Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Jordan from Kettner Creative. In this video, I want to talk to you about the job of an audiovisual technician. What's involved in the job, what skills you need, and what it takes to be successful in the role. Kettner Creative is an audiovisual company located in Vancouver, BC. We produce videos like this all the time. So if you're an AV geek, or if you're just interested in the audiovisual industry or the event production industry, please like and subscribe to see more videos like this in the future. An audiovisual technician is a technician that helps with event technology, mostly at corporate events. It's the most broad job title in the event production industry, and specifically it most commonly applies to doing corporate work in ballrooms and meeting rooms. Now, before we even get into the technical side of things, the things that will help you succeed in this role is bringing a friendly attitude, being clean cut, and being able to have good oral and written communication skills. Oftentimes you're dealing with clients that have been looking forward to their event for over a year. Before they even walk into the door, that brings a lot of stress and pressure into the room when they come in. It's your job as an AV tech to make sure that all the technical things that the client doesn't understand go fluidly and happen seamlessly, and you need to do it with a smile on your face while bringing calm to the situation. Being an AV tech is not right for people who are high strung, have high stress levels. The people that are successful more often than not are the people that are calm and can go about their way in a calm manner without letting the stress of the clients influencing your ability to troubleshoot technology. Now, what type of technology do you need to know if you're an audio-visual technician? You need to have a good understanding of audio. Before anything else, you need to know how analog consoles work and digital consoles. You need to have a good understanding of wireless microphones, how to program the frequencies, wired microphones, podium microphones, condenser microphones, all that. Bonus points if you have the ability to EQ a room and EQ speakers in a way that you can have five lav mics turned on at once without feeding back. That's the type of thing that you're going to encounter all the time as an audio tech in your role of audio-visual technician. Now, on the visual side, it helps to have a good understanding of laptops, both PC and Mac, how to change their output display settings, how PowerPoint and Keynote work, and how to make everything run seamlessly. You will be working with some video switchers, but they're pretty basic and they're pretty bulletproof. You just need to have a basic understanding of resolution. It helps a lot if you have experience with projectors and setting up screens. If you've never set up a fast-fold screen before, it's what you're going to learn on day one, and by the time you're at day two, you'll have a good understanding of how that works. Bonus points go for anybody that knows how lighting works, specifically how to DMX a light, how LECOs work for stage wash, and how uplights are generally set up in a room. Now, the things that will help you be successful not only are your attitude and your ability to communicate with clients, but your ability to be clean and do things in a predictable way. A big part of the job is having clean tape runs, clean cable runs, and being able to label things so if you get called out halfway through your shift, somebody else can sit down and they understand what you're doing. You could be the best event tech in the world, but if you do things in a weird way that don't allow somebody else to come sit in the seat right after you, that will make it difficult and you'll probably get less shifts because of that. It's also super helpful if you have your driver's license, if you have a flexible schedule, and you have experience driving a Sprinter van or a 3-ton or a 5-ton in a downtown environment. Those are the types of things that will get you more hours. Now, if you're in the in-house role, say you work on-site at a hotel all the time, you can expect that your hours will be semi-regular. Obviously, when you're starting, you'll probably get the worst shifts, the early mornings and the late nights, but as you move up, you'll probably end up in some sort of a predictable schedule since they have so many meetings on a regular schedule. If you're working for an outside AV company like ours, your schedule is a little more chaotic, but you can expect better pay. In terms of pay, the role of AV technician, if you're just starting out, you'll definitely be around that $15 to $18 an hour mark. As you gain experience, depending on all the skills that you bring to the table and how well you get along with your team and contribute and all that type of stuff, you can expect to be somewhere between $25 and $45 an hour. That's the current rate around 2020, and again, there's a lot of variables in that, but generally, the easier you are to work with and the more skills that you bring, the more flexibility you have, the more you're going to get paid. It's really as simple as that. If you have any other questions about what's involved in the role of audio-visual technician, please leave a comment in the comment section below. I think it's a super rewarding job. I really enjoy the fact that every single day, every event has to be perfect. That's what wakes me up in the morning is delivering those perfect events every day, and every day you never know what you're going to see. Sometimes you're at an auto show, sometimes you're at a medical conference, sometimes you're at an exclusive private party. It really is all over the map, and it can be pretty exciting if that's what you enjoy. If you want to see more videos like this, please like and subscribe, and if you have any questions, please comment below. Thank you so much for watching.