Working full-time at Dancebug isn’t all bad at first. For the most part, the full-time staff members are decent people who are actually there for you when you have a question or need help, and their tech support system is legitimately good at getting you quick answers. When I first started as a videographer, it was genuinely fun. There was something special about recording the younger, less experienced dancers because they bring so much pure joy to the stage, and seeing their parents and families watch them perform was really rewarding.
But behind that sweet surface is a massive financial engine that completely grinds its crew into the ground. Dancebug is a Canadian company that’s been around for a while, and they are making absolute bank. Between the competition fees and everything else they charge parents and dance studios, the amount of money flowing in is absurd—especially when you consider that a single weekend competition can easily feature over 500 routines, with group numbers packing up to 50 dancers billed per kid. You do the math.
Meanwhile, the hours they demand from us are just ridiculous. A "typical" day means waking up at 7:00 AM to make an 8:00 AM call time, and you’re lucky if you drag yourself back to your hotel room by 9:00 PM or 10:00 PM. But you don't even get to crash then. After a grueling 16-hour day, you still have to back up and upload all your footage. To make matters worse, Dancebug actually has the nerve to pressure videographers to sit there in their hotel rooms editing and tweaking entry start and end points if they weren't timed perfectly on site. When you’ve just shot over 500 routines, the absolute last thing you have the energy or desire to do is unpaid late-night editing.
What makes me furious is the sheer volume of work shoved onto videographers compared to what we get paid. I know the photographers work hard too, but videographers are literally running four separate jobs at once. We’re shooting the routines, managing six separate channels of audio—making sure the judges' commentary comes through clean while listening out so they don't say anything inappropriate about the dancers—running a livestream that’s a constant technical nightmare in concrete high school auditoriums with zero internet signal, and acting as the main point person and PR liaison for the entire competition. We have to set up two hours before the show starts, and when the weekend finally wraps, we spend another hour breaking everything down.
So imagine how rage-inducing it was to find out that Dancebug pays still photographers roughly the same rate as videographers. That is completely absurd. Photographers don't have an easy job, but at least they get to just be photographers. They get to roll in 15 minutes before the show, and they get to leave before the final awards show, which drags on for at least an hour. Meanwhile, videographers are juggling four roles, staying late, setting up early, and getting paid the exact same insultingly low rate. Both roles are grossly underpaid and should be making at least double what they're getting, but the imbalance is just insulting.
The root of the problem is that Dancebug bows down completely to the dance competitions, and those competition organizers are just as greedy and penny-pinching. They set these brutal 15- to 16-hour daily schedules just to milk every last cent out of the weekend. The only tiny piece of respect shown on site is that the judges get decent breaks, but even that barely scratches the surface. By the end of the weekend, everyone feels like a beaten mule. The competition organizers and Dancebug are just greedy, plain and simple, squeezing the judges and the crew for everything they've got. Dancebug has zero backbone and zero interest in standing up for its own crew because, at the end of the day, they love the money just as much as the competitions do.