The paperwork a production insurer actually asks for

A picture car is not an ordinary hire

It will be driven by people whose names are not on the booking yet. It will be moved around a location by a unit driver who is not the hirer. It may spend an entire day standing still with something bolted to it, and it may be asked to look, on camera, as though it is doing something it is not.

None of that is what an ordinary hire agreement has in mind, and that — not the specification of the car — is what holds picture vehicles up on the morning. The car on the call sheet has to be right twice: on camera, and on paper. Most of the work in production car hire happens before anybody turns over.

What ends up in the production file

Your insurer wants to know who is driving and what the car is doing before it will issue anything, so that end goes first. The documents that get asked for are consistent enough to list: the hire agreement itself; a schedule of named drivers; the certificates covering the vehicle; the registration details for the production’s own asset log; and a written description of what the car actually does during the shoot, which is the part productions most often supply verbally and then cannot evidence.

The hire agreement, the named-driver schedule and the certificates go over in time to sit in your file rather than arrive after wrap. That is the whole standard. A document that turns up on the Tuesday of a Monday shoot is not paperwork, it is a post-mortem.

The clause that catches people

Movement that is not driving. A car being repositioned on a closed location by a unit driver is not a vehicle being driven on a road, and cover written for the second does not automatically contemplate the first. The same goes for a car being pushed for a shot, towed for a shot, or carried on a low-loader with a camera and two people on it.

It is worth putting that to your insurer in those words rather than assuming the general wording covers it. The failure mode is not a claim being refused at the end of a shoot; it is a production office discovering on the morning that the confirmation it needed does not exist, with a crew standing around a car nobody is willing to move.

Named drivers, including the ones who act

Anyone named on the hire agreement who meets the eligibility may drive, and nobody else. That means the unit drivers, and it also means any cast who drive on camera. Actors are not an exception, which surprises people, and it is the check most likely to hold a car up on the morning.

The eligibility is tiered by what the car is: aged 30 to 70 with a licence held five years for supercars and premium luxury vehicles, and 25 to 70 with three years for everything else. Send licence details early. A licence issued outside the UK changes what we need to see, so flag the country at the point of enquiry rather than at the barrier — an actor flying in on the Sunday for a Monday shoot is the worst possible moment to discover a documentation question.

Several named drivers can sit on one agreement, which is how production hires are written here rather than adding people one at a time on the day.

Anything fixed to the car is a conversation, not a discovery

Camera mounts, suction rigs, low-loaders, tracking arms, interior rigs, anything drilled, clamped or taped. Also: driven hard, driven in rain that is being made by a machine, driven through smoke, or damaged in shot. Every one of those is a conversation before the booking rather than something found out about on the morning.

The hire is comprehensively insured and that cover sits inside the quoted figure, but a shoot asks more of a car than commuting does, so the terms are written against what it is actually doing. Told in advance, almost all of it is workable. Discovered at seven in the morning with a rigging crew waiting, some of it is not.

Static days, standby days and overrun

A car parked in shot all day is not the same booking as one doing unit moves across Southwark, and it should not be priced as though it were. A standby or static day is quoted as its own line rather than folded into the shoot rate.

Overrun is assumed rather than treated as a breach. The day is quoted knowing schedules move, so a car running past wrap is ordinary here rather than a renegotiation at midnight. If the dates themselves have moved, that is usually workable with notice — the constraint is rarely the car, it is the driver. If the shoot has moved to tomorrow, ring rather than emailing.

Continuity doubles need the most lead time

Where a second identical car sits in our own fleet, both are held against your shoot days. Where it does not, one is contracted in, and that is the part of a production booking that genuinely needs notice.

Colour, year and trim are what a double gets caught on. A specific make, colour and model year is a small pool nationally, and it is entirely possible for another production to be holding the ones you want. That is an argument for booking earlier than the schedule feels like it justifies, particularly if the script has been specific about the car.

What to send us, and when

The call sheet, or as much of it as exists yet. Dates, location, call time and what the car has to do on camera are the four things that change the answer, and a reference photograph beats a description every time — ‘a black Range Rover’ covers a decade of shapes and several different cars.

Delivery is to the location rather than to a depot, ahead of the crew call, with the London leg carrying no delivery charge and anything further quoted per journey inside the same total. The office is answered Monday to Saturday, 06:00 to 23:00, with Sunday by appointment, so an 05:00 handover or a Sunday shoot is arranged in advance rather than hoped for. The figure quoted is VAT-inclusive with mileage and comprehensive insurance inside it, which means it is the figure that goes in the budget rather than the one the budget starts from.

Questions this raises