Owership versus rental

[Luke Prendergast]

Don't own gear unless you want to be in the business of owning gear.

This coming from a guy who owns a bunch of gear! I know what you're trying to say though, Mitch. Of course, I own a bunch of gear too, so what the hell DO I know?

Yes Brad, exactly. And you and I both know what it really means to own that gear, with the insurance and productions trying to get you and equipment for package prices and dealing with clients who want the latest/greatest and on and on.

Yep. The assumption is that owning gear will help you get more work, but in reality you end up getting a lot of calls for you and the gear for the same or less than your rate before you owned gear. That's been happening to me a lot lately. They want everything for next to nothing, and they're happy to remind you that they know of some other person who'll do it for less. The problem is that those people do exist, and they really will work for less or nothing.

I recently did a job out in the desert, and I realized very quickly that all the sand blowing around and into my gear could cause some serious problems. But the biggest problem was that the rate was very low and if I did have a problem with the gear, the rate they were paying wouldn't cover any maintenace or repairs I might need. Since that job I've been much more wary of "helping someone out" than I used to be, because if I have a problem, how quick are they going to "help" me out? Not bloody likely I've found.

Owning gear is great in some ways, and a real pain in the butt in others. I think a lot of people that are looking at buying equipment tend to look at all the good things about it, but not many of the bad things about it. You have to look realistically at both the good and bad.

 

 

BUT: If your day job is not a DP, operator, whatever, where you are using the gear all day every day and someone else is paying for it; if you're shooting evenings and weekends to make your film; and you live more than an hour from a rental house - the most practical way is ownership. It is simply not an option to have a pile of gear couriered in for an evening where you're only going to spend two hours on location, then send it back in the morning because you won't have time in the next few days for another scene.

 

Besides, it's too cool having roadcases laying about the house (or 1 bedroom(office(studio(lab))) apartment).

[David Mullen ASC]

I think they are only warning people who think that owning gear will generate work for them. It tends to be smarter to buy gear if first you already are working and renting regularly and have a good idea how long it will take for your investment to pay off.

 

As for using a camera for personal projects shot off and on over very long period of times, especially outside of the major rental markets, then obviously owning the gear makes sense.

 

But if you are in a major rental market, you have to ask yourself if you are limiting yourself by owning the camera. I can afford to rent much higher-end gear than I could ever afford to buy. For the cost of a used Arri-SR 16mm camera, I could rent a 65mm camera over a weekend and shoot a short film on it!

 

My agent tells me though that I should start owning gear so I can make some money off of it. If I ever get enough money, maybe I'll start with some filters...

[GeorgeSelinsky]

I think it makes sense to own MOS packages, because they are generally more affordable and pretty convenient to have around when you want to pick up a few shots and play around. You can even do sync stuff and loop it later, like I do. The fact that American filmmaking (especially in the age of video with its single system sound) is so stuck on sync makes people overlook the MOS option. Think of the fact that for under 5 grand (and if you want to consider the Russian Konvas, which is a fine reflex camera, under 2 grand), you can be shooting 35mm images that look just fine - so long as your lens isn't a Coke bottle.

 

I shot a whole feature over two years on an Arri IIc which I had purchased, and I'm having the audio dubbed now. Works fine for me. Certainly made sense to pay about $5-6K for something that would cost me $250 every time I checked out of the rental house. Of course, having to foot a $700 repair bill for a lump in the gate and a dead tachometer was certainly no fun. I gotta learn how to fix this stuff myself one day - as of now I've just been too chicken to do it.

 

One other problem when you own gear for yourself you can't afford the best lenses for the job. I for one could never dream of investing in Zeiss optics at this point. Besides, it's not a great feeling when you have to sweat over a two to three thousand dollar lens that is almost as fragile as an egg. Then again, if you screw up the rental house's equipment they will also dig into your pocket.

 

- G.

