Rental houses dying one after another?

As others have said - Everyone owns what they need now. As filmmakers, when we get a job, we bid it with the gear in mind that we already have on hand. The clients don't know - they just want an image with sound.
 
I think what happened is that as more people started to shoot a new market for inexpensive gear (junk in my opinion, but that's another story) was born. Many of the new shooters were really hobbyist and in lieu of inexperience they went after stuff that looked real but costed a small fraction of what the real stuff costs. This in turn took away some customers from rental houses as in the past where there was no cheap junk the rental was the cheaper option from buying new quality gear or even used. As the market was flooded with cheap look-a-likes, selling used quality gear became harder and harder thus the prices of used gear plummeted. In turn the pros who were ready to invest in gear ended up buying up the used quality gear (yes, and some cheap junk - we are all guilty of believing that you indeed can find a deal...). That in turn dried up the rental market even more.
 
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Patryk_Rebisz said:
I think what happened is that as more people started to shoot a new market for inexpensive gear (junk in my opinion, but that's another story) was born. Many of the new shooters were really hobbyist and in lieu of inexperience they went after stuff that looked real but costed a small fraction of what the real stuff costs. This in turn took away some customers from rental houses as in the past where there was cheap junk the rental was the cheaper option from buying new quality gear or even used. As the market was flooded with cheap look-a-likes, selling used quality gear became harder and harder thus the prices of used gear plummeted. In turn the pros who were ready to invest in gear ended up buying up the used quality gear (yes, and some cheap junk - we are all guilty of believing that you indeed can find a deal...). That in turn dried up the rental market even more.
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Yep, Yep, Yep!
 
Great point, Patryk. I recently bought both 35mm Arriflex (including lenses) and Super 16 cameras for almost nothing. (Granted, I'll never find raw stock or a lab to process, but I've got great cameras that I would usually have rented in the past!)
 
Here in the Detroit area one of the largest rental houses, Mid America Cine Support, has gone under. This closure is probably due more to the government of the State of Michigan abandoning the film incentive program. Michigan used to be hopping with large productions, but no longer.
 
"But for small productions I really see no sense for renting"

Why to buy your own jib-crane.. when you can ent it for cheap when needed.. also kinoflos, etc???

It is like that when you becoming more professional..

.
 
This brings up a question that I'd like to pose: for those who have bought gear under the assumption that it makes more sense financially to buy rather than rent, do you track your ROI? And has the theory in fact proven to be true?

I have spent multiple six figures over the years on gear and the return has ranged from fantastic to abysmal, depending on the item. If something isn't paying back, I keep an eye on it and will dump it while it still holds market value. Although I've failed to do that on a few occasions--still have some SD and film gear, whoops--but other times I've sold just ahead of the curve enough to make financial sense. Equipment purchases are still the greatest deductions I've got on 1099 income and I see no reason to stop now. But, I do see people on boards buying out of what seems to be emotional response "want! gotta get me one of those!" and often without regard to resale value (good support gear maintains value longer these days than cameras, for instance).
 
CharlesPapert said:
This brings up a question that I'd like to pose: for those who have bought gear under the assumption that it makes more sense financially to buy rather than rent, do you track your ROI? And has the theory in fact proven to be true?
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Depends on who you are talking about. If you are talking about pro free-lancers who make 100% of their living from their work, that's one thing. But I bet you anything, that the majority of gear these days is purchased by complete amateurs/hobbyists, i.e. people who don't make a living at it, but who want to either play around, or are ambitious and have dreams of "being on the way to a career". The DSLR revolution - for better or worse - brought forth tons and tons of these hobbyists. Once upon a time, only pros or very serious indies bought or rented gear. Today hobbyists form the bulk. Of course, for them it doesn't make much sense to talk about ROI, because they don't make a living at it.

But even so, since I've lived it and seen it, here's my 2 cents. Buying gear is about more than cost. It is about time and convenience. If you are just puttering about, shooting shorts with your friends, it's a hassle to go back and forth to a rental house, so even if in the end it would make more sense to rent purely financially, that's not what it's about. It's about having your gear with you at all times to grab and do stuff whenever you have the time and fancy strikes. And because gear is so cheap these days, there's less of a penalty to buy. Of course, these being hobbyists and amateurs, they tend to purchase a lot of random sh|t and outright cheap junk. But that doesn't matter, because they still don't rent, they just write off the disappointing purchase, ***** on message boards and go buy something else (usually more junk).
 
OldCorpse said:
Buying gear is about more than cost. It is about time and convenience. If you are just puttering about, shooting shorts with your friends, it's a hassle to go back and forth to a rental house, so even if in the end it would make more sense to rent purely financially, that's not what it's about. It's about having your gear with you at all times to grab and do stuff whenever you have the time and fancy strikes. And because gear is so cheap these days, there's less of a penalty to buy.
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That's pretty much been my experience. I bought most of my tungsten fixtures for dirt cheap (they aren't junk, and if they were when I bought them I promptly got them in full working order). But notwithstanding the low prices that I got them for, it wasn't even about getting a ROI for me. Having them landed me a lot of work that allowed me to experiment and led me to much better understand how to light people and things. I'm not sure that they've even paid for themselves yet, and as I get more and more real professional work, I find that people tend to want to rent from actual rental houses. Therefore I have little interest in buying Kinos or HMI's unless I see a deal that's too good to pass up (like the time I got a 575 head with a good globe for $75, anyone out there have a ballast???), just doesn't make any financial sense. Even all the gear I own right now might not make sense financially to own, but as an aspiring technician, I don't regret having it.
 
leteeci said:
"But for small productions I really see no sense for renting"

Why to buy your own jib-crane.. when you can ent it for cheap when needed.. also kinoflos, etc???

