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Many of Hollywood’s biggest stars have already made an appearance at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), and more will be walking the red carpet in the coming days as the event heads into its second week.
Long before movies make it to the screen, brokers specializing in entertainment clients have to insure the entire production process. Gallagher is among the global leaders in this niche, handling the insurance needs of major studios around the world, and one of its experts gave Insurance Business a peek behind the curtain of the risks facing those clients.
“Generally speaking, your biggest exposure when you’re going to be looking at a film is where are you filming, where is the location? Is it going to be a studio shoot – are you shooting on a sound stage – or are you shooting on location, and is the location in North America or is it [for example] in the jungle?” said Susan Wallis, SVP at Arthur J. Gallagher, adding that if a crew is going outside of the continent, the method of transportation for travelling as well as security and safety considerations once they arrive are important to keep in mind.
“Nowadays with weather, that can even be part of the issue of where you’re going to shoot,” explained Wallis, highlighting hurricanes as a huge issue for productions, or even cold temperatures, if a shoot is taking place in the Canadian Prairies during winter, which has resulted in frozen camera equipment in the past.
The onscreen personalities are also an important consideration – who are the actors, what kind of health issues do they have, and are they younger or older? The film’s genre is another key element since an action movie with multiple locations and dramatic stunts will have more risks than a romantic comedy taking place in a small town.
The budget for the movie, whether it’s $50,000 or $300 million, tends to reveal a lot of these details that an insurance broker will need to know.
“From an insurance perspective, one of the first things we do is read the entire budget because when you read the entire budget, [it] will tell you everything that’s going on,” said Wallis, who added that she reads every line in the budget before discussing the proposed shooting schedule with the film’s key players and eventually, reading through the script, all of which help to determine whether the movie is a tear-jerker drama, if it will feature airplanes, drones, and watercrafts, and if the actors will be jumping off buildings. “When you read through the budget, you see what they’re proposing and that gives you a sense of what the exposure is,” she said.
With the #MeToo movement that was sparked after multiple allegations of harassment involving Harvey Weinstein came to light, budgets are changing in other ways.
“You are definitely seeing more money in the budgets [being put] into harassment training for everybody and the various unions, I know for a fact, that they’re on top of this, too,” said Wallis.
The work doesn’t end when filming is underway. If a freak hail storm or a wildfire in BC prevents the cast and crew from filming for the day, that time loss element becomes a big exposure, especially since a film’s daily budget can be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. For this and many other reasons, the broker has to be involved with the day-to-day work going on in front of and behind the camera.
“When something actually gets shooting, as the insurance broker, we get copies of daily call sheets, all the stunts have to be reviewed and approved and cleared by the insurance company, and the cast has to do their medicals or provide their Statement of Health forms, because you’re insuring the cast,” said Wallis. “You have to constantly be aware of these things.”
