Equipment Rental

[emretufekci]

I am curious to how smaller rental businesses deal with loss and damaged equipment.

I know there are few number of owners that rental of their equipment on this forum so how do you approach new/recent customers for rentals?

-Do you strictly require a insurance coverage with you as the payee?
-Just rely on your insurance?
-Take it on faith and hope they will return your gear undamaged (or return it at all?)

I have seen even very large companies get hit with loss/theft/fraud but I am curious to hear how the smaller companies do it.

Cheers,

 

[JonathanLB]

Hmm

Hmm

I only rent to people who are friends, or friends of friends. I don't go further out than that. So I always have someone to vouch for the person renting, but I don't really rely on rentals anyway. I mean it's a few bucks on the side but it's not part of my business in any meaningful sense.

I do not require proof of insurance -- none of these people have insurance. If I wanted to do that, I just wouldn't rent. Indie filmmakers don't carry insurance. I have my own insurance, but it wouldn't matter either, the deductible is high enough that it would really not be worth reporting. Anyway I'm not covered for gear that I rent to other people, so I wouldn't report it. I'd just hope that the person was honest enough to pay for what they broke, and I'm aware that probably wouldn't be the case, so I'd cover the losses. It would not make me happy, but oh well.

I was going to say in the future, I will not be renting anything out anymore, once our business is busy enough that I use my equipment regularly. But I have changed my stance on that for one reason. I have two HVX200s, and I'll be buying a 3K Scarlet and a 5K Scarlet. I won't use the 5K for corporate work anyway, too good of a camera, I don't want to mess with that footage for Web videos it just seems silly, and I don't want to bring $20,000 in prime lenses around with me either. Not unless it was some high budget commercial, rather than Web work. But the 3K Scarlet I would probably use for a fair amount of corporate work, might as well, it won't be expensive and I have a good data management system so I'm not overly worried about the difficulty of storing the footage. I still will probably use one of the HVX200s as a backup camera or sometimes as a primary. But because the Scarlets will be my primary production cameras, I will simply not rent them out at all, they will be my babies, not for rent.

But as I won't care much about the HVX200s anymore at that point, I'd rather rent them out than sell them. I don't think they'd fetch that much to sell so it makes no sense to me. If I could get $3,500 it might be tempting to sell one, maybe, and pick up another Scarlet, but I don't get why anyone would pay $3,500 for that camera when you can get a full shooting Scarlet package for $3,750. Makes no sense. So I'm sure the HVX200 used is more like a $2,500 camera, maybe not even? I have no idea. The point is you'd kind of have to be desperate for cash / an idiot to sell for that price. I can rent for $200/day with my P2 cards, no problem, and in a year I'd easily make at least $2,500 just renting. I have plenty of contacts who rent here and there, so the cameras go out 1-2 days a month on rental I'd say on average. May as well just keep renting them out. If someone breaks one down the road, I'll try to recover whatever I can from them, and that'll be that. It won't be replaced. They've almost made their money back anyway, it's going to be all gravy by the time the Scarlets arrive.

I would not recommend anyone to do what I do really, though. You should do what the rental houses do, if you want to be safe. You make them put down a credit card with the deductible of your insurance as the hold on the card. Then they must provide adequate insurance, through the insurance certificate naming you as the additionally insured, then you rent it out. That's the bulletproof way to do things -- that's why rental houses do it that way, they have the system figured out. It's smart that way.

My way isn't smart, but the people who rent from me are usually people I've worked with, only lately I've been getting the whole friend of a friend thing, and usually been willing to do it.

My issue is with my company probably going to be in full gear by next January, with a lot of projects on the horizon, I simply don't want to deal with renting anything out that I actually use to other people. I do not need that stress for a few dollars. I don't want to think, "Alright I have that big important corporate project starting Monday, and Brendan says he'll get the camera back to me on Saturday, so yeah it should be good." Then I can't reach him Saturday, I start to panic, etc. Not worthwhile. I'll rent out the HVXs because I keep them at my home anyway, so it's easy, walk downstairs and hand them off, that's that. If I'm not using them for production it's ok. But nobody will touch the Scarlets but me and my DP / camera crew, lol.

 

[emretufekci]

Thank you for the very detailed explanation and taking the time to write it Jonathan. I do not do rentals at all but I get a few requests from time to time. I usually send them to a proper rental house. It just seemed to be a very risky business for me.

cheers,

 

[JonathanLB]

Yes

Yes

Yeah, especially if your primary means of income is through your own video productions, whether you're a videographer or a production company, etc., you really can't afford the risk of renting out your gear, which may be your livelihood.

