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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

EVERYTHING HAS BEEN STOLEN! put word out please.

Shawn Booth said:
Damn, sorry Lou - The insurance investigation can find out if it was an insider.

Damn.

And some think I'm overly paranoid taking the body to the hotel every night...
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No you're not paranoid. It should be in bed with you, under the linen, and the linen should be tucked in around the edges, always
 
Thank you everyone for the comments, concerns and help.
Right now little to no leads no progress nothing found.
Needless to say im in bad shape as it was my personal set up and now I loose work starting today not having it.

Insurance will kick in some day im sure but who knows when how or what.

Thanks everyone
my comments will be minimal to none but I read every single one as its such a strange situation.


If the day its ever found I will put up a post.
 
Lu,
Have you posted serial numbers of he accessories anywhere?
Have you contacted PERA (production equipment rental association)?
I assume the police are on it.
Andrew,
When you work on a stage, you walk away each night. You bag up the camera on the dolly and go home. The stage is locked, the producer alone has the key, and the building has a night guard.
Very common. Standard Operating Procedure. Lu has done nothing wrong or stupid or unusual there.
Lu,
Good luck. I (and I'm sure everyone here) will keep eyes and ears open.
Cheers,
Harry
 
Everything was packed up in a LOCKED small Technical directors room which had thick solid doors with double lock.
To brake into this room you have to break outside doors, and make your way threw the studio to get to this small TD room which was properly locked.
Absolutely everything was put away every night.

Thanks.
 
really sorry to hear that Big lu. I hate theives more than anything. Wish you luck and may justice be served.

Juan
 
Brad Webb said:
Looks to me like the crook that stole your gear may have tried to sell it these guys. Hopefully this means you get your stuff back soon, and in perfect shape.
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No. I think they will put him in touch with a special task force that deals exclusively with this sort of thing.
 
Lu this is terrible news. If I can help in anyway, let me know. Hopefully this clears up in a few weeks and you have a new setup.
 
I'm sure the police will ask these same questions and figure out who did it but from what has been described, the only way to get into this room is:

1: You have to get past the security detail.
2. And/Or you have to have a key to get into the room (was there forced entry)
3. You have to get past security with all of that gear, or find another way out of the building without anyone seeing you.

The list starts with who has a key to the room. Who would be allowed to come and go with securities approval. And if they walked out the front door (maybe they didn't) who would be able to do this without being questioned.

I know there are a lot of variables probably involved, but I have to say on the surface without knowing all of the facts, it does seem like an inside job.

I hope you are able to retrieve the gear or at the very least the people get caught and brought to justice. Somehow getting the insurance money doesn't seem like complete justice. Your trust in humanity is damaged more than insurance can compensate.
 
moral lesson: if you bring valuable stuff with you when travelling,, if it's portable enough,(moreso,if it's your tools in making a living), have it with you at all times.i guess only your firearm should be left in the car, unless you have a license to carry a weapon on you,,but that could be stolen too.
 
Luis,
My heart is out for you!
I had both of my 35mm cameras stolen in 2005: Moviecam Compact, Arriflex 35-3, full set of Cooke primes, 2 x Cooke zooms, O'Connor 2575 head, Technovision Gearhead, filters, all my light meters, etc..
26 cases in all, 1,100 lbs of gear, stolen from my camera truck.
Be VERY aware that the insurance company WILL try to screw you anyway they can! They will be your buddy for the 1st week then they will try to find any means to screw you & delay or depreciate your $$ worth of payment.
The more documentation you have the better. Receipts are a must, as well as getting some form of 'appraisal' of what the gear is worth..call your friends at any rental house to go over your list of stolen inventory and get $$ numbers INCLUDING sales tax and shipping costs.
I would immediatley call a very good lawyer.
I had to seriously threaten to sue my insurance company to get ANY activity at all.
They finally did pay, but it was after my wolf of a lawyer told them that they have been taking my insurance payments for years & cashing them under "good faith", and that they were not wishing to pay under "bad faith"..which is some huge legal term that actually broke the damn and caused them to pay.
FYI, not one single micron of any of my stuff was ever found. Nothing. I've called & contacted every major rental house in the world as well as the original manufacturers of all the camera items stolen to see if by some chance something would one day surface under a repair..nothing.
The police will really not do much, they seem to not care about cameras. They kept wanting me to check pawn shops!
Yeah, right!
Yours was an inside job and the bad guys know how to fence your stuff in such a way that you may never know who it was or where it went. More than likely it was out of the country before your next call time!
Best of luck to you..be prepared to fight the suits!
 
JEFF
Thank you thank you that was some of the most useful information i have received.

Thank you.

Calling a lawyer asap.
 
Did the production company sign a Rental agreement ? Is it the productions insurance or yours? Most rental contracts have statement to the effect of, "if it's broken, destroyed, or stolen, You pay me till it's payed for, replaced, or repaired".

