Rental houses dying one after another?

Patryk_Rebisz

Patryk_Rebisz

Veteran
Is it only me or did you guys perceive that rental houses are dying one after another?
In the past 2 months 2 rental house went out of business...

I remember getting a fantastic deal on my edit suite from a guy who used to own a medium post house and he said that the mid market is disappearing. The only guys left standing are small mom&pop shops and huge conglomerates. I'm wondering if the same is happening to the rental market... Which will suck when it's time to rent serious gear because i'm pretty sure the "mom&pop" crowd will not have all the bells and whistles and the huge conglomerates will charge an arm&leg...
 
There have been several auction of rental houses conducted lately by Joseph Finn Co. Looking at their website it appears they are actioning two more right now.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Panavision lighting & grip here in NY closed down. From what I've heard about their camera facility, I wouldn't be surprised if they close too.
 
While a few of the biggies will hang around and some will merge, most are expected to go belly up in within the next five years. Just another sign of the global shift in the market.
 
But what would you attribute the cause? Cameras getting too sentive meaning less need for light / better options with available light?
 
Shrinking budgets, rapid camera technology advancements, DSLR's. ;)

Same thing is happening to a number of higher end graphics houses as well as production & post houses. The support structure has changed.
 
David W. Jones said:
Shrinking budgets, rapid camera technology advancements, DSLR's. ;)

Same thing is happening to a number of higher end graphics houses as well as production & post houses. The support structure has changed.
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I don't see the budgets shrinking on my productions but i do see the producers getting comfortable and simply using my gear for the shoot (it's nice to see on those few occasions where the gear is rented out to have the producers getting a reality check with the ACTUAL prices of gear rentals where they have to go back to a rental house rather then getting my discounted rates). The lights don't change. I can understand camera houses going out but lights&grip??
 
Speed of development. Cameras are coming on the market very fast, and a rental house has to keep buying the newest, because that's what clients demand. That often does not leave enough time to amortize the cost. This is true for all equipment. It used to be that you could hold onto and rent a camera for 10+ years, and you'd earn out during that time. You can't do that anymore. Who is going to rent one of the old Reds now? But yet, you don't have the option of not buying, because when a client comes in, he wants that camera - or piece of equipment - he's read about. There is also just a ton of stuff coming out in general - lights, support gear etc., and you just can't keep up buying it all for just a few rentals. And indeed budgets have shrunk. And gear has gotten segmented. Today, there is the internet - and there are sites which specialize in for example, renting lenses - so a lot of your lens rentals has just gone out the window. A lot of used gear is available through the internet - didn't use to be this way. A lot of free-lancers own their own gear, so they are not going to be as anxious to rent, and what they rent has to compete with all the used gear available at cheap prices - so your margins of profit will shrink. All that puts a lot of pressure on the rental business.
 
Moseph said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Panavision lighting & grip here in NY closed down. From what I've heard about their camera facility, I wouldn't be surprised if they close too.
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Yes, I bought several pieces of gerar from them.
 
Patryk_Rebisz said:
The lights don't change. I can understand camera houses going out but lights&grip??
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Actually, no. There are tons and tons of lights coming out, and people are getting very picky. Older style DPs are hostile to LEDs for example, but many indies are demanding lights which don't put pressure on household wire, or are battery driven. And stuff is dropping in price - look what happened to CF lights or LED lights. Which means people are increasingly buying stuff, and don't need to go to a rental house. The lights may not be optimal, but hey, it'll do - just as sub-optimal equipment and jerry-rigged stuff existed since cinema started. Only now you have more tools and options with cheap Chinese stuff.

Even grip equipment. I can get a decent size grip package for less than $50 a week. But you know what? It's still a hassle. For a few hundred dollars I can buy a bunch of c-stands and lightstands, and flags and what not from CL or ebay, and I can shoot my stuff leisurely whenever I want - bunch of shorts and experiments. I own very good quality c-stands (8), lightstands (8), a ton of flags and kits of various kinds. Guess what happens - when friends are shooting, they borrow my stuff for free, and I borrow their cams when they're not shooting. Rental places get: $0 for their grip packages.