[Luke Prendergast]

I was thinking of you George, and Christopher Nolan (Memento, Insomnia) who shot his first feature, Following over a year of Saturdays.

[Max Jacoby]

My agent tells me though that I should start owning gear so I can make some money off of it. 

Is he hoping to get his 10 % share of the rental as well? :D

[Brad Grimmett]

If I ever get enough money, maybe I'll start with some filters...

I once heard a guy that owned a ton of gear say, "If I had it to do over again, all I would own is glass." I think that's a pretty decent phiosophy. Lenses and filters don't become outdated nearly as fast as anything else, or at all really, for that matter. It's not a bad place to start if you ask me.

[David Mullen ASC]

Yes, I've sometimes thought owning an Arri-2C with a crystal motor wouldn't be a bad idea -- it would give me some freedom to run around and grab shots on my own time for some of the projects I have worked on.

[GeorgeSelinsky]

Lenses and filters don't become outdated nearly as fast as anything else, or at all really, for that matter.

Well, shooting with a 30 year old lens affects image quality more than shooting with a 30 year old camera by far. I can rent the latest and greatest glass and slap it on my Arri (provided it's available in that mount - I don't have one of those hard front PL mount mods), and get the newest looking images, if someone else is willing to pay.

 

From an equipment keeping perspective, lenses are just as fragile as cameras, even more in some ways. That's why I'm glad to have cheap $300 Cookes on my Arri, if anything happens to them I don't have to worry as much.

 

- G.

[Mitch Gross]

I wouldn't worry about the fragility of gear that much. Yes you've had a repair, but it was just once in two years, and that's not bad considering. Compare it to keeping a 30 year old car running, even if you only gently use it on weekends. I think you're doing pretty good.

 

My warning -- and I find myself issuing this warning every few months these days -- is to people who think they've discovered some magical way to save money in making their own indie features by buying big chunks of equipment. This time it started with a discussion of 2-perf cameras. How cheap could this be done?

 

Say you get some great deal on a BL-1 for $10G, then spend another $10G converting it to 2-perf. You then spend another $15G buying some lenses, tripods, and other completely basic gear just to get started. Shoot a feature on 50,000' of film (instead of 100,000' in 4-perf) which costs $25G for the stock, $6G to process and $10G to transfer to video (perhaps more as it's a non-standard format). And then an optical print must be done to get to standard 4-perf, so figure $30G for that. You've now spent $106G to shoot on an inferior format with junky old equipment. No one will have any interest in ever renting it from you. You don't have the money to make a bunch more movies to spread out these costs.

 

So what were your great savings? Well your raw stock and processing costs would have doubled, so that's $31G. But you spent $30G on optical printing when you could have spent just $11G, so now you've saved $20G. And you spent $35G buying this junky old camera, converting it and getting accessories. That's a $15G difference, and believe me you could make an arrangement to rent a very nice new camera package for your feature, even doing it in fits and starts, shooting on weekends and such.

 

So I argue that this is not a great way to save money except in the most extreme of cases. Even for George, who shot his movie in bits and pieces. He lives in the New York City area. I know that he could have rented a better camera (sync sound) for a few hundred dollars a day, especially if he made an arrangement with a rental house beforehand. Even with all the shooting days he had spread over a very long time, I still think he may have saved some money in the end, plus he would have had a quiet camera so that he could have gotten useable audio on set, saving time and money in post. He can argue that the dubbing asthetic isn't a problem for him, and we can all choose where we are willing to compromise. But it's a huge expenditure to go out and make a movie and I just generally question why people are so quick to jump into ownership.

 

Let me put it this way: Say I'm going to drive across the USA. I know I can get a brand new rental car for the trip for $500. I also know that I could find some old junker car for the same money, but I can't go over 40 miles an hour and I'll need to put oil in it ever 1000 miles, there's no air conditioning and the seat belts don't work. But at the end of the trip I can sell the car to another used car lot for $25. Which one would you choose?

