Getting Insurance 4 Your Film - the smart & thrifty way

Production Lessons from the Love 10 to 1 team.

Getting Insurance 4 Your Film - the smart & thrifty way

While there are filmmakers who give no thought to insuring their production, we at Good Karma Films are of the belief that safety and protecting our entity comes first. Plus, Christine is an attorney and she wouldn't have it any other way.

We took turns calling different companies that would sell us an insurance package that includes worker's comp, third party liability, liability for equipment etc. The best price we got quoted was $2,200. One of the reps I spoke with suggested that for an extra $400 we should get insured for 1 year and we won't have to worry about insurance for our next project. Given how long this one has taken to get off the ground, I told him that we most likely would not have another project to go into production with. Then he told me of a very common practice among production companies - you can get another production to piggy back off your insurance. I asked him if he knew of anyone we could piggy back off of. He said he was not in that business and we politely ended the conversation.

I'm not sure if it was Laura or Christine but one of them placed an ad on craigslist and a few minutes later we had a number of responses from people willing to let us piggy back off of their insurance.

We went with a woman who has her own production company. This being such a small community we did our research and it turns out a few people we know have dealt with her and they highly recommended her. This woman has gone above and beyond, referring us to a number of resources.

She's only charging us in the hundreds to insure the film, saving us a ton of money we didn't have.

We've met so many people who are willing to help us out for free and others who are willing to work for us for very little money. But even with all these favors, it is still an expensive investment to make a movie.

I didn't go to film school, so I look at this film as my thesis film minus the expense of film school. I have friends who have spent in the high thousands making their short (usually under 15 minutes) thesis films. They are usually beautiful, artful, well crafted films but it'll take them years to pay off the student loans they financed their education and film with.

So, if I incur a bit of debt making this film I'm ok with that. I know I can pay it off in one year's time and hopefully Disney will come calling and my day job will be directing episodes of The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, That's So Raven, Hannah Montana, etc. Yes, I want to make films, as a matter of fact I have 4 books that I'd like to option, and I like my 9-5 just fine, but to quote The Beach Boys "Wouldn't It Be Nice...."
Lucy