If film making is something that you do in spare time then this article may not be relevant but im sure still quite interesting. If you’re serious about film making, perhaps you’re considering starting your own business, or making your professional first short film with a budget and actors etc. If so then you will need equipment insurance and public liability insurance. Having your equipment covered on your house contents insurance will not be enough.
We all know accidents happen, and they happen when we least expect. If your film involves any element of high production value, risk to the team or working in tricky surroundings you will be at high accident risk.
- Who’s watching those loose light stands and cables?
- What happens if a member of public trips over your a stray item of your kit whilst you’re busy consentrating on the film?
- Who’s looking after the excess kit, whilst your eyes and mind is on other things? What if somebody steels it?
- What happens if a member of staff injures themselves?
- What happens if your talent (actors or presenters) injure themselves.
- What if you lose your most valuable archive of footage?
The list can go on and on.
All this could be easily fixed if you have Insurance.
If you want to hire equipment, you will have to have insurance that can cover the damage of the product you are hiring.
We once hired a Libra stablised head mount which was going on a jib arm on a moving vehicle. Just this head mount alone was worth £150,000. It was a 2 day shoot, so we made sure we made sure we had a weeks cover for this amount of money. The reason why we went for a week’s insurance, was due to the day collecting the equipment, and the day returning it. If anything happened during those 2 extra days, I think I would have cried!
A little tip you can do with insurance as the weather in the UK is very unpredictable, you can actually insure your shoot for the weather incase it’s so bad you have to cancel a shoot, and re-scheduelle camera crew, actors and staff etc.
