Double Your Film Equipment Rentals (Alexa, Venice, Etc) in 2023
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- čas přidán 15. 07. 2024
- If you're a filmmaker and overwhelmed at the cost of gear, or hate seeing a huge chunk of your income go to loan payments - you might want to seriously consider co-ownership.
The math is worth checking out - your rate of return increases like crazy, your loan risk decreases like crazy, and you're also able to buffer each others slow seasons without any real downside.
Now the one obvious thing I didn't say - be wise about who you're investing with. Be clear about things like insurance, responsibilities, and how the revenue splits work.
I wanted to quickly add the context around our Amira deal - we each put in $17k, and in 2 years we have each made $65k, then we sold the camera and got $14k each BACK from our initial $17k investment. The details will depend on your market, your type of work, volume, etc - but this can quickly multiply the money you may have sitting around in a bank account.
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I’d love to do this. The issue in my market is if the production companies rent something more than a few times, they tend to buy that thing themselves. So I might get 2 or 3 rentals out of one company, but then the next time I see them, they’ve purchased that thing and the rentals dry up. It’s happened more times than I can remember.
I love your thoughts on pooling all of these owner/ops together and minimizing the number of cameras that you’re competing against, though.
Was there ever any tension with your partner about where the camera was stored, or how the insurance was structured? Did you establish a separate business just for the ownership of the asset?
Would love answers to those questions aswell !
I totally get that - we had a similar situation with the Amira, two production companies ended up buying them each after doing 3-4 jobs with us. There's a few factors you can consider here - lowering your rental rate for repeat customers, just dealing with it not going to everyone, etc - the problem is the math on purchasing is generally super favorable if you're doing more than 5 days with something.
Storage and insurance wasn't really a concern, we got COIs from every production it was on, and it sorta floated back and forth between our houses depending on who was using it. No separate business - you could, but we didn't want all the extra paperwork hah.
Another option would be to pitch a prod co you work with a lot on co-owning something with you - shared interest could make a lot of sense there.
@@ebourcier Yep! That's also one thing to do. You could even try to approach a rental house, they might be interested depending on where you live. Tho, it would be a bit trickier since it would be rented out a lot more then you with your DP work.
How you deal when you both have clients that want to shoot on the same days? I know the booking should be part of the client negotiations but how about when they can't be moved?
The way we handled this was that generally whoever could get more money would take the camera, and the other production would just have to rent. So if your job couldn't afford it you'd still get your $750, and your production would rent whatever they could afford.
Just as a general question, who do you rent to?
Or is the idea that you're "renting" to whomever is hiring you (aka: equipment fee)?
A ton of the rentals are to production companies and agencies on jobs we've been on as freelance DPs, some are to other filmmakers, and some are billed through on work where we're producing etc.
Do you have any plans to go in for an Alexa 35, LF or Venice with anyone? I’m in the middle of figuring out if it’s worth picking up a used Amira by trading/selling my RED Dragons. It’s tough to know what’s worth owning for personal projects and also paid work. Always dreamed of owning an ARRI.
I don't currently have any plans to go in on one of the big boys - 2020 sorta shifted my market and the type of work I was focusing on, and for my current situation it doesn't feel like the move - I'm super happy with my FX6 and FX9, and I have two owner-op friends within 20 minutes of me with Venices.
What's holding you back from upgrading the RED?
@@ebourcier Yeah, it's a big commitment to go in for a $50K+ system. I found this video super helpful btw as purchasing something in that price range seems so far out of reach if you don't have consistent client work to pay for it. I've been hearing great stuff about those Sony cameras and it appears the Venice has really improved Sony's earlier color science.
The RED Dragons have been good, but I'm ready to move on. It's always felt more video than film to me and RED has totally dropped support for the DSMC2 line now. I'm also in the process of pushing outside the corporate type work I've been doing into more short-doc and short-film projects since I recently moved to Nashville. That's why investing in an Arri camera is attractive.
@@mabfilm That totally makes sense - I would honestly seriously consider the FX6/FX9, especially for short doc work. This film was on those two: czcams.com/video/r9RsE8icRjk/video.html
This is also FX6: czcams.com/video/ev1UFTYAU4I/video.html
Those videos look great! And like you said in your video, a lot of time these cameras are mostly sitting on our shelves, so having money tied up in expensive gear is a waste if you’re not booking jobs with them. Honestly, I’ve been the one pushing for cinema cameras over any request from a client so far.