I am looking to rent one of these camera's and a lot of places seem to require some form of rental insurance. What exactly is this? Would my normal insurance company cover something like this? If so what type of insurance do I ask for?
Your normal insurance company may offer this but you would have to check with them. Pretty much it comes in two main forms. Annual Production insurance and Production insurance per project.
The annual production insurance is generally insurance that you have on your gear and equipment that would cover any type of accidental damage to your equipment. Now depending on your policy it can also cover rented equipment up to a certain amount. Most often actual production companies are the ones that have this.
Now lets say you are a filmmaker and you don't really run your own company and you rent most of your equipment. You obviously would need insurance on equipment that you don't own all year round. So you would purchase insurance for a specific production that your a doing.
Now whether you have annual insurance on just for a project you would contact your insurance company and have them create a certificate of insurance naming the company whom you are renting from as the payee in case of damage.
Production insurance is also generally vital for getting film permits also.
