This past Friday, Saturday and Sunday my house in Montauk was rented for a Calvin Klein photo shoot and I have never seen so much equipment come into the house – I have a 2-car garage, which was completely filled with equipment and another room in the house was set up with computers and light boxes. A total of 42 people came, with food, music, make-up, trucks and tons of stuff. Thank God I had organized to stay with a friend over the weekend, leaving a caretaker at the house to watch over it.
It’s encouraging to think that people are still spending this type of money in this economy, which must mean that they feel that things are getting better else they wouldn’t be spending like this. Are you feeling a change?
P.S. I only returned to my house once it was all over and back to its serene self!
#1 by petra voegtle on July 14, 2009 - 6:28 pm
My world is a small one – living and working takes place in a 2 room flat with a balcony, a dear partner and a feral pigeon family of 6 on the very same balcony.
I don’t really want to be indiscreet but what makes someone open up a house, a private refuge to a wild horde of complete strangers with cameras and dirty shoes to trample on one’s carpets, to sit on the chairs, to touch all the things that are not meant to be touched by strangers?
Is it really worth to lose one’s privacy and intimacy for favor of publicity and boost of business?
I am just curious and apologize for my naivety. I just try to understand this world which is so very different from mine…
#2 by Shani on July 14, 2009 - 7:47 pm
I hope everything was left the way it was before they came! I’m sure that it was fun to watch and experience.
Down here in South Carolina we are a few months behind major areas, so we felt the slowdown after my friends in California and New York. While I don’t think things have picked back up yet, people seem quite confident that they will. A realtor friend of mine made the comment recently that sales are definitely starting to come out of the slump, so hopefully everything else will follow!
#3 by Anita Berlanga on July 15, 2009 - 11:18 am
Petra,
I won’t presume to answer for Vicente but I can speak to your query, having worked in the film biz for 25 years, prior to my current business.
Most people rent out their houses/property because they are proud of their spaces. Also, before the space is taken over by the film crew, anything of personal or irreplacability is (or should be) very carefully packed away. It’s usually the SPACE, rather than the things in the space, that they are interested in – crew people are carefully monitored and they stay in the space they are assigned to – nobody is going through closets or drawers or sleeping on your bed. Plus, most film crews are highly professional (and I’m sure Calvin Klein expects the highest professionalism from his people) – my film crews treated our rented homes with dispassionate care. After all, within 99% of all rental contracts of that nature there are hefty fees incurred for any damage. Plus, a crew member responsible for any willful or negligent damage is usually fired and not hired again in production. Nobody needs that headache.
So the stakes are actually HIGHER for the renters than the rentees!
One other thing – if they modify your home in a positive way, you usually get to keep the mods. And they leave your home cleaner than when they got there, especially if that is in the contract as well.
Film crews can come to my little shotgun shack anytime they like!
Hope this helps answer your question a little bit. I guess it boils down to what each person considers invasive!
#4 by Vicente on July 15, 2009 - 1:39 pm
Ditto! $$$$