[GeorgeSelinsky]

A point to add about rentals is that rentals prices are NOT proportionately related to the cost of the equipment. For instance I've seen an Arri IIc rent for $250/day, and a comparable setup for a BL4 was around $600/day. That's just over twice the price, yet a BL4 costs way more than twice the price of a IIc. So you can look at it as getting more for your money with the more expensive gear when you rent, or getting really burned with the cheaper MOS stuff - hence another argument in favor of owning your own MOS package and renting the sync stuff. Personally I'll probably never invest in a sync package for that reason alone.

 

Another observation I'd like to add is that equipment has an uneven price/performance ratio. A $300 Cooke won't look as sharp and contrasty as a $2000 Zeiss, but for me to honestly say that a lens that is almost 7 times more expensive produces image quality 7 times better is not true, at least in my judgement. Of course there's the extra f-stop at the end when you need it, but frankly I hate shooting at such a low DOF and would avoid it like the plague. I mean, if your subject moves forward just a hair and the AC misses it, that's it - you're soft. Better spend a little extra money on an extra light than a lot more on the glass!

 

Furthermore, a $24,000 blimped camera isn't twice as quiet, twice as easy to load, half the weight, and loaded with twice the features of a $12,000 one in most cases. There's a law of diminishing returns up the price scale when it comes to ownership.

 

I personally think it's ludicrous to spend five figures on film equipment if you want to do your own shooting (which is what you'd have to fork over for a decent 35mm sync package). You're practically guaranteed to take a loss on it that way unless you're shooting for years. For what I'm doing now, I'm perfectly happy dealing with no sync in exchange for thousands of dollars I can apply elsewhere. The fact that I have a 30 + year old camera body doesn't disturb me in any way. I don't need a video tap because I'm also the director. I don't need a focus pulling rig because I don't have an AC in most cases (would be a bad joke if it wasn't true). I don't need 1000' mags because I'm shooting short ends. I'd get better lenses but for the increase in price it's not worth it to me for this project - seven times the price won't buy me seven times the quality. And yes, I'm willing to stand on my head instead of paying all that extra money for an orientable viewfinder :D

 

But take this situation and reverse it, where I'm a DP for a big client. Even if I could get away with my MOS Arri rig, I wouldn't do it because I have to maintain a certain look when the client comes to visit. In the USA that often means Panavision (although it's also fair to note the company is very good at support). Then there's the video tap which is a required item these days. Then there are all other sorts of gadgets that I'd consider to make my life and my AC's life easier and save my energy for more important tasks. At this point I'm not paying anything for rental so why the heck shouldn't I get all those goodies? After all, it's not like I get to keep the money I save - all I have to do is negotiate with the bean counters to be sure I'm within my range.

 

So each situation demands its own approach.

 

- G.

[GeorgeSelinsky]

I know that he could have rented a better camera (sync sound) for a few hundred dollars a day, especially if he made an arrangement with a rental house beforehand.  Even with all the shooting days he had spread over a very long time, I still think he may have saved some money in the end, plus he would have had a quiet camera so that he could have gotten useable audio on set, saving time and money in post.

I can tell you confidently that with over 80 shooting dates, that would in no way have worked out. The way the shoots have worked is this:

 

Me: "Hey Rob, you ready to shoot with us this Friday night?"

Rob: "Yeah, I can probably do it. But I still have to see if I'm being called to work that night, I won't know till Thursday night".

Me: "Okay, because Suzy can only do Friday, then the next time she can do it on a weekend is in two weeks, and after that she's leaving for Greece for three months"

Rob: "I understand. Well, it looks optimistic. Call me tomorrow."

Coproducer: "George, we still don't have a confirm on that location for Monday, the guy still hasn't called me back".

Me: "Okay, well is David ready to go that day?"

