\n This is a must-read for any creator, new and established, to the immersive realm.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n To start any business or company, the first thing to decide is what exactly your company is going to be. That sounds like a simple question, but there\u2019s a lot to decide before you even get to your first experience. Researching your market, namely your audience demographics, other companies in the space, and industry trends, can help you define your own niche, meet a consumer need, and stand out in a booming theatrical field. Developing a strong brand identity can also help. But ultimately, what drives your company will be its mission, vision, and values.<\/p>\n Fix suggests that knowing your strengths can help determine your mission and priorities\u2014which will inform your desired budget allocation. A company like Scout Expedition Co.<\/a> that has a strong background in set design put their focus (and money) towards that, while a company like They Played Productions<\/a>,<\/u> that prioritized interactivity, placed a focus on strong actors with improv skills over expansive sets. \u201cMaybe acting is third on your tier; maybe the first ones are more akin to escape rooms and puzzles,\u201d Fix explains. \u201cIt\u2019s just how you want to come to market.\u201d<\/p>\n When you\u2019re ready to make yourself known, then you have to set up your LLC, buy your domain, and build out your website. Fix admits, \u201cWe did that scrappy. We bought a SquareSpace account and a domain through GoDaddy. We did all our email blasts through MailChimp and used Quickbooks for accounting.\u201d These are all monthly costs that require minimal upkeep but can add up quickly.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n With a relative idea of what your company wants to produce, you can begin to determine costs of an upcoming experience: are you making a small intimate one-on-one show from the comfort of your own apartment or are you producing a large warehouse show with thousands of people going through in a singular run? While the logistics and costs are vastly different between the two, determining a budget is essential to understand ticket prices.<\/p>\n Fix tells us for his first year 3,200 people went through their experience. This number rose to 3,800 in year two and grew further to 4,200 in year three. Despite the growth in visitation, his scope grew as well\u2014the length of his shows increased from 30 minutes in year one to a full hour in year three. This shift was reflected in his ticket prices as they went \u201cfrom $40 to $55 to maxing out at $75\u201d in their third year.<\/p>\n In an artform with narrow margins, it is common knowledge that actors, photographers, and other artists aren\u2019t always paid for their work. Some companies hire their friends or do the work themselves. But paying other artists is something that Fix feels strongly about and incorporates into the values of Just Fix It Productions. Fix tells us that it\u2019s often easy to find someone to do some of the work for free\u2014but to him, \u201c(Performers) have worked so hard to put a price point on their work, and I feel a duty to show them that they\u2019re deserving of this.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite the large cost of his talent, Fix tells us his biggest expense is his space. Fix estimates the monthly rent to be about $15,000 on average, with trash ($500 per month) and utilities ($780 per month) on top of that. He laments that he does not have a space that he owns, suggesting that that is \u201cthe best way to make money off this thing because then you can produce anything year-round in it.\u201d<\/p>\n Secondly, for him, roughly thirty percent goes toward press and exposure. Obviously, this number will differ greatly across the diverse scope of immersive creators, as a small 30-person show can survive off word of mouth and small-scale press, while something that requires a throughput of 4,500 will require a bit more publicity. To put this in context, Fix tells us that for LORE, they spent close to $18,000 on publicity over the course of the run. \u201cYou can put up an entire show for that\u2014and here we\u2019re putting that in just one of our channels.\u201d This is a choice you must make when deciding on your company image, scale, and scope.<\/p>\n Ultimately, this is a hard industry to turn a profit, no matter the scale of your production. For Fix, he\u2019s \u201creinvested all of (his) profits, year after year after year to make the next year better.\u201d Much like others in the immersive realm, he clarifies that this is not the industry for earning a large paycheck. \u201cI\u2019ve paid myself nothing all three years because I\u2019m trying to build a company. If you\u2019re in it for the money, you\u2019re in the wrong business.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Insurance<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re going to open up an LLC, if you\u2019re going to open up a business, if you\u2019re going to perform in a space, you need to have insurance, protect yourself, and protect those who are coming in.\u201d Fix feels strongly enough about this that he expanded his insurance coverage in his third year. Before that, he \u201cused to do it only specifically tied to the address that we were occupying for those eight weeks.\u201d Now, he uses a policy that extends the full year. \u201cWhatever project we touch, whatever we do, at least I know my employees and my guests are protected.\u201d<\/p>\n He states that it\u2019s tough to find the right insurance\u2014a lot of insurance companies don\u2019t understand the stuff that they do. Describing yourself clearly is key. Fix explains to companies that he is \u201ca three-hundred-and-sixty-degree immersive walkthrough; it\u2019s like an attraction or play, but you walk through it as you go from scene to scene. But yeah, they still don\u2019t really get it.\u201d<\/p>\n In terms of policy, Fix says that he usually runs with a one-million to three-million-dollar policy. (or even more, depending on show requirements when working with a major studio, like with LORE).<\/p>\n He states that there are brokers who specialize in entertainment like this, just like others specialize in music. These brokers can insure all your costumes, your makeup, and your sets. But this brings another issue: doubling up on insurance. \u201cDo my vendors already have insurance on all their stuff\u2014do I need additional insurance for each vendor because that adds an additional $50 for every vendor I add to my insurance policy?\u201d Fix recommends checking with vendors to see if they have insurance because there\u2019s no point in paying extra. \u201cWe had to do that with the trees [in LORE] and with the lighting company. Above just the basic profile, we had to do additional add-ons.\u201d<\/p>\n He also recommends checking with the space. For smaller companies, you may be able to be added onto the insurance for the location. At The Reef, the location for LORE, that was not the case\u2014but we have heard places like Zombie Joe\u2019s Underground<\/a> do allow for this.<\/p>\n Fix stresses the importance of having a projected budget at the start and tracking that over the course of your experience. \u201cBasically, put together an Excel sheet of what you think you\u2019re expenses will be, how you\u2019re going to do it, and so on. Because if you\u2019re not keeping an up-to-date tracker of your budget, you won\u2019t know. What we normally do in our budgets is set a 20% contingency on it. This 20% covers all of our incidentals: whether we buy the crew pizza or a light breaks or the floors get damaged or we need to buy more wood chips. Normally, our budget only continues to climb.\u201d<\/p>\nBUSINESS<\/strong><\/h3>\n
What is your goal?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
<\/h4>\n
The Cost of Your Experience<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Contingency<\/strong><\/h4>\n