More than a decade producing events and shoots across four continents. These are the mistakes that have cost us the most; told without a filter, because someone has to tell them.
The most expensive mistakes in this industry aren’t the spectacular ones. They’re the small administrative slips, the decisions made on a Tuesday afternoon thinking you’re saving money. The detail you let slide because “I’ll deal with it later.”
Three real mistakes from inside Alfred, some mine, some ours. The kind that cost money, sleep, or both. Plus a bonus one that still makes me laugh and shake at the same time.
If you produce events, shoots, or international activations, one of these will happen to you.
1. Not hedging the exchange rate
The quietest mistake in this business. And the most predictable.
We had a project where the client paid us in dollars while we paid every operational cost in euros. The deal was closed, the budget added up, margins were protected. On paper, everything was fine.
What I didn’t calculate: between the client paying us and us paying suppliers, the dollar dropped. Not by much. Enough. We weren’t just below the projected margin, we were losing money on an operation that, on paper, was profitable.
Several thousand euros. You don’t recover those. You don’t claim them. They just disappear between two lines of your spreadsheet.
The lesson: any international project where you bill in one currency and pay in another needs a hedging mechanism. Most banks offer forward contracts to fix the exchange rate for a future date, it costs a fraction of what the fluctuation can cost you. If the project is small, at minimum negotiate a clause to revise pricing if the rate moves more than X% between signature and execution.
Exchange rate isn’t a risk you absorb. It’s an operational cost you manage.
2. Skipping the local service “because the budget was tight”
Two years ago I wanted to shoot a commercial in Colombia. The client came in with a tight budget, not enough for a proper local service company.
Instead of saying “this budget doesn’t work”, I assembled the operation piecemeal: a coordinator here, a technician there, a location manager who seemed reliable enough. On paper, covered. In reality, nothing like it.
Day of the shoot. Four in the morning. The person responsible for opening the location didn’t show up. No phone. No messages. No colleagues could reach her. She’d fallen asleep.
My DOP lived near her. I told him: “Throw pebbles at her window until she wakes up.” And that’s exactly what he did. At 4:20 a.m., my director of photography was tossing small stones at a second-floor window in Bogotá until she finally looked out, understood, and ran to open the location.
We shot. The commercial came out well. But the real cost wasn’t the budget, it was weeks of stomach ulcer, a half-day lost starting late, and the full risk that if she hadn’t woken up, there was no plan B. None.
The lesson: hire the local service, or don’t do the project. There’s no middle ground.
A local service isn’t a luxury. It’s the infrastructure that holds the operation up. When you hire piecemeal you save 15–25% on paper, but you lose 100% of the safety net: the backup chain when someone fails, the emergency contacts only a local operator knows, the ability to solve in thirty minutes what would take you two days.
If the budget can’t cover a serious local service, that means one of two things: either the budget is wrong, or the project isn’t viable as proposed. Neither answer is “produce anyway and pray.”
3. Not reading the fine print on the schedule
This one still stings.
We were building a space for a client at a large multi-brand fair. The organizer centralized operational communications, access windows, loading slots, schedule updates, all by email.
At some point, the organizer moved the materials delivery and loading window. The person leading the project on our side didn’t read the email. Our internal schedule kept running on outdated information.
The day we were supposed to start building, we arrived at the pavilion and found every other stand already well advanced. Ours was empty. Empty. Like we hadn’t started.
We got the client’s call that afternoon. “Why is our space empty while everyone else is finishing?”
We’d missed the loading window. The next one available wasn’t enough to hit the deadline. The potential cost wasn’t just thousands of euros, it was our reputation with that client and probably with the entire fair.
We solved it the only way these things get solved: the network. We dug through the organizer’s website, found someone who knew someone who knew someone, and made calls until we secured an exceptional loading slot. We got lucky. Very lucky.
The lesson: read. Read everything. Read the fine print. And then have contacts.
Every operational email from an organizer gets read in full, confirmed in writing, and reflected in the internal schedule before end of day. Not optional. In complex operations, one line buried in an email can rewrite the entire build logic.
The contacts aren’t built the day of the problem. They’re built in the two hundred days before, over coffees, messages, real relationships with the people who run the events where you produce. When something falls, you don’t have time to introduce yourself. You have time to call.
Bonus: the contractor who built two warehouses
This one didn’t cost thousands, but it came close. And the lesson is different enough to earn its spot.
We were building a diplomatic space abroad. Brief: two towers and a back-of-house. Tower one: main reception. Tower two: storage and ops. Back space: catering and staff.
We arrived at build-up and found two warehouses. The contractor had read the plans and built two storage spaces. Not a reception room. Two storage rooms.
Ministers and ambassadors were arriving the next day.
No time to demolish. No time to rebuild. The only option: turn one warehouse into something presentable for heads of state.
We pulled it off with pure creativity: intensive decoration, a glass door that changed the space’s perception, a tasting table that gave it purpose, lighting that hid what couldn’t be hidden. The opening went well. The ambassadors didn’t notice. The client was happy.
But the lesson isn’t about how we decorated a warehouse. It’s about what you need for that to even be an option.
The lesson: creativity under pressure + calm. In that order.
Creativity without calm is panic. Calm without creativity is resignation. Both together are the only reason that, after fourteen years, we still say yes to the projects that walk in complicated.
The line that closes every mistake
We’re not saving lives. We’re not performing open-heart surgery.
Producing events and shoots is demanding and technical. But it isn’t emergency medicine. Nobody is going to die. Keeping that perspective, even at four in the morning, even when the container is held at customs, even when you discover your reception room is a warehouse. Is what lets you think clearly enough to find the solution.
There’s always a solution. I’ve seen it too many times to doubt that line. But the solution doesn’t show up on its own. It shows up when someone on the team stays calm enough to see it.
The mistakes I just told you cost me thousands of euros and sleep I’m not getting back. But they left me three things: a more serious financial setup, clearer criteria on which projects to accept, and a reading protocol for operational emails that’s now ritual on the team. Plus a network built, in part, on one desperate phone call on a Tuesday afternoon.
Every mistake, properly processed, becomes a protocol. That’s the only honest way to gain experience in this industry.
Planning an international production and would rather skip the part where you make the mistakes? Let’s talk. We help.
~ Jose, founder of Alfred
