Production Insurance

B

BlueVision

New member
Let me know if anyone here has experience with production insurance. I have been preparing a budget for a documentary project and have been making phone calls for various quotes. This project is fairly simple shot on DV with a four person crew over a month. Insurance companies and contact names would help me a good deal. In addition, advice on packages necessary for my shoot would help me ask the appropriate questions. My objective is to account for the expense; supply rental houses with certificates of insurance; and insure for equipment damages. Does one thousand to two thousand sound naïve? What would the deductible range?
 
I think I did a Google search a couple years ago and found a place (don't remember which) that seemed pretty reasonable. For a small production, I could buy insurance for about a month for I think about $1,200-$1,700, or I could buy the same coverage for a year for about $2,500-$3,000. These rates were disucssed with me in detail over the phone, and to my surprise, the rate seemed to be somewhat dependent on how complex your shoot was (how many actors, etc). Just some ballpark figures to get you started. FYI--I have never personally purchased production insurance from any company, but I probably will have to pony up for the 1-year coverage once I get started on my mini-feature.

Oh, by the way, the MAIN reason I am buying the insurance, is that I cannot rent police cars (picture cars) without insurance. I'm going to buy most of my shooting gear so I really don't need it to rent equipment. Most of my locations, of course are either stolen, or used with only tacit permission from the local management.
 
I have purchased production liability insurance on a number of occasions. I typically worked through a broker in LA, but the actual insurer was located in New York. Their contact information is:

Film Emporium
274 Madison Avenue
New York City, NY 10016

Telephone (866) 611-3456

The most recent policy that I secured was for a 15 day period of time. The premium was just over $1,000 and provided a $1,000,000 coverage limit. They had a great system, I could go online at anytime and input the information that I needed for a binder, their system prepared the document and emailed back to me in the form of a PDF within a matter of minutes. This came in very handy when we had a last minute cancellation on a Steadicam owner/operator. I needed to hire someone to cover for the following day and the new owner/operator required a $135,000 equipment coverage binder. I input the data at 11PM on a Friday evening and had the binder in the hands of the Steadicam guy in plenty of time to make are 8AM Saturday crew call.

Most locations and nearly every studio lot required coverage to use their facilities, so despite being a real cost, it was an absolute necessity to secure the locations. I haven't looked into an annual policy yet as I typically only do 2 or 3 projects a year. If it is as low cost as NBCshooter states, then I might just go for the annual next project.

If you need a specific contact name I can go back and look at our correspondences, but I would think that a telephone call to the number that I have provided will get you started.
 
khmuse said:
This came in very handy when we had a last minute cancellation on a Steadicam owner/operator. I needed to hire someone to cover for the following day and the new owner/operator required a $135,000 equipment coverage binder. I input the data at 11PM on a Friday evening and had the binder in the hands of the Steadicam guy in plenty of time to make are 8AM Saturday crew call.
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That's great info, khmuse! So to clarify, if you turned up a last-minute need for a location or whatever, and you needed an additional certificate of insurance indicating a new loss payee, the new certificate .PDF would be e-mailed back to you within a few minutes any time of the day or night? In other words, are custom certificates of insurance available upon request 24/7 for an existing policy holder?
 
Yes NBCshooter, with the policy that I had, I could get a new certificate at any time of day or night. As I said, it was a very convenient system and extremely easy to use. If they offer a similar system for their annual policies, I might just go ahead and go that route next time.

If you would like to see a copy of the certificate, send me a message with an email address and I will be happy to send you one of their certificates.

It worked great for me.
 
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