PERG Newsletter: May 2024

     

| PERG News: May 2024 | 

In This Issue:

The AICP and PERG put on One Heck of a Party
On May 9, the AICP and PERG hosted the annual Spring Mixer at Versatile Studios in Los Angeles. Over 200 people RSVP’d for the party. Read more...

PERG Rental House Breakfast at Cine Gear
All PERG members should have received an invitation for the Rental House Breakfast at Cine Gear. If you have not received the invitation, and would like to attend, please contact perg@esta.org. Read more...

Basic Training for Entry-Level Rental Employees
When an entry-level employee starts work at a rental company, so much of the knowledge and skill essential to the smooth running of the operation is learned via on-the-job training. Read more...

Hallahan Group Offers Customer Vetting for Rental Companies
The latest rent to steal equipment schemes are becoming near impossible for rental houses to detect on their own without the assistance from professionals equipped to separate the real from fake and fraudulent identifications. Read more...

PERG General Membership Meeting at NAB
On April 15th, PERG held its General Membership Meeting at NAB. The meeting, which was held in the Cine Central area of Central Hall of the LVCC, was attended by over 100 people. Read more...

Red Flags on Certificates of Insurance
On April 30, PERG hosted a Coffee Break on the topic of fraudulent certificates of insurance. During the presentation Scott Taylor, President of Taylor & Taylor Associates spoke about the trends in fraud and best practices for vetting customers that you don't know. Read more...

 

The AICP and PERG put on One Heck of a Party

| PERG News: May 2024 |

On May 9, the AICP and PERG hosted the annual Spring Mixer at Versatile Studios in Los Angeles. Over 200 people RSVP’d for the party—principals from productions companies, freelance commercial producers, representatives from insurance underwriters and brokers and financial services, and of course rental company personnel from all over Los Angeles. The event is an opportunity for PERG rental companies to see the customers they service every day, and vice versa, and share some food and drink and a good time. See event photos below.

PERG Chair, Bianca Halpern (BECiNE), and Paul Royalty (Litegear) were the masters of ceremony. Sean French (Versatile Studios) made remarks on the behalf of the AICP. This year’s fun turned up to 11 with some amazing raffle prizes. Eight companies donated raffle prizes: ASTERA, Cast & Crew, Illumination Dynamics, Rental Tracker, Sher Gelb, Versatile Studios, Wrapbook, and Warner Bros. Studio.

Thanks to our sponsors for supporting the event. 

PERG Rental House Breakfast at Cine Gear

| PERG News: May 2024 |

All PERG members should have received an invitation for the Rental House Breakfast at Cine Gear. If you have not received the invitation, and would like to attend, please contact perg@esta.org.

The Breakfast is held on Saturday, June 8, before the show opens. The venue is close to Warner Bros, where Cine Gear is taking place this year. The event is a great opportunity to see friends and colleagues, to speak with vendors outside the constraints of the show floor, and to enjoy at good breakfast. 

We look forward to seeing you!

Basic Training for Entry-Level Rental Employees

| PERG News: May 2024 |

When an entry-level employee starts work at a rental company, so much of the knowledge and skill essential to the smooth running of the operation is learned via on-the-job training. By “training” I don’t mean that you go in a classroom and someone says, “let’s go over this organizational diagram together so you understand what everyone does here,” or “I’m going to present to you a three-part lecture on how to design an Ethernet network for lighting,” or “I’m going to show you a power point on how to prep a multi-camera package.” More often, people first learn necessary skills informally by being assigned a job that is adjacent to someone else who has experience, watching and gleaning the knowledge by whatever the person will tell them, and by osmosis. A new employee has virtually no visibility into the bigger picture. When I worked for a lighting rental company in Chicago, fresh out of film school, I was completely unaware of what went on outside my own department. PERG’s EWI Program offers an opportunity to develop resources that all members can take advantage of, to give new employees a broader view of our industry and technology.

PERG’s 2024 EWI Coordinator, Alison Cupples, has a lot of experience mentoring young people, serving as a board member for Women in Film, New England. She also knows rental, having worked for 15 years as a Sales Account manager, and managing a branch office at High Output in Boston. As part of managing PERG’s Equitable Workforce Initiative, Alison will be working with PERG members to develop virtual training sessions that will be of universal interest to rental companies for their new employees. All PERG members will be notified when training sessions are scheduled, just as PERG has done with its popular Coffee Breaks, and employees from any member company are welcome to join the sessions. 

One of the first sessions Alison is working on takes a 30,000-foot view of the landscape of a rental house. Trainees will hear from veteran rental owners and managers about the staff roles including the salesperson—the client liaison, translating the client’s needs into operational duties, acting as a consult as much as taking the client’s order, shop management, inventory management, accounting, marketing, and so on. Trainees will have an inside look at the rental company’s important relationships with the equipment manufacturers. By inviting the trainees to think about the bigger project of supporting productions, and everything that goes into it, the EWI program aims to help our members shape more informed, more valuable employees, and to spark an interest in rental as a long-term career.

Other EWI educational sessions will also focus on modern cinema technology. PERG is working with manufacturers to develop educational sessions on a wide variety of basic training, from color theory and lighting control to cameras and lenses to understanding the demands faced by the crew on set, and how the rental company supports them.