Coproducer: "He hasn't called me back yet either, his mom said he'd call tonight"

Me: "Damn, I can't do anything else on Monday because Joe is working, Rachel is working and then has a meeting, maybe I can squeeze in part of that scene with Peter in the cellar, although he just cut his hair and it's a bit too short - can't ask the guy to not cut his hair for three months!"

Coproducer: "Well, we can only shoot in the cellar till 9 am, the old lady goes to sleep at that time. You can break it into three days but Peter has a final that week..."

Me: "I could do this one exterior on Monday with Max but it's forecasted to be 20 degrees outside that day. He has to match a scene we did when it was 70 degrees and he had that light jacket. He's gained some weight now so if I give him undershirts he'll look fat. There might also be snow so that might not work out well. Also he may not get off early that day, and then I'll have no light."

 

Coproducer's phone rings. I look at the list of unshot scenes and check who I need for what. Coproducer gets off phone.

 

Coproducer: "Guess what? That was one woman I know from my job. It turns out she has a nice bedroom we can film the shot of Nana looking out the window and dialing the phone. It really looks nice".

Me: "Hmm. If it's small I can probably light it fast. Is Nana home now? Let's give her a call and see if she can come in. I have my camera with me and if she can give me an hour, we're all set!"

 

Coproducer dials up lady with house on his cell phone, I dial up actress on my cell phone.

 

You get the picture? :rolleyes:

 

With a setup like this, where sometimes I find out in twenty minutes if I'm filming that day or not, you can easily loose your shirt with a rental house. Besides, all those trips to and from, even if it's a mere 30 minutes away from location, also cost something - gas, tolls (unless you want to dip down to the 59th street bridge and have your suspension damaged), parking, etc. Then there's the ceremonial check in - check out which eats time and nerves. To top it off you have to watch the clock and God forbid you hit a traffic jam - here comes the late fee.

 

Even if it cost me the same to rent a BL-4 with Zeiss glass as what I paid for my IIc, I wouldn't do it. After all, I now have a 35mm package anytime I may need it for any reason. As a matter of fact the very first filmed sequence for this project (done at a public event) was shot on the spur of the moment, when an idea crept into my head and I said "Should I take my camera and go? hmmmm". If I didn't have an Eyemo sitting there waiting to be tested, I don't know if I would have driven out to the rental house and plunked down the cash to take the chance.

 

To top it off, dubbing helps my performances, that's one of the main reasons I've embraced it. It also helps me add lines to the script that weren't there before, and since this is a loosely scripted film I need that flexibility to make things add up sometimes. I've definitely had a faster shoot because of no sync, that's for sure. It did take me a bitch of a time to sync the video scratch track to the dailies though, because of my very variable speed motor. Makes me wish I had a constant speed or better yet a crystal (but the former is $250 while the latter is $1000 - but at least the flourescents and sodiums don't flicker)

 

- G.

[Mitch Gross]

Okay George, I guess yours is a pretty extreme form of filmmaking. But if we take it up just one step to the guys who shoot their movies over a series of weekends for months if not years on end, it would prove to be cheaper and better to rent rather than own.

[GeorgeSelinsky]

I have to say that yes, my situation is not the usual 35mm low budget feature and I freely admit it (although there have been others who have gone this route, but they usually shoot 16).

 

I still maintain that getting an MOS package is a good idea for any director/DP, or even just a DP, for either 16 or 35, or both. If you are willing to get a Konvas you can even shoot anamorphic images for under 3 grand. That costs less than a prosumer DV camera. Keep some high speed color negative short ends in your freezer and you have the freedom to get footage any time of day or night, and any place you can take your camera with you. I once hopped into a dinner dance and stole footage that would have cost me a lot of sweat and/or money to reproduce. I could have been told to get out of there and then what would I do with my camera rental fee for the night? I'd have to eat it, and be up early the next morning in my car fighting NYC traffic to check in on time.

