Rental or hire locked without specifying exact gear or personnel — breeds surprises on set. Always confirm model, condition, and experience level first.
Blind Booking
You book equipment or crew without knowing exactly what will arrive – that's blind booking. This classically happens under time or budget pressure: the producer urgently needs a camera for tomorrow, the next rental house has indicated availability, but the model, year of manufacture, and condition remain open. Or the UPM reserves an electrician because someone canceled – simply a name from a list, no references checked, no prior collaboration. Things get exciting on set.
The practice is treacherous. You receive an ARRI, expecting 35mm – a 16mm test version arrives. The lighting department brings a set designed entirely for studio work, but your shoot is predominantly on location. The editing assistant confirms they work with your editing system – on-site, it turns out they only know the software rudimentarily. Blind booking theoretically saves planning time but is guaranteed to cost time on set. The real price: improvisations, frustration among the crew, possibly lost hours reprioritizing setups.
Professionally, this only works with long-term rental partners or crew members you trust implicitly – because they deliver standard goods and you know their working methods inside out. Otherwise, you need specs: exact model designation, year of manufacture, what's included in the set, cable standard, software versions. For crew, you request references or a portfolio – or at least a preliminary conversation. Blind booking only works if you have a fallback plan – a local rental house as a backup or an experienced key grip on-site who can improvise if the equipment doesn't fit.
Practical advice: Blind booking is an emergency tool, not a strategy. If your budget is so tight that you book everything blindly, you need a larger buffer. If time is so tight that specifications are impossible, you have a planning problem. Real professionals – DoPs, key grips, sound designers – will quickly complain if they have to work with blind equipment. Your reputation suffers, and the next production will hire someone else.