So yeah, even lights and grip equipment isn't guaranteed for rental houses anymore, though of course, it's stil there.
 
Hmmm, I don't think a couple guys buying some C-stands and flags is going to put a rental house out of business. That's really small fry stuff comparatively....what the rental houses care about is their 10 ton going out with the 1200a plant and 4 18k's which are making 700 bucks a day per lamp. Thats the job thats going to make them 10 grand in a couple days and thats the kind of job that will keep them afloat.

What I wonder about those rental houses that you are seeing go under Patryk, is who's running them and what they are doing now, not to mention how long they've been around and how production is doing in your town. A lot of times the reason I see houses going under is because they started as an owner/operator, then built up enough trucks to have a reputable rental house...Sooner or later the guy who started it all goes away and then it's like the fire that was pushing that company forward burned out. Sometimes it's fairly quick, other times it takes a couple of years. We're watching a big local rental house go out of business now, and it's really just because no one really cares to keep the business going. Its sad, but definitely a necessary happening. Of course the other reasons for houses going under is just runaway production, if everyone is shooting in Atlanta or Louisiana, you don't need as much gear in California...that one isn't too complicated and makes a fair amount of sense.

Honestly if anything the market in your area was probably over saturated to begin with. A lot of guys I work with and other gaffers I know all own gear and they're all slowly building up their packages, but at a certain point here there is just too much gear. Too much for the amount of production going on and really somethings gotta give.
 
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I've generally noticed that I'm like the proverbial "Canary in the Coal Mine". When I get around to deciding on something it isn't long before a lot of others independently come to the same conclusion taking similiar actions with same outcomes. I can honestly say I ceased renting the way I once did a few years ago. That's about as scientific as I'll ever get on this one.
 
RyanT said:
A lot of times the reason I see houses going under is because they started as an owner/operator, then built up enough trucks to have a reputable rental house...Sooner or later the guy who started it all goes away and then it's like the fire that was pushing that company forward burned out. Sometimes it's fairly quick, other times it takes a couple of years. We're watching a big local rental house go out of business now, and it's really just because no one really cares to keep the business going.
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That's exactly the scenario I see all the time, and it often comes in waves. Don't know how many times I've seen Dad retire, only to watch Junior burn the company into the ground in just a few years. Happens in every business. It's really about passion and understanding the business. It's always going to be a lot of work because there's competition and if it's just easy money then someone else will figure that out and begin competing.

I also see this happen in waves, from a variety of reasons. I recall when one major city changed from the old yellow sodium vapor street lights over to a better-colored halide emitter that several companies who had invested in special lighting tools just dropped off the face of the earth. Often companies are on a narrow rail financially. Lose one major show and that's the line for making payroll. When the lockout happened in NY in the early 90s, I saw a bunch of houses disappear. Same with the 2008 recession. Now there are tax incentives that push & pull productions.

It all comes and goes. I know a uy who used to have a nice 10-ton truck. Then he got divorced and he couldn't make payments. The truck was sold at auction and most of the gear inside went into a landfill. Such is the ebb and flow of life.
 
This is happening also in my country. Rental is dying. Why? The gear has become really inexpensive - that's why. It's really simple as that. Because of that there are tons and tons of people who are doing production these days that wouldn't have been doing it 10 years in the past. And most of these people own their own gear. Why rent? For high budget I understand but for anything less than that I see no sense - this is if you have steady projects coming in, if not then rent!

A good camera sistem and a basic lighting kit can be had for app. 10k€. 10k amortizes relatively fast. And more and more projects are shot on this relatively cheap gear. Why? Because it delivers good result. How big a difference is there between an Alexa or a C100 with an external recorder?

If you want to make low budget films. Let's say docs in the 15k range. And you've got 3 of them lined up in the next one and a half year. (This are low budget films and all that
you really need a camera and an audio system and some lights. This can be had for 10k or even much less than that.) What does it pay more to rent or to buy and then sell when the production is done? My math says that it pays more to own then to rent especially if you are willing to rent your gear in between productions.

But doing one-off projects, not knowing when you're going to get the next one... Well this is another story. But for small productions I really see no sense for renting.
 
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