Sorry for your loss,

Nick
 
Big Lu. Jeff is right. My place was broken into in 2002. They cleared out my showcases as well as some of my rental gear. SR3, shelves of lenses, superspeeds, 10 Arri S's, 35-3. I needed to hire a public adjuster. He helped me get my claim but not all and he charged a 10% fee. Not a good time at all. Also, my insurance had a subrogate insurance clause which basically means that my insurance company will go after all they think who is responsible like my building, my alarm company. What a pain in the a**
 
Arrinick brings up an excellent point.
Did the production company sign a rental agreement from you?
This would specify full replacement cost rather than depreciated cost, payment of deductible from the production company, and also a provision for lost rentals. However, lost rentals are usually a separate policy and you need to meet a separate deductible.
Best of luck.
Cheers,
Harry
 
Nick definitely has a point. Under what pretense was the gear left at the location? In most situations, unless you sign a waiver or agreement of some sort to spell out liability concerns, the location does carry a certain amount of liability. Where there security services on-site? Gate guards? Night watch?

As for Jeff's comments above, I've heard lots of stories like that over the years about insurance companies being a problem. I've experienced it a bit myself, but not to a level where I felt they were trying to screw me. After all they are a business too. It is often hard to deal with insurance providers when it comes to computers, electronics and less-common items that don't fit into their cookie-cutter depreciation schedules. The best you can hope for with insurance is that you find an agent that will go to bat for you with their underwriters and surety providers and who these providers will work with. Anyway, that's of little help now, I just hope you have good insurance people to work with. But definitely take all of Jeff's advice into consideration.

Receipts and documentation of what was paid for all your gear, pictures of your gear, etc.. Are all valuable tools if you have them. Try to be a part of every aspect of investigation into these matters as much as you can be. Stay on top your insurance company, your primary concern is getting your equipment replaced, just the way you had it. It's up to them to figure out the back-end and conduct investigations. After all, that's why you contracted an insurance company in the first place -- to quickly recover from an event like this so your livelihood isn't destroyed. Sometimes you may need to remind them of that.
 
A "dry hire" of equipment is when the gear is rented directly by the production company. At the point the company or a representative thereof takes possession of the gear until it is returned it is the responsibility of the production company. A "kit rental" is for the tools brought along by an individual or entity who is hired by the production company to perform a task. Depending on the local laws the gear within a kit rental may or not be considered the responsibility of the production company if such responsibility has not been contractually spelled out. You may need to check with a lawyer in your locality to find out. This is why my employment contract riders always had this spelled out, just in case.

BTW, if the law in your area states that the production company is responsible no matter what but you sign a contract stating that they are not, then the actual law wins. You can never be forced to "assign rights," even though many contracts are filled with such clauses. Just like a garage posting a sign saying they're not responsible for the stuff left in your car -- they are.

I'm not a lawyer but I've talked to a lot of 'em. Feel free to consult one yourself.
 
Curran Giddens said:
No. I think they will put him in touch with a special task force that deals exclusively with this sort of thing.
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I´ve been told by an associate that an int'l task force was assigned by FBI, Intepol due to the large number of pro video gear being stolen during last years in several countries. Hope they succeed.

Back to 2002 we’ve lost a full ENG DigiBeta setup, including a brand new DVW-700WS camcorder w/ 11X4.5 wide-angle lens, Sachtler 30, Lectronics wireless, Sennheiser 816 shotgun, AB bricks & charger, PVM-8045Q monitor and other smaller stuff.

My partner Pete left the car unatended for 5 min by a 7-Eleven store while went inside to grab a bite, during day light in downtown Toronto's St Clair Ave. Time enough for the craps to grab everything from the back seat.
A security camera across the street had it on tape. Two "fellas" driving a Honda Civic used a spark plug to smash his Passat’s window. Checking the Honda’s license police found the car was stolen. It was found a week later, no signs of our stuff.

That was a major loss for our, young at that time, company. The whole thing was only 2 months old and we had its leasing to pay w/o having it working to generate revenue for.
Insurance tryied to screw us as much as they could, we’ve got paid almost 6 months later, after spending big bucks on laywer and tons of phone calls.
I doubt we could get anything w/o the security video footage and the stolen Civic that was found later, we were two young partners and the adjuster even said to us “well, how can I be sure you guys haven’t paid two guys to get the job done. You would claim the loss, get the insurance money and sell the gear later to someone in the States...”. I had to hold myself not to punch his nose, and that would be a major issue for him as I’m 1.92m and 120Kg!

You’ll have my Viking eyes wide open in OT for you, BigLu, good luck getting your gear back.

Mark Olsen
 
facetmedia said:
Heck we will need geo tracking in RED one bodies soon. I wonder how many cameras have been stolen so far... about 10?
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Is that right?

If so, shouldn't there by a STICKY post somewhere on the site which lists all stolen Red bodies serial numbers?

Otherwise, how will we know if we are offered one of them or not?

Also, I believe the Red somehow encodes the serial number into all its footage. So can someone (or does it need to be Red themselves?) extract this info to check which camera footage was shot on?
 
Everytime someone gets his/her RED stolen, one of us asks for a sticky!

Come on moderators - let's get one running now please. I would suggest it's just posts with lists of equipment, serial numbers, contact details if stolen kit spotted, and links to original theft threads for further info as to circumstances of theft. NO discussion posts in the sticky to keep it easy to read.
 
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