Finding a niche in a crowded market - live events?

[IronFilm]

I was just comparing to rates I pay in LA and NYC. The other things is, perhaps this was just an outlier, but in Atlanta we had a wardrobe person, a gaffer and a PA (each was sourced from a different place, not all from the same production company) all try to basically rip us off on rates and putting things on their invoice that we turned down, shipped back, didn't need, want or use. The line producer kept coming to me with the gaffer's invoice and he had lights on there that we simply didn't ask for or use and this added up to over $1,000.00 is additions that were just plain not used. I remarked to the line producer that if these people were in the LA market, trying the same game, they would have just blackballed themselves from getting any more work in general. But apparently in Atlanta, that was deemed acceptable behavior. It left me very gun shy about producing another project in Atlanta again, you have to work with people who are trustworthy. I would have just marked it as an anomoly but the same thing happened with three or four other crew, they were just plain trying to rip us off. Amazing, we were all shaking our heads.

What about Alanta do you think makes it so different in this aspect?

 

[puredrifting]

What about Alanta do you think makes it so different in this aspect?

I can only say that was my experience there, not saying it is common there or commonly done. But I got the impression that there is so much work being performed that it was a bit of, "lets see what we can get away with with these 'rich' producers from LA" perhaps?