The Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) and PLASA’s Production Equipment Rental Group (PERG) teamed to host a Cinco de Mayo party on April 30 at the Culver Hotel in Culver City, Calif. While the scheduling was chronologically off, the intent was right on target.
AICP and PERG have been co-hosting an Oktoberfest event in New York for the past couple of years and it has proven to be a great occasion for rental houses and production companies to get together in a relaxed social setting. So the two groups decided to try to create the same dynamic in the Los Angeles market with a spring event; hence, the Cinco de Mayo celebration.
“This underscores how the two organizations are working together to better the marketplace,” said Harry Box, manager of PERG. “I remember hearing a production equipment rental house executive noting that until the first Oktoberfest he hadn’t met the head of a production company that he had been doing business with for 20 years. Those kind of meetings are important to our business and the community at large. By bringing these people together face to face, we’re building relationships.”
SHOOT first met Box right before a fateful joint exploratory meeting between representatives of AICP and PERG in June 2011. That dialogue sparked a coming together which just three months later yielded a document containing standard terms and conditions for the rental of motion picture camera, sound and lighting equipment. The final document–which is still in use with a tweak or two–represented a significant improvement over what had been the norm of coping with numerous different agreements drafted by individual rental houses, which necessitated careful scrutiny by production company execs who often would delete or amend certain clauses. In contrast to those assorted often one-sided agreements favoring equipment rental firm interests, the newly reached uniform pact–which factors in protection for both the production house and the equipment rental company–provided a measure of predictability and fairness as to how claims and concerns involving the use of rented equipment should and would be settled.
Beyond that breakthrough document, a foundation between the two organizations was built for future dialogue in a cooperative spirit, noted Box. Since then, AICP and PERG have worked in partnership to deal with such issues as equipment theft and the shipping of lithium batteries, as well as working to jointly develop best practices documents on how to handle stored media that hasn’t been properly erased on rented recording equipment.
Box observed that there is inherently a bond between production companies and their equipment vendors. From collectively solving production problems to just making budgets work, there is a synergy to making each others business thrive.
