Transcription in English
I’m Samuel. For our profession, the established definition is perhaps freelancer in the artistic field. I myself am, more precisely, a freelancer in the fields of dramatic art and music. I’ve kind of been on my own ever since I stopped getting study grant, but, already during my studies, I employed myself and tried to get my foot in the door. So, I’ve done gig work quite a lot and for a long time. My main instrument is singing.
My main source of employment in recent years has been musicals, that is, theatre. It’s the core of my work around which I organise my own concerts. Sometimes, I get requests to participate in concerts organised by others. I also teach singing and, occasionally, participate in filming TV series and commercials, and do voice acting. In publicly-funded theatres, the permanent staff works six-day weeks on average, and, if they want to do something else, they take a leave of absence.
It’s by no means regular, it’s as irregular as it gets. Of course, it makes a difference how much effort you put into offering yourself for different kinds of jobs. It may go so that you send 50 applications and none of them take, and then maybe one application takes. Assignments can last from an hour to a year or two. That’s the scope. Sometimes, I work seven days a week and then it gets quieter. But, on average, I have assignments on about three or four days a week.
It goes over the limit of over-exhaustion, you feel like you can do it, you wonder where you have gotten this much energy, you have no time to do anything or think about anything, and you think that heck, it’s quite cool that I can do something like this. Then, WHEN the stop comes, you notice how damn tired you are. At some point, you need to get some rest.
I do hear wild stories from my colleagues about how they burn the candle at both ends and how they stop liking the thing they used to love to do. The quality gets worse. You start doing things in the way that you’ve always deemed best and you stop being open to new ideas. You start to curl inwards. When you have a lot of work, you use defence mechanisms to survive and do things like you’ve learned to do them. It gets heavy.
Except for Mrs C, I haven’t had the need to think about work outside my field. But it’s actually quite recommendable to get experience of work in other industries. I, too, have tried many jobs before my career in music. Adjusted employment benefit is essential to freelance actors. Yes, the system is riddled with bureaucracy, but, once you’ve learned it, I think it’s pretty easy. You just need to be careful with dates.
For the core of my work, theatres and singing lessons, I use a tax card. That way, I get a pension insurance and all that stuff. Through my private trader company, I invoice corporate gigs. Companies like invoicing. When the clerk at the TE Office saw that I have a Business ID and a company, I had to struggle a bit to convince them that it’s for necessary invoicing and not stable, not my main form of self-employment. It’s possible, but you need to be able to justify it. The clerk said, “Working in your field is like this.”
My social media channels, Facebook and Instagram, are the biggest, easiest and least complicated marketing channels. In addition to them, I get gigs through acquaintances, my website and different performer databases. This is a harsh industry in the sense that you have to apply for each job separately, time and time again. So, even if you did well in the previous production, you still have to audition for the next one. Then again, it’s a fair game and provides a wider scale of opportunities.
Education, experience, competence. It’s easier to market yourself when you have a degree. And, when you have experience, you know what to offer, and the rest is about your self-confidence, about feeling that you’re good at what they’re looking for. Then you can ask for a certain price. But if you want the job, you can’t overprice. That also applies to situations such as sitting in an office with a theatre producer. They usually start by offering something. Together, you check whether the pay is in line with the collective agreement, whether it’s appropriate for the task and whether there is something else to consider, like is it a special assignment somehow – for example, do you need to belt out “aa”, do a triple pirouette and have precise comical skills. Or, if you are an understudy for three roles and live with the stress, accepting another job adds to that stress, and it is a justification for extra compensation. And well-known professionals can, of course, negotiate themselves a generous extra for their renown.
You have to plan your vacations for a period with no work and save up money beforehand. It’s a kind of savings vacation. You should definitely join an unemployment fund. You’re required to be available for the job market, but offered work rarely starts the next week. Sometimes, it’s difficult to perceive that you are “between jobs”, that is, not working but not unemployed either.
My advice is that you should create a good support network, surround yourself with a lot of people from the same industry who have skill sets different from yours: financial skills, legal knowledge, whatever kind of support your business needs. You need to remember to be compassionate towards yourself and also know how to chill. You need to be excited and stand behind the entity you’re freelancing for. Being a freelancer is a lifestyle, so why not be excited about it? It also fosters getting work.