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.
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| PERG Chair, Bianca Halpern (BECiNE) |
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| PERG EWI Coordinator, Alison Cupples |
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| Guests at PERG General Membership Meeting at NAB |
