Do you have LIABILITY INSURANCE when filming?

[FilmBoy77]

found a great location to film at - a warehouse - however they require liability insurance in case anybody gets hurt or whatever. do you guys have this and where can i get it? how much does it cost? any good companies to recommend?

[ExtremeSleuth]

when i filmed on a college campus they asked for liability insurance. i told them i didn't have it, and they had me and my cast/crew sign a waiver saying that if someone were to get hurt, they weren't responsible. that took place of the liability insurance. i'd say look into doing that first, and see what they say

[cyclone]

If you are AT ALL actionable (i.e you have a savings account, or car or house, etc.), you should get insurance. I know this sounds like B.S. (yeah, yeah, yeah, I know...we should all have insurance - but let's get real, ya never see it on the screen!), but it seems like a COMPLETE waste of money UNTIL that one really bad thing happens. The one thing you weren't expecting.

[Matthew R. Rodwell]

Talk to your local rental houses, they should be able to provide you with some recommendations for insurance providers since they almost always require it for their rentals.

[Zak Forsman]

about a month of production insurance ($1,000,000 policy) cost about $1500. i have year round production insurance and that costs about $5000. i use film emporium.

http://www.filmemporium.com/new/site/new_icont.htm

[moonlitnite]

Hi FilmBoy,

Insurance, ah what a joy! General liability for negligent injury and damage, errors and omissions, entertainment insurance, and don't forget workman's compensation insurance for good measure.

Entertainment liabiity covers: cast insurance, negative (media) insurance, props/sets/wardrobe insurance, equipment insurance, third-party damage insurance, automobile insurance, etc. O&E covers libel, defamation, copyright infringement, plagiarism, invasion of privacy, extra expense.

Some Los Angeles insurance brokers specialize in packages that cover all these areas:

Abacus Insurance Brokers 310-207-5432
AON/Albert G. Ruben 310-234-6800
Truman Van Dyke 323-462-3300

A few reference books on insurance include:

The Complete Film Production Handbook
The Independent Film Producer's Survival Guide
The Indie Producer's Handbook Creative Producing from A to Z

Are we having fun yet?

Lotsa' luck, Michael

[JonathanLB]

We are a legitimate production company and carry annual production insurance through Wells Fargo Insurance Services. They are great, I think, really helpful usually and we already had it pay off in fact. We had our offices robbed in January, an inside job (we sublease from a mortgage company and one of their part-time employees had been sleeping in their office, knowingly, and used keys that were left out to rob us), and we had $15,000 in equipment stolen. We were VERY glad we had production insurance that covers also our office contents, vehicles rented for shoots, etc. It covers up to $1 million of liability I think, $1 million rented equipment, etc. It's a standard package.

I would say for what you get it's inexpensive, more so than before, it's about $8,000 per year if you finance it. I know that's not possible for a lot of individuals but for a company it's not bad, about $700/month and if you're doing at least a few days of productions a month it's worthwhile.

I wouldn't want to shoot without insurance at this point, not a risk I'm willing to take. I'll consider filming without a permit on something really low budget on private property only where we have permission to be there, because I frankly think it shouldn't be constitutional to ask that I have a permit to film on someone else's (or even my own!) private property with their consent. I'm not sure how that's actually constitutional frankly, it's ridiculous. But if there's any shot of being caught and fined and running into various hassles, being shut down, etc. you have to film with a permit for serious shoots.

We were total guerilla style on our first music video, though, filming with fire on what is technically park territory (a desert with just sand, no shrubs, and a bunch of old burned out cars where everyone parties in Yucca Valley, a tiny town of 25,000 a few hours East of Los Angeles), no permits, no additional insurance, no fire safety officers, just a few extinguishers and hoping to god we didn't get shut down. It worked out fine, we got a great video out of it, looks much higher budget because we didn't do anything legitimately, LOL, but that's a risk I won't be taking again because it is too much of a risk since you can be held personally liable for that kind of stuff if it goes wrong.