 

If you have a very regularly committed schedule (which I don't have) over a long period of time you might do better with rental - especially where sync is required which means you need two people for sound to be there with their gear. But then again, projects that have such low budgets are very careful about overspending on camera rental so they end up renting at the low end of the spectrum, where you get less bang for your buck (as I previously noted). In that case ownership starts making more sense economically. I mean, I wouldn't hop around with my hat raising extra funds to have a BL-4 or 535 on the set, versus an old BL-1 wearing a few leather jackets. I think it's much wiser to put that money towards stock and lab, which is what low budget productions most directly benefit from.

 

- G.

[Brad Grimmett]

Lenses and filters don't become outdated nearly as fast as anything else, or at all really, for that matter.

Well, shooting with a 30 year old lens affects image quality more than shooting with a 30 year old camera by far. I can rent the latest and greatest glass and slap it on my Arri (provided it's available in that mount - I don't have one of those hard front PL mount mods), and get the newest looking images, if someone else is willing to pay.

Good point. But I was thinking more about buying more up to date glass, that you know you like to use most of the time, and that works with most cameras. Panavision is of course the exception here. But I would think buying and maintaining a set of primes would be much cheaper than buying and maintaining a camera body. I could be wrong on this point since I don't own lenses or a camera, and am not that well versed on the upkeep of either.

Personally, I own a Steadicam and all the bits, pieces, and accessories that go with it, including wireless follow focus and wireless transmitter and receiver. And I gotta tell ya, it's expensive to keep this stuff up! At least it is if you want it to work properly. I spent $3000 in December buying a couple of bits and pieces and doing an overhaul on my arm. That's not a rare thing, it was basically normal upkeep. Almost every job I do I have something that I need to upgrade or service or repair at the end of the job. And that's not counting the latest and greatest stuff that comes out all the time. I have a very nice rig that does it's job perfectly 99% of the time, but it's not the newest rig you can buy, and I'm always hearing about friends of mine that lose jobs because they don't have the rig that the producer is familiar with.

Producer: Do you have a Pro 2?

Op: No, I have an Ultimate.

Producer: Oh, well I need someone that has a Pro 2.

Op: Um, OK.....

The truth is, the producer wouldn't know a Pro 2 from an Ultimate from a Ultra to save his/her life, but that's what they hear is the best, so that's what they want. And there are many operators who believe the Ultimate is the better rig. But in the end it doesn't matter. What you own is what you own.

This is just an example of what owning gear can be all about. I know the same thing happens all the time with camera owners. Some of it is based on ignorance and some of it is based on other factors.

I guess the point (before all my blathering) was that if you're going to buy gear you should be aware of what the advantages and pitfalls of owning the gear are. It's not just "buy the gear and watch the money roll in". There are many factors to consider. Lenses and filters just seemed like a good way to go in my opinion.

Sorry to go on and on, but I think I made SOME sense. :blink:

[Luke Prendergast]

From an equipment keeping perspective, lenses are just as fragile as cameras, even more in some ways. That's why I'm glad to have cheap $300 Cookes on my Arri, if anything happens to them I don't have to worry as much.

I'm not one to baby equipment, no matter how expensive, regardless of whether it's mine or a rental. I do take good care of gear but it is a tool, it is to be used. That said, the most expensive piece of glass I've broken was a Bormioli martini glass (more than one actually).

[GeorgeSelinsky]

I do take good care of gear but it is a tool, it is to be used.

Agreed. At the same time, you'd be more reluctant to take a $20,000 camera out on a shoot and run scenario than a $5000 camera. I've done risky shots (like filmed off of a ship and out a window) which I really wouldn't risk with a more expensive package unless I had people there taking care of the camera fulltime. I've also done things like pull my lenses just slightly out of their mounts in order to get a macro effect. Good luck if you jounce the camera by accident or tilt it low enough, forgetting that your lens is loose - and goodbye charlie.

