On The Fly Productions

On The Fly Productions
By: Michael McArthur

On The Fly Productions

By: Michael McArthur

It wasn’t a professional company that brought acts One Republic, Dave Matthews Band and Twista to the tiny town of Mount Pleasant. It was student ran event planning organization that calls themselves On The Fly Productions.

On The Fly Productions is in its 11^th year of existence on the campus of Central Michigan University. According to its president Miranda Crawford, senior from India River, On The Fly’s main function is to provide alcohol free programming for students at CMU and create a fun and safe environment as well. OTF also tries to schedule a majority of events on Thursday or Fridays to encourage students to stay around during the weekend.

On The Fly is broken down into three sub-committees; special events, comedy and music. Each committee discusses speakers and performers they would like to see come to campus. Then the committee chairperson reports back to Crawford the committee’s ideas and from there the ideas are carried out further. Once the ideas are agreed and voted upon the process of bringing that particular speaker or performer to campus begins. “The process seems a bit complicated, but it is not, it is actually quite simple,” said Crawford.

The first step of the process is to check the price of that particular performer by contacting the agency that represents them. This is usually the most difficult step because a lot of today’s more popular performers are well out of OTF’s price range.

“We are funded through the Residence Life office and they typically give us about $40,000 to work with” stated Crawford. If the act is affordable the next step is to check for open venues on campus to hold the event, this can also be shaky because OTF has to make sure they do not schedule a show the same night another organization has an event out of respect for the other organization.

Once those first couple hurdles are cleared, the show is well on its way, the only thing left to do is to determine ticket prices. Crawford said that On The Fly’s adviser Dani Hiar usually takes care of this part. “It really depends on the show and how much we had to spend to bring the act here. Dani has a system on her computer where she punches in the numbers and it spits out a price. We try to keep the tickets as cheap as possible, however.”

On The Fly also tries to get the input of the student body for performers they would like to see come to campus. They have done numerous opinion surveys asking what the students thought of the organization and what they would like to see as well. “We take students thoughts and opinions very seriously, said Crawford, we are here to serve the students, they are priority number one.” Although a majority of the acts brought to campus are suggested by students there are still some who are frustrated with the organization. “For those who are frustrated we strongly encourage them to join On The Fly and let their opinions be heard. We are always accepting new members each week” said Crawford.

If students are interested in joining On The Fly and want to play a role in bringing an act to campus, they meet every Sunday at 6 pm in Kulhavi Hall, rooms 141 and 142.