It is like that when you becoming more professional..
.
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This conversation is pointless without knowing each others business model. But anyway... I was talking about small scale productions not large scale. And with that in mind I was talking about cheap gear not expensive gear. So regarding kinos and jibs and what not: jib is a whole other story, kinos not so much. Jibs aren't used in a day to day productions. This is a special item that gets used time to time AND it needs a crew and a slow paced project to really work. So regarding jibs I wouldn't buy them. The only things that I buy are those that I know they will amortize in a relatively short time.

But, if I'm talking about this amortisation...it's kinda different for productions vs rental houses. I don't need to have the latest and the greatest. I can buy an F5 today and shot with it for the next...how many years? For lots of years to come! While rental houses are forced to upgrade their gear this really doesn't apply to productions that are doing their own work. As somebody already mentioned this in this thread...
 
Yeah, it's not that easy to calculate ROI because ultimately it's not as basic as: i bought this item, it went out with me on 15 days of shooting which means by now it paid for itself. So not to appear like i'm nickel-and-dimeing my clients i offer flat rates on my gear. If on one particular project something is "missing" i try to decided if there will be other projects that could use that particular "missing" item. If so, than i buy it. That doesn't translate into more $ to me because as i said i offer flat deals where "I" pick what to bring and use and the producer simply decide on the abstract limits of what i'm allowing myself to bring. Moreover there is a number of productions that can't afford my rates but by asking for a favor and merging their rate + gear rental fee, they scrap by what looks like a decent rate - those are the jobs i wouldn't take in the past because i just didn't want to go under my rate (cause half of that money would be going to a rental house). That allows me to wheat out the "joke productions" that live in Lalala land that think they can get something for nothing.

BTW, here is my modest, but very complete lighting package:
http://patrykrebisz.com/lights.html
 
Actually Patryk, it sounds like more than many people here you ARE making a calculable ROI because clients are paying you a line item for your equipment package. Just because you are taking jobs that pay a lower rate than you would normally accept if you didn't have the gear rental doesn't really affect that, that's just perception. Your gear is earning rental and paying itself off, which is the goal. As well it should, because you have to shlep it to jobs, maintain it, etc.

For years I've had flashes of wanting to get into a G/E package but the shlep/maintenance factor against the actual return has always stopped me dead in my tracks! The closest I've gotten to it is thinking about partnering with someone on a nice 3-ton combo truck, where they do the "dirty work" but the numbers have never worked out against the hassle. I have a small selection of lights including LED specialties that are tough to rent elsewhere and I can get by on a tiny or personal project.

There is a certain stress in providing gear, which rears up in full force when it breaks down during a shoot. I've had some lucrative rentals get wiped out instantly when I have to make lightning-fast replacements that cost an arm and a leg. It's tough to do but protecting the production is first and foremost and you have to provide the same level of service that you would expect from a quality rental house, unless you have particularly forgiving clients.
 
Just take the gear you own and calculate what that would have cost to rent, minus say 50% for the various discounts and deals possible over time. Figure out how long it would take to pay for that equipment in renatal days and you have your ROI schedule.
 
CharlesPapert said:
For years I've had flashes of wanting to get into a G/E package but the shlep/maintenance factor against the actual return has always stopped me dead in my tracks!
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HA! This is exactly what lets me never to back down and go under certain number for rental... You spend enough hours maintaining this gear and then you are "F*** that, i'm not letting this HMI rent for less than..." or you spend 30 min shleping the heavy cases at the end of the day and then you know that you undercharged on the rental and it won't happen again...
 
Patryk_Rebisz said:
Never yet run into scenario where i would be "Damn, i wish i had some Kinos!"
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I thought the same thing until I got some and then became addicted to the damn things. I love Kino's. They are light, fast to set up and with single harness rigs you can pu them any where. I now have 18 units.
 
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OldCorpse said:
Depends on who you are talking about. If you are talking about pro free-lancers who make 100% of their living from their work, that's one thing. But I bet you anything, that the majority of gear these days is purchased by complete amateurs/hobbyists, i.e. people who don't make a living at it, but who want to either play around, or are ambitious and have dreams of "being on the way to a career". The DSLR revolution - for better or worse - brought forth tons and tons of these hobbyists. Once upon a time, only pros or very serious indies bought or rented gear. Today hobbyists form the bulk. Of course, for them it doesn't make much sense to talk about ROI, because they don't make a living at it.

But even so, since I've lived it and seen it, here's my 2 cents. Buying gear is about more than cost. It is about time and convenience. If you are just puttering about, shooting shorts with your friends, it's a hassle to go back and forth to a rental house, so even if in the end it would make more sense to rent purely financially, that's not what it's about. It's about having your gear with you at all times to grab and do stuff whenever you have the time and fancy strikes. And because gear is so cheap these days, there's less of a penalty to buy. Of course, these being hobbyists and amateurs, they tend to purchase a lot of random sh|t and outright cheap junk. But that doesn't matter, because they still don't rent, they just write off the disappointing purchase, ***** on message boards and go buy something else (usually more junk).
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I think there's a tier of user in between those two. One that primarily does lower-budget fair (direct to web, digital signage, corporate, etc.,) and whose wide expansion is relatively new to the industry.


-Andrew
 
Patryk_Rebisz said:
Never yet run into scenario where i would be "Damn, i wish i had some Kinos!"
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Really? In New York City, where just about all non-high budget shoots are hampered by small locations with limited house power? I don't doubt that you've never wished you had them if you don't own them since your experience with them may therefore be limited, but I would strongly encourage you to look into them. I don't own any since they're just too expensive for me to justify getting given the frequency of people renting my gear, but they're on every shoot that I work on and I hope that continues to be the case until the fluorescent tubes are substituted with LED retrofits.
 
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