I just had a 14 and up to possibly a 20 week rental bid taken away from me. It was for a network show. I did give the production company an incredible deal on a 24' JJ rental but it was not ridiculous for such a long rental period. The production company did not want an operator or tech, and they were taking the JJ arm to South America. The deal was a go until about 5 days before the JJ was to leave. A late bid came in from another local LA JJ owner. They wanted me to beat his bid at $800 a week for the first 6 weeks then $500 a week after that. The bid also included 2 weeks of travel at half the current week. My jaw dropped, I could not believe this was a true bid. In good faith they faxed me over the quote. The owner operator who made this deal is very respected in the industry, and has preached to others about rental standards.

I try hard to maintain a high standard for the JJ. I believe it is a great product, but with so many people and production companies owning them it has made it very difficult to maintain a standard in pricing for rentals. I hope this one case does not start jib rental pricing in a backward spiral.

I am hurt by what happened, as any struggling JJ owner would be. I am not trying to hurt anyone by writing this, that is why I will not say who made the bid. This industry is too small to start bad vibes with people. I just hope we will all start holding to a standard price.

The only way to keep the productions paying a reasonable rate for rentals and operators is to not do stupid bids like this one. You would never see a steadicam being rented like that.