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Entertainment, Film & Media
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This industry changes every day. It is fast-paced, demanding, and highly specialized, and it is here that DeWitt Stern has made its mark. Our reputation among top businesses in the theatrical, film, television, and music industries is solid because we stand by our clients. They do business around the clock and around the world and need a broker who understands this and can get the job done for them.
No one in this business is punching a time clock and neither are we. Calls from our clients at two in the morning to act on a claim, or request a certificate or policy endorsement are never unexpected. We have the capability to dial into our network so certificates of insurance can be produced at any time. Our strong relationships with the top insurance markets in this field mean we can track down our clients’ underwriters 24/7 and quickly clear up coverage matters.
We work with our clients to simplify difficult processes, policies, proposals, and legal requirements. This allows them to focus on what they do best. DeWitt Stern has been setting the stage for businesses in entertainment, film, and media for years. Put our experience to work for you.
To learn more about our capabilities and specialized products and services, scroll down or select from the following links:
Entertainment, Film and Media
Film production insurance for TV or film is generally purchased as part of an entertainment package policy. But our clients are not just buying insurance. DeWitt Stern helps them risk-manage their productions. For feature films, we peruse the scripts well in advance of production in order to research stunts and document special hazards. We also review the production budget. If the script calls for an overhead shot, we need to: 1) clarify whether the overhead will be shot from a helicopter or a crane, and 2) make sure it’s spelled out in the budget. Films that are loaded with special effects need a great deal of special attention to avoid potentially ruinous budget overruns.
Our clients do not keep regular hours. We got a call from a location at 2 a.m. on a Sunday morning. There had unfortunately been a shooting on the set and the client wanted to know what to do. While the police and ambulance were in route, we guided our client through this unusual coverage scenario.
Clients like these do business all over the world and we have to be there for them. A prominent cruise line that just rolled out a major ad campaign around the premise of fun recently went to Philadelphia to film a commercial as a live event. Four tons of candy was hidden inside a pinata that resembled a parade-float donkey and stood about three stories tall. The police had told our client to let the spectators join the extras in scooping up the sweets. Rumors spread that people would be crushed under 8,000 pounds of candy. Police, wary from recent celebrations of the World Series, then announced there were too many people on the scene and shut down production.
Someone from DeWitt Stern was on the location. Asked by our client what to do now, she had him on the phone with a loss adjuster as his production was being shut down. To ensure that the production could regroup and re-shoot in two weeks, a large partial claim payment was made.
As demanding as this industry is, not one of our clients’ productions has been held up because of an insurance issue. They know we are doing far more than helping them buy insurance. [back to capabilities]
Music and Touring
Our music and touring clients, from baby bands to arena tour headliners, are usually represented by business management firms who turn to us as a trusted business partner. They aren't just hiring us to place insurance coverage either, but are relying on our knowledge of touring exposures from load in to load out and beyond.
Attention to detail, market knowledge, and responsiveness characterize our service delivery model. At any hour of the day, clients depend on us to verify certificates, insurance clauses, and contracts. Contracts can apply to dozens of services, from pyrotechnics, to huge video screens, to back line, to rigging, or even flying performers and equipment. If information is not complete or accurate, or if any contract is not air tight, we don’t rest until they are.
We remove standard exclusions that are often overlooked and provide broad and specific errors and omissions insurance coverage and employment practices liability insurance for celebrities and composers. Entertainers can be outspoken so we make sure our clients have appropriate celebrity errors and omissions coverage. DeWitt Stern works with top entertainment insurers to obtain blanket coverage whenever possible that can save thousands of dollars.
We provide our clients with a laminated checklist we call "Every Tour Every Time" that spells out what they need to provide our office with as well as what to do in the event of a claim. Click on the link "Tour Checklist" near the top of the page on the left to view it.
Any detail overlooked or lapse in coverage can end the tour and cost millions. Expertise like ours matters to our clients. Let us put it to work for you.[back to capabilities]
Special Events
A special event is essentially a one-time event in which insurance coverage is provided for the duration of the event, or, a short-term liability. The concert at Woodstock was considered a special event. Presidential inaugurals, museum launches, or corporate events such as an employee picnic, are others.
Contractual liability for special events can be enormous. Your company picnic is open to spouses and children, so it rents an inflatable bouncing room. Maybe some of the kids were too big or exuberant. But if the room rolled downhill, would your company’s Special Event Liability coverage pay the related costs?
Your company rents a booth at a trade show at the local convention center. While you’re putting your company’s best foot forward, a pregnant woman walking in front of the convention center knocks her head on a street sign. Can your company be sued for her misstep?
