JonathanLB
Carbonite Member
Well, it's all business expenses, I mean starting any business costs money and I don't believe in a production company not owning production equipment. That has to be one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. If I actually found out that major production companies didn't own any equipment I would assume they were run by morons. The price of renting equipment isn't worthwhile if you're doing frequent productions. Now a development production company that only shoots features, for instance, that I can understand, why buy Technocranes, 35mm cameras, Fisher dollies (which you can't buy anyway), etc. if you are just developing and producing features? But if you are making music videos or commercials and you don't own the means of production, that's as stupid to me as a restaurant without a blender, an oven, stove, etc. It makes absolutely no sense. We heard from the very start down here, "Well it's a rental market, everyone rents." I think there are a lot of people down here with no business sense, or everyone is afraid to own, because the price of renting commercially is ludicrous, you look for office space they want $700 for 100 sq. feet. I'm going to get into that business sooner rather than later, we've already discussed buying a commercial building. I've never seen a market so out of whack as this one. Since everyone refuses to buy anything, I don't know if it's lack of money or lack of intelligence or what, then the companies that rent anything are in the business of ripping you off. I would say it's more than just a rip off, it's like highway robbery. $9 for a $187 indestructible c-stand per day. Yeah, that makes sense, thanks Mole Richardson! I told them I'd give 'em $5 and that's it, they said fine. But just the fact you have to negotiate everything is exasperating after a while.
If you shoot 2 projects per year, I guess it makes sense to rent if each one only takes a week or less to shoot. But if you shoot 3-4 projects per month even one day each, you better buy, because in 8 months for what you just flushed down the toilet in rental fees you could have owned everything. Also it's funny some people make a big deal about, "Well the rental guys keep everything working and tested and in great shape." This isn't like 1932. This is 2007. The HVX200 is still considered a prosumer camera, i.e. it's built to work. It won't just stop working for no reason as long as you take good care of it. Rental companies don't know anything more about servicing an HVX200 than your average consumer does, so that argument is worthless. And c-stands don't need servicing. Basically when it comes down to it we decided that we'd rather pay everything upfront and own the means of production than making rental companies rich by overcharging for everything.
What's funny is apparently only n00bs and major studios rent from the big guys, because everyone else knows they are a rip off, but the major studios just don't care. Or maybe they are getting incredible breaks that make prices affordable because of the equipment volume rented. That must be the case, I would think, because they're absolutely a rip off for low budget filmmaking.
Why a company as big as Warner Bros. wouldn't own its own massive equipment rental company, I have no idea. Just look at Google -- they used to just have a search engine, did they content themselves with that? Absolutely not. They bought DoubleClick, one of the biggest online advertisers, and they had already launched Google Adsense, then they bought MySpace, and they continue to buy other related businesses. The big studios aren't apparently smart enough to figure out that if companies are making money off them, they should own those companies to prevent the outflow of money. It's not difficult to understand. Eventually if you've been in business long enough you should own virtually every business type that you spend money on. If you're a massive film production company (WB, Fox, etc.) you should own a location agency yourself, that way not only do you keep someone from getting rich off your needs but you make money off other people's needs, you should own an equipment rental company, you should own transportation companies, you should probably even own an aerial helicopter company, etc. They seemed to figure out that you should own your own studio backlots, give them a cookie for that I guess, but I can't understand any business plan that doesn't eventually end in you owning every part of production from start to finish. Telecine houses, editing labs, everything. Nobody should be making money off you, you should be making money off everyone else and giving your main company a discount on services rendered to the parent company. That's the type of vertical integration that they teach in any good business school. The film industry just doesn't seem dominated by people who understand business very well. Of course, most of these studios are now owned by larger parent companies, and that is an example of excellent vertical integration. But that wasn't the innovation of the film companies; that was just market forces that snatched up valuable assets. Who knows, maybe the major studios do own more companies than I know, but I shouldn't hear about Paramount renting out lights from Mole for Indy 4. They should already own all of those lights. I thought that was a joke or something, Paramount is too poor to own all of its own production equipment?! That makes no sense at all.