 

Of course, I'm not saying that you shouldn't get more expensive gear if it's reasonably affordable, but that there are advantages to having a cheap package sitting around, you definitely can get mileage out of it.

 

- G.

[Mitch Gross]

Hey, I'm sad if I drop a filter. It's only $100 or so, but that's $100 of my personal money! That said I've also beeen known to lean out the side of flying helicopters with my camera gaffer-taped to my hand.

 

George, I don't know where you saw an Arri 2c package at $250/day, but you can get them for about half that in the city, including a few basic lenses. And as I noted before, book rate can be a very different thing from what you might actually pay if you went to an equipment house and talked to the people about the long-term project you were attempting. But I still understand your special situation.

 

I guess in the end I just feel that yours is a VERY special situation, one that prohibits most types of filmmaking and is not a model that many would be interested in following. It works for you and that's great, but I don't think it would work for the vast majority out there. Most filmmakers would like their movies to look, sound and function like a big Hollywood feature, just cheaper. :lol:

 

Brad, I once thought about investing in 35mm format glass just like you suggest. There are a number of DPs with their own personal sets of lenses, even though they do not own the camera packages themselves. I believe Oliver Stapleton was one of the first customers to buy a set of the Cooke S4s after Beta-testing some from Les Zellan. But even that would cost me about $150,000 and so it's not worth it to me. But it is a point well-taken. I did advise David recently to follow his agent's suggestion and start investing in filters. It's a cheap start and one that no real production can argue with. And Greg has told the story in the past of a DP's filter kit sitting in the truck for a shoot untouched yet earning more per week than I get for my entire Super-16 camera package.

[GeorgeSelinsky]

Hey, I'm sad if I drop a filter.

Well, there's a difference between being sad and getting a heart attack :unsure:

 

Even with the IIc at $100 a day, it still wouldn't work for me. After 50 check ins/check outs the package is mine for life. Can't argue with that. Then there's all that time and gas money I saved... Now a BL-4 package at $350 a day (or even at $500 a day) is a different story. It will take you a LOT more check ins/outs to own that baby.

 

I think in reality many filmmakers want to shoot on a regular block schedule, but in practice this doesn't happen very often on low budget shoots (especially VERY low budget shoots). While I still agree that the sync packages are best left to the rental house in the vast majority of cases (although I'd probably buy a BL 1 if I had to shoot sync over 80 days in my current environment, as described above), the MOS package is a real plus to have, especially for director DP's. You can't really go wrong for that money, as long as you have a working piece of equipment.

 

- G.

[Brad Grimmett]

I believe Oliver Stapleton was one of the first customers to buy a set of the Cooke S4s after Beta-testing some from Les Zellan. But even that would cost me about $150,000 and so it's not worth it to me. But it is a point well-taken. I did advise David recently to follow his agent's suggestion and start investing in filters. It's a cheap start and one that no real production can argue with. And Greg has told the story in the past of a DP's filter kit sitting in the truck for a shoot untouched yet earning more per week than I get for my entire Super-16 camera package.

Yeah, that's a hefty investment for lenses uless you absolutely know that you have the work lined up for them for a string of projects. But who really knows that? Even the huge name DP's don't seem to have that kind of work lined up.

You're right about the filters. You can give the production a bit of a deal, but have more filters available than you would had you rented them. Hard to argue that one. And I too thought of Greg's filter rentals when I was writing about buying glass. He seems to have a pretty good thing going with that. Of course I'm sure he's constantly replacing and adding filters, but that's pretty minor when you consider how much they cost. The great thing is you can buy a few and then slowly add one or two here and there and the next thing you know you have a nice size filter package. Seems like a pretty good deal for both production and the DP.

Of course, you could do the same thing with lenses........"Um, I think we should shoot the whole feature on the 40mm.....on the next one we'll use the 40mm and the 75mm, etc." ;)

[Tenolian Bell]

It's interesting the two cultures of NY and LA and owning gear.

