A camera is easy to rent.
Someone who knows it isn't.
You can hire a body and a lens from anyone. What arrives is a box. What you actually need on a shoot day is somebody who already knows what that camera does in a dark room at 3pm, and who brought the adapter nobody remembered.
The kit, and the hands
A cinema camera and a full set of lenses, with an operator who has been using them for years — so the settings are a decision rather than a search through menus while everyone waits.
And the rest of it: spare batteries, cards, tripods, adapters, audio, the cable that only matters when you don't have one. The things that don't appear on a rental invoice and stop a shoot dead when they're missing.
Two situations, usually
The date moved,
or someone dropped out
A shoot is happening on Thursday and the plan fell apart on Tuesday. You need a second camera, a replacement operator, or simply someone competent on site who will not need managing.
- Overflow days when your own team is committed
- A second or third angle on a one-take event
- Coverage in Philadelphia when you're based elsewhere
We can arrive
as your team
Agencies and production companies use us as crew under their own name. We turn up unbranded, take direction from you, hand over the footage, and never appear in front of your client unless you want us to.
- Unbranded on site and in correspondence
- Footage delivered to you, in your structure
- Happy to work to your look and your LUTs
Thirty-three years of
what usually goes wrong
The value isn't the camera. It's the person who has seen the weather turn, the location change that morning, the hero car arrive filthy, and hair and makeup run an hour behind — and who knows which of those actually threatens the day and which just needs working around.
That's a different purchase from a rental. You are buying the thing that keeps a shoot moving when something breaks, which is most shoots.
Camera, lenses, support gear and an operator. Half days and multi-day rates on request, and travel beyond greater Philadelphia at cost.
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