Arrange film insurance

What this is about

Almost every shoot touches three separate risks: gear that belongs to somebody else, harm to third parties or their property, and the production itself failing to reach delivery. Each has its own policy, and none of them quietly covers the others. Rental houses and many locations release equipment or keys only against a certificate that names them, so the paperwork sits on the critical path weeks before the shoot day. Annual policies suit companies that shoot constantly; single-production cover fits the agency with four films a year. What decides both is knowing which risk each policy answers before anyone signs.

The order matters more than the tools. Skip a step and you usually notice two steps later — by which point the fix costs several times as much.

What runs differently here

In planning terms, that means:

• Equipment cover follows the gear, not the shoot: rented, owned and borrowed items often sit under different clauses and different sums insured.
• Public liability protects third parties — a light stand through a shop window is a liability claim, never an equipment one.
• Rental houses and locations usually want a certificate naming them, and issuing it takes days that belong in the prep schedule.
• Drones, water, fire, stunts and historic vehicles are standard exclusions; they need named extensions rather than optimistic assumptions.

Step by step

This order gets you there fastest:

1. List the real exposures first: rented equipment, own gear, third-party property, the location itself, cast availability and every vehicle used for camera work. That list picks the policies.
2. Check what already exists. Production companies often hold annual equipment and liability cover; freelancers rarely do, and a client's corporate policy almost never reaches a film set.
3. Take the sums insured from the actual rental quote instead of memory. Underinsurance settles proportionally, so a camera package valued at half pays out at half.
4. Ask each supplier and location which wording their certificate needs and who has to be named on it. Send that request the moment the location is confirmed.
5. Add named extensions for anything unusual — drone flights, water, fire, animals, stunts, night work, listed buildings. Standard wording excludes more than people expect.
6. Weigh the excess against the size of the job. A high deductible on a two-day corporate shoot makes small claims pointless, which belongs in the budget line.
7. Bind the cover before the first pickup and keep the certificate with the call sheet, so the crew can show it at the gate without phoning the office.
8. Document damage the moment it happens: photos, a short written note, names of witnesses. Claims fail on missing evidence far more often than on wording.

Common pitfalls

What most often goes wrong in practice:

• Assuming the client's corporate liability policy covers the film crew — it almost never does, and nobody checks until there is an incident.
• Insuring a camera package at its day rate instead of its replacement value, so a total loss is settled at a fraction.
• Booking the drone first and reading the exclusions later, when the pilot's own cover turns out to stop at the property line.

With TillyGen

TillyGen's equipment list and schedule hand you the figures a broker asks for: what stands where, on which days, at which locations — before the quote goes out.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.