Sitting in to get the lighting right
Well, well well. Look who’s back. I know you thought I’d abandoned you but I didn’t, I promise. Last week was a crazy one for me and I just didn’t have the energy to sit down and get out any good posts for y’all. Let me fix that today.
Between the end of last week and the end of this week I worked three catering shifts, two and a half days as a PA on a corporate commercial shoot and was given the chance to do some editing. It was a side hustle bonanza! I also had to continue my non profit work, of course. I was a busy lady. I was happy to have the chance to hustle my butt off though because August has been one expensive month.
Catering was catering. The work is not something I’m passionate about by any means but last weekend I did made a sweet cash tip! It’s the most I’ve ever made in a cash tip before and it came at a great time.
On to the PA gig. My friend works for a company that shoots corporate videos and she asked me to step in as a PA. I have minimal corporate shooting experience but have worked on short films and web series’ before so I jumped at the chance.
Commercial PA work pays better than movie PA work. You have a day rate, a flat fee that they pay you for the entire day. The standard industry day is 12 hours, woof. The glamorous world of film right? Commercials pay between $150-$200 a day for a PA. My rate is $175 personally. I’m experienced but not overly so, I’m a hard worker and I can get anywhere at any time.
This gig was pretty sweet. It was inside, lunch was provided and there was all the coffee, iced and hot tea and bottle sparkling water you could drink. The first day ran 8am-2:30pm, the second 7am-5:30pm. The third day I went back to our shooting location, packed up all the gear we used and carted it back to the warehouse we rented it from. That garnered me another $50 so over the course of three days I made $400!
That breaks down into $20 an hour, which is a good amount of money to me. That’s more than I make at my catering gig by a few bucks. I also scored free food for two days and there was lots of down time on the shoot. I was lugging around heavy equipment, have no doubt, but as far as PA gigs go, this one was pretty good.
With trying to get in some non profit work time though, it made for some long days. I was pretty exhausted. I spent last night at my boyfriends and I’m a light sleeper. Any noise or light wakes me up. Well, he woke up in the middle of the night to try and fix the fan and neither his movements, his flashlight nor the fan noise bothered me. I was so tired I slept through it all!
Today I’ve been focusing on my editing gig. One of my uncles just got a new job at Harvard and needs to update his CV. He is super busy and important, what with working at Harvard and all, and asked me if I could do it for him. He’s paying me $40 an hour for about four hours of work. Total score! It’s mind-numbingly boring for him and something I’m actually happy to do. #englishmajor, am I right?
I’m really glad these chances came up because like I said before, it’s been an expensive month. I’m also heading out of town next Saturday for one week and will miss the chance to cater a few events. I needed a little boost here at the end of the month and I got it!
Kara Perez is the original founder of From Frugal To Free. She is a money expert, speaker and founder of Bravely Go, a feminist financial education company. Her work has been featured on NPR, Business Insider, Forbes, and Elite Daily.