Summer Foley

I would say a couple different things, but one of them is knowing what failure feels like. Once you know that feeling, it drives you to want to succeed, kind of in any way possible. But also, my ability to reset very quickly. As I'm sure you can imagine, in a live production, maybe 5 minutes before doors, an audio track stops working, or a light goes out, and you just have to be the calmest person in the room, ready to fix the problem immediately. I think that my ability to do that is actually what's made me successful in what I do. I let the client freak out, and then I just focus on fixing it immediately. It's like a rat race until the doors open and the lights go on, but once the event happens and it goes smoothly and you put out the little fires along the way, it's the biggest sigh of relief afterwards.

The worst thing anybody will tell you is no. It's very simple. I think especially going out and getting your own clients to produce for, which is essentially what I'm doing now, the worst thing that somebody will say to you is no, we're not looking. So you might as well just go and throw yourself into it and try.

This obviously is a male-dominated industry, and it's changing rapidly, but I would say, be curious. Ask questions. Know how to do multiple different things on set. I think the reason that I learned as much as I did, and I was able to come into the role that I'm in, was mostly because I sat with the cameraman and I asked him questions about the camera, or I sat with the stage hand and I asked him questions about the stage. Be curious, and also take nothing personally. These events and these advancement processes, they get very intense, sometimes they get very stressful, there's a lot of money at stake, and I think remaining, again, the calmest person in the room, not taking anything personal, being ready to deliver, is probably the best piece of advice I would give.

I would say one of them is that production is a people-driven field - live event production really depends on the people you have there making it happen. I think that sometimes there's a disconnect between large companies and skilled engineers, where a skilled engineer will show up and say they require X amount of money per hour, and the company's like, we should do it for less. Me being the production professional is like, you do it for less, maybe that person is not going to know how to fix your audio 5 minutes before the doors open. But you pay a bit more for this very skilled professional, and you won't have to think about a thing. So I would say there's a bit of a value trade-off happening with people right now in production. And then I would also say technology is advancing at an insane rate, and keeping up with that, and also keeping up with that cost-wise - I think we all feel very lucky that AI and other very high-level LED walls and things are coming out, but at the same rate, it's almost like clients and companies can't keep up with the demand of how expensive these things might be, of how unique they might be. I think we're at a place where clients are trying to catch up to everything that's changing.

I would say fulfilling promises - doing what you say you're going to do. I'm very close with my family, and I do work in a very relationship-driven field, so keeping your word is essentially what drives the success of a production, and also, for me, what drives the success in my family. We all make agreements and fulfill the obligations that we have for each other. So I would say that's a very important value to me.