The vocabulary of production

Production glossary

The words a show runs on, defined the way veterans use them on the floor. The same vocabulary the Wavemist Certified curriculum teaches and every Wavemist bid, budget, and settlement speaks.

The budget & the bid

Show: A single production, tracked end to end — the unit everything else hangs off (budget, crew, carbon, settlement).
Bid: A priced plan for a show. Wavemist says "bid," never "RFP" or "RFQ."
Bid request: What a client or producer sends when they ask a vendor to price work. (Plain language for the thing others call an "RFQ.")
Line item: One priced row in a bid or budget — a piece of gear, a labor call, a truck.
Baseline: The locked estimate. The fixed reference every actual is measured against.
Actual: Money spent or committed against a line — the real number as it lands.
Variance: Actual minus baseline. Positive means over budget; negative means under.
Change order: A scope or cost change after the estimate is locked. May need client sign-off before it counts.
Contingency: A budget reserve held back for overruns — around 10% is the industry habit.
Wrap: The post-show financial close-out. The wrap report is what goes to the client.

Crew, labor & the hall

Local: An IATSE (International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees) chapter — e.g. Local 16 covers the San Francisco Bay Area.
Dispatch call: A scheduled block of union labor with a call time and a minimum — the job the hiring hall fills.
Master Electrician: The head of the lighting department. Runs the electrics crew and owns the rig — not an "L1."
Board Op: The lighting console programmer and operator — the person at the desk calling and running the cues.
Rider: The artist's technical and hospitality requirements. It flows straight into the budget and the advance.

Gear & the market

Gear spec: The normalized description of a piece of equipment — what it is, precisely enough to price and benchmark it against the market.
Load-in / Load-out: Gear into the venue (load-in) and back out (load-out) — the bookends of the show day, first in, last out.

This glossary teaches the framework and the vocabulary. Exact union rates — wages, fringes, and penalties — always come from the governing collective bargaining agreement for that local, craft, and year, never a number memorized here.