What production is actually renting
A key makeup artist shows up with thousands of dollars of product, brushes, and a set chair. A best boy electric brings a box of hand tools, meters, and spare parts. A coordinator runs the office from a personal laptop. Production could buy all of that, but it's cheaper and faster to rent it from the people who already own it and know how to use it. That payment is the kit or box rental.
The names come from the trades. "Box" started with the tool box a grip, electrician, or carpenter brought to the stage. "Kit" usually means supplies: makeup, hair products, a medic's bag. Plenty of shows use one word for both. What matters for the budget is that it's rent for property, not pay for work.
A 5-week shoot, department by department
Here are the rentals on a fictional 25-day feature with 5 shoot weeks. The amounts are examples; the real ones come from each deal memo and each inventory.
| Crew member | Type | Rate | Units | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Key makeup artist | Kit | $60 / day | 25 days | $1,500 |
| Makeup artist | Kit | $40 / day | 25 days | $1,000 |
| Key hair stylist | Kit | $50 / day | 25 days | $1,250 |
| Costume supervisor | Box (sewing and steaming) | $150 / week | 5 weeks | $750 |
| Prop master | Box | $250 / week | 6 weeks (1 prep) | $1,500 |
| Best boy electric | Box | $150 / week | 5 weeks | $750 |
| Best boy grip | Box | $150 / week | 5 weeks | $750 |
| Set medic | Kit | $30 / day | 25 days | $750 |
| Script supervisor | Computer rental | $75 / week | 5 weeks | $375 |
| Production coordinator | Computer rental | $75 / week | 8 weeks | $600 |
| Total | $9,225 |
Each line goes in its own department account (makeup kit in makeup and hair, the prop box in property, the coordinator's computer in production staff) rather than a single "kit rentals" line. That way the cost report shows the full cost of each department, and a department head can see their rentals next to their labor.
Notice the units. Makeup and hair kits are often daily because the kit is used up on shoot days; tool boxes are more often weekly. The prop master's box includes a prep week because props are being bought and built then. The coordinator's computer covers 8 weeks because the office opens before shooting and closes after.
Why it stays off payroll
Suppose all $9,225 were paid through payroll as wages. Using an example fringe load of 18% (employer Social Security and Medicare at 7.65% under IRS rules, plus unemployment tax, workers' comp, and the payroll company's fee), production would pay $9,225 x 0.18 = $1,660.50 in employer costs on money that isn't wages. On a union show, putting rental money in the wage line can also muddy the base used for benefit contributions.
Keeping the rental on a separate line from the rate does two more things. It keeps the rental out of any hourly rate someone later uses to work out overtime, and it gives accounting a clean record that the payment was rent backed by an inventory. See film budget fringes for what does belong in the fringe base.
How to write it in the deal memo
The crew deal memo should spell out five things: the amount, the unit (day or week), which days or weeks it covers, whether prep and wrap are included, and that it's subject to a signed inventory. For the prop master above:
Rate: $2,600 / week (5 days, 12 hours guaranteed per day)
Box rental: $250 / week, prep week and shoot weeks (6 weeks)
Payable through accounts payable against signed inventory
Loss/damage: Items on inventory covered per production policy
Without the weeks written in, the box rental gets paid for wrap week because nobody said it wasn't, and on a show with 15 rentals, those extra weeks add up. The crew deal memos post covers the rest of the memo.
The inventory is the paperwork that matters
Accounting will usually hold the first rental check until there's a signed inventory on file. A useful inventory lists each item, a serial number for anything that has one, and a replacement value. It does three jobs:
- It supports treating the payment as rent for equipment that actually exists.
- It's the basis for any loss or damage claim. A missing Kino ballast that isn't on the inventory is hard to reimburse.
- It tells the production's insurance broker what crew-owned equipment is on the show. If a single item is worth more than a few thousand dollars, ask the broker how it's covered before it goes on set.
Get a W-9 with the inventory. Rents are reported on Form 1099-MISC in box 1, and for payments made in 2026 the IRS instructions set the threshold for rents at $2,000 or more to a payee in the year. The coordinator in the table, at $600, would fall under that threshold; the prop master, at $1,500 for this show alone, would too, unless the same company pays them more on another project in the same year. Let the production accountant make the call.
Box rental or equipment rental?
A box rental works for tools and small gear. When a crew member owns a real package, like a sound mixer's recorder, wireless, and boom kit, or a DIT's cart and monitors, price it like any other rental: a separate equipment rental agreement with a weekly rate, insurance requirements, and often a purchase order. The difference is value and risk. A $150-a-week tool box goes on the deal memo; a $1,000-a-week sound package gets its own paperwork and sits in the equipment line of the sound account.
Setting a fair rate
There's no published scale for most kit and box rentals on non-union shows, so the number gets negotiated. Two checks keep it grounded. First, look at the inventory's replacement value against the weekly fee. A tool box with $3,000 of replacement value at $150 a week pays back its value in $3,000 / $150 = 20 weeks of work, which is a reasonable return for gear that wears out and gets lost. A $600-a-week fee on the same box pays it back in 5 weeks, and that's worth a conversation.
Second, separate what gets used up from what doesn't. A makeup kit loses product every day, which is one reason makeup kits are often priced daily. A meter and a set of wrenches don't get used up at all. If a department head asks for a higher rate because of consumables, offer a supply budget with receipts instead.
Mistakes that cost money
- Paying rentals for weeks the kit wasn't used, usually wrap week or days a second makeup artist wasn't on the call sheet.
- Letting consumables ride on the kit fee. Extra blood for a horror shoot, gels, tape, and batteries are purchases for the department's supply line or petty cash, not a reason to raise the kit rate mid-show.
- Budgeting the rate but not the rental. A makeup department budget that's missing $2,500 of kit fees is short before the first day.
- Treating a phone allowance as a kit rental. It isn't equipment the production uses, and it needs its own policy.
Getting rentals into the budget
When crew-owned gear is significant, list it as equipment with its own rate so it's budgeted apart from the person. In Storiara, the Equipment module has cost and rate fields for each item, and the budget uses those rates when it builds equipment lines. For a first estimate of what a department's crew rates and rentals might run, the crew rate lookup is a starting point, and the film budget template has rental rows under each department. The kit rental and box rental entries give shorter definitions for sharing with a department head.