The other solution, which I'd probably still do even in the case of the Scarlets and the rest of my equipment (lighting, jib, dolly, reference monitor, the whole nine yards, haha), is to rent basically in bulk and just be a co-producer. In other words you're shooting a short film for 4 days let's say, you want (in the future) my 5K Scarlet, primes, pro tripod, laptop for capturing, my entire workflow basically, and you want basically a working setup for shooting your production, we could work something out and I'd simply file it under my own insurance as I'd co-produce and be on set, etc. Let's say someone offered $1,500/day for everything I own, I come with a truck and basically just offer some equipment support / tech support, then yeah I'd be open to something like that even in the future. It's enough money that I can afford to take 4 days and make $6K.

But how often would that really happen? My guess is not very often, maybe in a few years you'd have one person make such a request, but honestly most of my contacts are poor indie filmmakers. The only reason they pay me is because they know I'm cheaper and easier than rental houses. I'm very easy going and lenient too. Iv'e had people rent a camera for one day and return it five days later and I'm mostly just like eh ok whatever. Especially if I know them and know they didn't go shoot with it all 5 days, they just work a day job and our schedules didn't match up for an earlier return. They always notify me and sometimes we fail to come up with a time for return that works. I don't really mind usually.

Again though I'm not in the rental business and in general it's nothing but a few bucks petty cash. I generally do it only to assist people I know because I like to keep these connections open. It's honestly more about helping out friends than it is money. I've had a few rentals for about $1,000 and that's alright, that's some real money at least, but usually it's too small for me to care much about. I'd also prefer to keep it simple and just rent out tripod, P2 cards, and camera. When I start renting out lighting gear and grip equipment I don't like that, because I have to drive to my storage facility, that kinda stuff doesn't rent out for much, and I don't bother to check lights and make sure they work nor do I usually check the kits for every little thing that was in it, I mean I do a basic check like yeah ok looks like the scrims are here, hmm, lights look ok, etc. But I am too lazy to be that thorough since I don't have a way to check them right there at storage. So I have steered away from renting that stuff out mostly.

 

[emretufekci]

Makes sense, I get a few calls and request from (low end) indie filmmakers for rentals or assistance but unfortunately I had to cut them off completely due to a few bad individuals. We no longer offer any kind of help to the low end budget productions.

It wasn't about damaged or lost equipment but more to do about lack of respect for peoples time. Sour subject.:angry:

I dont think we will be renting our new P2 Varicams or 3000 but I was wondering about the options of sending out the hvx200's with adapters (without all the hassles, headaches). Thank you again for the insight.

 

[JonathanLB]

Yeah for sure, no problem. I don't blame you. Look all it takes is one bad experience even and it's easy to say screw this. I had that happen myself and that put me in the mood of basically saying that I'm not going to be interested in rentals once my company is active enough that my gear is used regularly and I make my money on that front.

I had someone basically come back to me and say, "Your DuelAdapter isn't working right, we couldn't transfer the P2 footage." Look, I just used that freakin' adapter the week before, it worked fine, they obviously broke it. I don't know what they did to it, but it doesn't work anymore. That being said, that's hindsight -- at the time, all I heard was it wasn't working on their computer, and I never tested it myself because I figured it was just something they were doing wrong. I go by the NASA saying they jokingly quote from Armageddon fortunately, "Why build one when you could build two at twice the price?" Only replace build with buy, lol. So of course I had an extra here, and I lent it to them to finish the project. Ok whatever. Well the next time this person rents from me, somehow they got the faulty adapter, which I wasn't even sure was broken at this point, I hadn't checked it myself, and this person gets all pissy with me, "I thought we went over this, that one didn't work, now I'm scrambling and I need the other adapter and blah blah, etc."

READ the rental contract. That's NOT MY PROBLEM! It's YOUR problem! The contract clearly states that when you sign it, you agree you checked all the equipment or waive the right to complain if something is broken, because I cannot sit there and guarantee it all works for you. If you want that, go to a real rental company. You get what you pay for, even with me, LOL. You don't pay rental company prices, and you don't get rental company service either. So I was like, I'm sorry it's broken, let's mark it and make sure it gets tossed, and I'll get you the new one. But at the same time, don't yell at me and b**ch me out about it when you're the one who should have checked before the shoot. I check everything before I shoot with it, but if it's not my shoot I'm not going to bother. I'll only check cameras that come back because they're expensive and I want to make sure the things still work.

I just rented a camera today actually, an hour ago, just for a day. So I have a few things out on rent right now, it's just a few extra bucks petty cash.