Many entry level employees apply for positions at a rental company because it is somewhere they can gain skills and knowledge about the equipment. Even someone with a college degree in filmmaking has not necessarily had much exposure to professional level equipment and filmmaking techniques. When I was in my twenties, entering the industry, the most knowledgeable and professional camera assistants I knew, who were young like me, had worked for a year or two at Panavision or one of the other respected rental companies. That was a real leg up. Working day in and day out with the equipment and servicing the 1st ACs who came in to prep their cameras, an entry-level person was soon set straight on the correct way to handle precious items and the experience vastly expanded their knowledge of the wide array of specialized equipment one must know to work in the industry. 

The PERG EWI program, which is sponsored by Netflix, creates opportunities for people from underrepresented groups who have a strong desire the enter the motion picture/television industry. The 2024 program is currently accepting applications from rental companies that have positions to fill and from job seekers. The program reimburses the rental companies for all costs of wages and benefits for the first six months of employment. In exchange, the rental companies that volunteer to participate in the program provide the worker with a wide variety of training and experience and give the employee the 30,000-foot view of the rental industry that they need. For more information.

Hallahan Group Offers Customer Vetting for Rental Companies

| PERG News: May 2024 |

The latest rent to steal equipment schemes are becoming near impossible for rental houses to detect on their own without the assistance from professionals equipped to separate the real from fake and fraudulent identifications. The thieves have gone so far as to create a fake website using the name of a real production company that is no longer in operation and create fake certificates of insurance. The fake certificates of insurance contain telephone numbers and email addresses that direct any outreach from the rental house to the thieves versus the legitimate insurance broker.

The Hallahan Group Inc. is a private investigation firm that is headed by Glen Hallahan and John Moran. Glen was the commanding officer of the NYPD Fraudulent Accident Investigation Squad. John was a Detective Seargent of the NYPD-FBI Joint Healthcare Fraud Task Force. Glen says, “We believe this investigative tool is one of the options a motion picture equipment rental company can use to vet unknown customers.” For $99.00 HGI will conduct a search with the goal to determine if the renter is who they claim to be, and that they are in fact a real person.

Below is the link to the HGI website and link to submit a new inquiry:

https://hginy.com/

Investigative Services – The Hallahan Group Inc - The process is as simple as uploading the customer’s application, photo ID, etc. through the referral form and request Investigate Other service. 

Alternatively, you can contact them using  Contact – The Hallahan Group Inc or email mailto:info@hginy.com

If sending a contact email, please be sure to mark Urgent – New Customer Investigation.

The expected turnaround is the next business day. 

PERG General Membership Meeting at NAB

| PERG News: May 2024 |

On April 15th, PERG held its General Membership Meeting at NAB. The meeting, which was held in the Cine Central area of Central Hall of the LVCC, was attended by over 100 people. 

PERG Chair, Bianca Halpern (BECiNE) welcomed the guests and opened her remarks by acknowledging the challenges of 2023-2024. “We were all understanding of each other's struggles and the camaraderie helped navigate through the times.” Raising her glass she continued, “Cheers to that and to the better times ahead.”

Bianca voiced a feeling that is common in the rental community, that there needs to be greater awareness among crew and customers of the value and challenges of rental companies. “Professional rental companies are foundational to every production community. Providing proper rental equipment requires long-term commitments, regular maintenance, long lead times to obtain vital items, and large financial expenditures to keep up with the latest advances in technology—these things are only available through an established rental company. Education is key, but it is just a first step, and we hope that every rental company will be part of the conversation as we provide a forum for the community around this issue.”

Bianca gave a shout out to PERG’s Coffee Breaks and User Group meetings. “PERG has hosted a lot of great educational sessions this past year. Including with Sony, ARRI, Astera, Small HD, Flanders Scientific, ProdPro, CORE, and Anton Bauer. For the past nine months PERG has coordinated User Group meetings in partnership with Rental Works, which have proved hugely helpful, and generated insightful discussion among our members that use that software. We’d love to do the same for any other rental software for which our members have the same need.”

Next in the meeting, Bianca introduced Alison Cupples, who has taken over as the new EWI Coordinator for ESTA. Alison announced that Netflix, the program sponsor, and ESTA have signed an agreement, and we are taking applications for the 2024 program. This is excellent timing as many companies will be hiring in the coming months. Since the announcement at NAB Alison has reached out to every PERG member individually to invite them to participate in the program and claim one of the eight grants that are available. For more information, please contact perg@esta.org.

Scott Taylor told the assembly about the most recent trend in COI fraud. Renters have presented doctored or fabricated Certificates of Insurance, even providing fake carrier phone numbers. (See Coffee Break – Red Flags on COIs and Best Practice for Customer Vetting.)

To close the evening Paul Royalty spoke on behalf of the Behind the Scenes Charity.

PERG Chair, Bianca Halpern (BECiNE) 

PERG EWI Coordinator, Alison Cupples

Guests at PERG General Membership Meeting at NAB

Red Flags on Certificates of Insurance

| PERG News: May 2024 |

On April 30, PERG hosted a Coffee Break on the topic of fraudulent certificates of insurance. During the presentation Scott Taylor, President of Taylor & Taylor Associates spoke about the trends in fraud and best practices for vetting customers that you don't know. Amy Saenz, Claims Manager at Taylor & Taylor Associates, provided valuable insights about how a knowledgeable person can spot a fraudulent document by knowing what one should expect. 

Glen Hallahan, Claims and Adjustment Consultant and Contractor at Hallahan Group, Inc. explained his company’s service to help rental companies vet new customers and verify that the person is who they say they are. (See Hallahan Group Offers Customer Vetting for Rental Companies, in this issue.)