If you shoot 2 projects per year, I guess it makes sense to rent if each one only takes a week or less to shoot. But if you shoot 3-4 projects per month even one day each, you better buy, because in 8 months for what you just flushed down the toilet in rental fees you could have owned everything. Also it's funny some people make a big deal about, "Well the rental guys keep everything working and tested and in great shape." This isn't like 1932. This is 2007. The HVX200 is still considered a prosumer camera, i.e. it's built to work. It won't just stop working for no reason as long as you take good care of it. Rental companies don't know anything more about servicing an HVX200 than your average consumer does, so that argument is worthless. And c-stands don't need servicing. Basically when it comes down to it we decided that we'd rather pay everything upfront and own the means of production than making rental companies rich by overcharging for everything.
What's funny is apparently only n00bs and major studios rent from the big guys, because everyone else knows they are a rip off, but the major studios just don't care. Or maybe they are getting incredible breaks that make prices affordable because of the equipment volume rented. That must be the case, I would think, because they're absolutely a rip off for low budget filmmaking.
Why a company as big as Warner Bros. wouldn't own its own massive equipment rental company, I have no idea. Just look at Google -- they used to just have a search engine, did they content themselves with that? Absolutely not. They bought DoubleClick, one of the biggest online advertisers, and they had already launched Google Adsense, then they bought MySpace, and they continue to buy other related businesses. The big studios aren't apparently smart enough to figure out that if companies are making money off them, they should own those companies to prevent the outflow of money. It's not difficult to understand. Eventually if you've been in business long enough you should own virtually every business type that you spend money on. If you're a massive film production company (WB, Fox, etc.) you should own a location agency yourself, that way not only do you keep someone from getting rich off your needs but you make money off other people's needs, you should own an equipment rental company, you should own transportation companies, you should probably even own an aerial helicopter company, etc. They seemed to figure out that you should own your own studio backlots, give them a cookie for that I guess, but I can't understand any business plan that doesn't eventually end in you owning every part of production from start to finish. Telecine houses, editing labs, everything. Nobody should be making money off you, you should be making money off everyone else and giving your main company a discount on services rendered to the parent company. That's the type of vertical integration that they teach in any good business school. The film industry just doesn't seem dominated by people who understand business very well. Of course, most of these studios are now owned by larger parent companies, and that is an example of excellent vertical integration. But that wasn't the innovation of the film companies; that was just market forces that snatched up valuable assets. Who knows, maybe the major studios do own more companies than I know, but I shouldn't hear about Paramount renting out lights from Mole for Indy 4. They should already own all of those lights. I thought that was a joke or something, Paramount is too poor to own all of its own production equipment?! That makes no sense at all.
I could fit that into the back of my tiny Celica. Now, last shoot with the stuff we rented and what we owned, it barely, barely fit into a large U-Haul van. With what I have bought since then (M2, lenses, Porta-Jib, more light kits) there's simply no way that even a van would hold the stuff comfortably. I could probably make it all fit somehow, but then you have to unload everything before you can shoot anything, and that's really inconvenient and let's be honest requires more grips or PAs available to help out. So we want to buy a truck, but that's the easy part. Where the heck do we park the truck? If I have to park it in an unsecured location, then I might as well not buy one at all. That would involve leaving all of my equipment in secured storage, which we have, and then loading the truck for every shoot we do. If we're going to do that, why pay insurance and parking for the truck plus the cost of buying it when we can rent the truck from U-Haul or wherever else? So the key is finding some secured monthly parking where we can leave the equipment in the truck ready to shoot whenever and on the day of the shoot just get in the truck and drive to the location. Neither one of myself or my business partner own a house. I own a condo, so I have secure parking but you can't fit a truck into the garage. My business partner will probably buy a house sometime in 2008, so we may get a truck then and just back the truck against the garage, add a security camera or something along those lines and it's Burbank so it's pretty safe anyway. But for now I'm at a loss, I couldn't find any parking like I was describing in Los Angeles. We've both searched online a bunch of times and found mainly car parking in unused garages or whatnot.
- he is such a cool guy I love him. he has really been taking good care of me, especially since he is a hotrodder himself and classic car collector. Anywhoo, I'll go see that dolly. $2,500 sound steep though, since Indie dolly is only $1600 and HAS A SEAT. Which is a must have, IMHO.