 

I've lost two jobs this year in LA because I didn't own gear. The goal was to eliminate paying for gear altogether. As in paying me but not paying extra for my gear. What makes it so crazy is I could be the most qualified for the job, but they'll go with someone with their own gear even if they are less skilled with it. Almost every meeting I'm at in LA the question comes up of "what do you own?"

 

In NY I've never lost a job because of lack of owning gear. Generally once I'm hired the production will borrow or rent the gear. Generally we are able to get better equipment than what I could own. But I imagine in time NY productions will start placing more emphasis on owning equipment.

[GeorgeSelinsky]

What makes it so crazy is I could be the most qualified for the job, but they'll go with someone with their own gear even if they are less skilled with it. Almost every meeting I'm at in LA the question comes up of "what do you own?"

Sometimes I wonder if these people will ever learn either on the set or watching the dailies, or both. Probably not. This is really the whole video culture coming in, with personal camera packages being standard.

 

- G.

[Luke Prendergast]

Agreed. At the same time, you'd be more reluctant to take a $20,000 camera out on a shoot and run scenario than a $5000 camera

Quite the opposite. I would use whatever is going to give the result I need, and specifics aside, the better, more expensive gear would give me better results more easily. If I think I'm going to trash something, like strapping a camera beneath a car, it won't be anything more expensive than a K3 or a super8 camera, but this kind of thing is an exception.

Being precious about gear is ridiculous. Keeping the expensive, functional equipment safe in the very controlled confines of the studio and using lesser equipment in the field where you really need the useability and reliability of good gear doesn't make sense.

[Kevin Zanit]

I to have lost work for not owning gear. I lost a job on a low budget feature because I couldn't (more like wouldn't) get them a Panavised F900 package for free (I guess the un-godly low price I did secure wasn't good enough for them).

 

I said if they want a free package their producer better start producing.

 

The filter ownership angle is an interesting idea. I have never really needed to carry more than 25 - 30 filters so that was within enough reason for the rental house to just give them to us for free.

 

But this is long form work, on music videos and commercials I can see the nitch . . . maybe something I'll look into.

 

 

Kevin Zanit

[David Mullen ASC]

Early on, I sort of took the attitude of "hire me because you like my work, not because I can get you free or cheap gear." So it never bothered me to not get a job because they wanted an owner/operator to exploit because I didn't want to work for people who were hiring me for the wrong reasons. Of course, I didn't get a lot of work at first...

 

Even now, when I occasionally do the freebie short film or something like that, I tell the producers up front that all they get is me and my skills -- I don't come with a freebie crew or killer deals from rental houses. That's their problem to solve.

[J. Lamar King IMPOSTOR]

I'm shooting a low (no) budget documentary right now. The project is about a sculptor and there's only so much tedious chiseling I can shoot. I only shoot once, maybe twice a month and that has been going on for the last couple of months with a DVX100 and since July 2003 with 16mm.

 

I drive 300 miles round trip to get the DVX-100 package on Friday and another 300 to return it on Monday. I wish I didn't have to do that but the rental house rents the DVX for $125 a day versus the usual $250+ a day and they give me a good weekend deal. I've been saving money doing this so far but gas is getting high.

 

Some people have asked why don't I just buy a DVX-100. The way I look at is,

 

1. Up until recently I wasn't sure if it was worth the 3K to get one. But people have shown interest in hiring me if they could "use it" on their project so it might be worth it.

 

2. I don't really have 3K to buy one outright and I don't want any more credit debt. And remember you really have to buy more than just the camera (tripod, head, monitor etc.). BUT, I do have the rental fee in my pocket and I really need to shoot this weekend.

 

The thing that really sucks with renting is the insurance. It can be cheap (per day)if you shot every day for a couple of months straight. But if you shoot only occasionally you really have to get a year long policy. The plus side to having a policy like this is you can rent any piece of equipment you want and feel good about it.