Computer Rental

Our radio museum does prop rentals for movies. I heard there was a minor problem with one of them, but, TMK, for the better part the experiences have been pretty good. The more serious production companies tend to be professional about it. Even though a given movie is typically a company only existent for the production, the production people have an interest in maintaining their and their industry's reputation, at least if you're in a region where the industry has some presence. I just finished involvement in a teletype rental for a Tim Burton production (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1126590/). In this case it wasn't just a static display, they wanted a functioning teletype (newswire feed), which meant I had to be on set to operate it. Demanding as the schedule changes by the minute, and somewhat stressful as you are expected to be well-prepared, as a screwup means dozens of people and hundreds-of-thousands of dollars of production equipment will be waiting around on you. For an active involvement like this, it comes down to: - a month of preparation (getting a model 28 teletype going; my responsibility if I wanted to do it) and consultation, - a day and half on set, most of which is being paid to wait around and stay out of the way, - 20 minutes of involvement in actual filming activity, - all of which can be anticipated to result in about 15 seconds of screen-time in the movie. I thought of trying to wangle a line in the credits for the sake of the anachronism of a line that says "Teletype operator ...", but didn't ask.