After 5 EventsThe work in rough order
An agency begins with concept and ends with teardown. In between: venue search, supplier negotiations, technical planning, the run-sheet, the crew brief, the build day, the event itself, and the load-out. Not every job needs all of that — a summer team day in a garden skips most of the rigging — but the sequence is the same.
The concept is usually half-formed when you call. The agency's job is to make it specific enough to price: how many people, what kind of room, what time of year, what the evening needs to do. A product launch has different requirements than an anniversary dinner. One needs a stage and a screen. The other needs tables that let sixty people eat and still hear each other.
Venue search is where the budget gets tested. The wish is always a glass-walled space with natural light and parking for eighty. The reality is that in June those rooms are booked, and in November they cost what you had allocated to everything else. A good agency tells you that in the first week, not the fourth.
What an agency does versus what it buys in
Some agencies own the production. They employ the lighting crew, the riggers, the AV tech who builds the screen. When you book them, you are booking the people who will actually be there.
Others own none of it. They write the brief, collect quotes, add a margin to each line, and forward the job to subcontractors. There is nothing dishonest in that model — it is how most event coordination works — but it has a structural consequence.
When the projector fails ten minutes before doors open, the person with the clipboard has never touched that projector. They have a phone number for the AV company. The AV company has a tech who might be at another job. You are now negotiating through two layers while your guests arrive.
When the agency owns the production, the person with the clipboard is the person who rigged the projector, or is standing next to them. The fix happens in the room, not over the phone.
The technical plan is the part that shows
Most of the work is invisible if it goes well. The guests do not see the venue contract or the revised run-sheet. What they see is whether they can hear the speeches, whether the room is too dark at the edges, whether the music cuts out when someone opens the loading door.
The technical plan is drawn two weeks before the event. It names every power drop, every truss point, every speaker position. It says how the light moves when the presentation ends and dinner begins. It says what happens if it rains and the terrace has to close.
That document is the reason one event feels considered and another feels like five separate ideas in the same room. It is also the only part of the job where the agency's actual capability shows. A planner who has never hung a light writes a different technical plan than a rigger who has done it two hundred times.
The run-sheet is who does what when
The run-sheet is the hour-by-hour map of the evening. Doors at six. Welcome drink service starts at six-fifteen. Speeches at seven. Dinner service at seven-thirty. Band on at nine. Last call at eleven-thirty.
It also names the dependencies. The speeches need the screen live and the handheld mic tested. Dinner service needs the band off stage. The bar needs a restock at nine because the first two hours are always heavier. Every one of those is a task assigned to a specific person with a specific deadline.
On the night, the run-sheet is what keeps an event from becoming a series of surprises. The coordinator is not deciding in real time when to start dinner; they are following the map that was agreed in advance.
The crew on the day
Load-in is usually the morning of, sometimes the night before if the rig is large. A small event is two people and a van. A stage event is a crew of eight and a truck with a tail-lift.
The work is physical. Trussing gets built and flown. Cable runs from the desk to every speaker, every light, every screen. Everything gets tested under load, then tested again. If the agency's crew has worked together before, this part is fast and quiet. If they are meeting on the job, it is not.
During the event, the crew is mostly invisible. One person runs the light desk. One runs sound. One coordinates with catering and watches the timeline. If something breaks, they fix it in place or they have the backup unit in the van. There is no time to order a part.
Teardown starts when the last guest leaves. The faster the crew, the lower the venue hire cost, because most venues charge by the hour and the meter does not stop until the last case is out.
The difference it makes
You cannot see the difference in a quote. Both kinds of agency list the same line items: sound, light, AV, staging, staffing. The price might even be similar, because the production-owning agency has overhead and the coordinating agency has margin.
The difference is in what happens when the thing that always goes wrong goes wrong. The projector, the delay, the power trip, the no-show, the client change at four in the afternoon. One kind of agency makes a phone call. The other kind fixes it, because the person who can fix it is already there.
We are the crew that writes this guide. After 5 Events is the production brand — we own the rig, we employ the people who build it, and we are in the room from load-in to load-out.
What to settle before you call anyone
Three things: the date, the guest count, and what the event has to do. The date determines availability and cost. The guest count determines the venue, and the venue determines most of the budget. What the event has to do — celebrate, inform, persuade, reward — determines the format, and the format determines the crew.
If you know those three, the rest is solvable.