Special event insurance brokers at DeWitt Stern give sure answers to these and other nearly unimaginable coverage questions. We offer protection for concerts, festivals, parades, trade shows or conferences, and provide contract review and risk management services, and coverage quotes for weather insurance, property and casualty, and more.
In the world of special event insurance, experience matters. [back to capabilities]
Theater/Live Performance
DeWitt Stern placed insurance for Broadway productions like Hair, Cats, Jesus Christ Superstar, Amadeus, and Rent, among others, and continues to play a leading role as broker on The Great White Way as well as to Off-Broadway, regional theaters (LORT), and touring production companies.
Coverage can be prohibitively expensive for stars over 65 or have a history of missing curtains. While celebrated names on the marque can spur healthy box office sales, producers must be able to recoup production costs when the show can’t – or they won’t – go on. DeWitt Stern has developed cost-effective alternatives for scenarios like this such as accident-only coverage that can lower premiums.
We do much more than place insurance for our clients. For an international tour in China, we assessed our client’s production risks and made certain they understood what they were getting into. China tends to shut down their cities if there’s too much pollution, for example. We made sure appropriate coverage was in place.
This is a highly specialized area where off-the-shelf insurance solutions are ineffective. DeWitt Stern continually develops new ways to provide the broadest, most reasonably-priced coverage including D&O insurance for producers and Employment Practices Liability programs for theatrical productions. [back to capabilities]
Venues
We provide all insurance products for venues of all size, such as auditoriums, music halls, amphitheaters, stadiums, convention centers and performing arts theaters. An inexperienced broker will probably bring its client standard coverage on standard forms. These will not do the job for most of our venue clients. A well-known performing arts institution asked us to review their liability policy. The organization regularly brought in a circus but their policy inexplicably had an exclusion on circuses. We often take over such accounts from inexperienced brokers who are more focused on the transaction.
Because we know how venues operate and work to understand each risk, we offer special theatrical property forms that provide broader coverage. We remove standard exclusions such as one for throwing objects because musicians have been known to throw drumsticks, guitar picks, even guitars, into the audience at the end of a concert.
Our specialty is making sure our venue clients get the broadest coverage at the most affordable price. [back to capabilities]
Specialized Products and Services
Brokers are transactional. DeWitt Stern’s entertainment, film, and media brokers don’t just sell products, they perform for their clients. They put their experience and creativity to work for them before, during, and after the transaction. A prominent airline found a way of saving millions by selling the experience of first class flight to travel agents—who then sell it to their clients—without paying their airfare. Outfitting two trailers into perfect replicas of first class cabins, the airlines could shower travel agents with all the amenities of flying first class without actually taking them anywhere. We showed the airlines that it needed a hedge against customers choosing not to fly at all. Say, for example, an incident occurred and travelers took to the highways. Their investment in the trailers would be lost. The client relied on us to understand their unique circumstances and protect their financial interests.
Contingency Coverages
This is a broad category that encompasses Cancellation, Non-appearance, Abandonment, Prize indemnity, and Weather or Rain insurance coverages.
Cancellation - cancellation of event insurance, which may include non-appearance insurance coverage, is important for businesses, film companies, and managers, in case the show can’t go on. This coverage, while available for concerts, trade shows, exhibitions, fund raisers, and conventions, is hardly routine.
Non-appearance insurance may include cancellation insurance and is often called contingency coverage in the UK. It covers the loss of incurred expenses to mount the production/show or event or the loss of profit from tickets, merchandizing, and other sales due to the necessary postponement, interruption, or abandonment of the show for any cause beyond the control of the artist, performer, and/or producers-event organizers.
Abandonment insurance covers the capital costs of the event.
An example of prize indemnity is hole-in-one insurance to promote a golf outing.
Pay-per-view signal insurance We’ve also insured a premium cable company in the event of revenue losses associated with a pay-per-view event that lost its signal. [back to specialized products and services]
Entertainment Package Policies
Includes Cast Insurance (often referred to as Star Insurance); Negative Film and Videotape Insurance; Faulty Stock, Camera, and Processing Insurance; Props, Sets and Wardrobe Insurance; Miscellaneous Equipment Insurance; Third Party Property Damage Liability; and Extra Expense Insurance.
Special Production Coverage
Animal Mortality/Extra Expense; Non-owned Aircraft Liability; Non-owned Watercraft Liability; Railroad Protective Liability; Money and Securities Crime Package; Adverse Weather Extra Expense; Foreign Commercial General Liability; Foreign Workers’ Compensation; Kidnap, Ransom, and Extortion; War Risk (in transit only); Political Risk Coverage, Confiscation, Expropriation, Nationalization, and Deprivation
Other Required Production Coverage
Can include Errors and Omissions - Producers’/Distributors’ Liability; Workers’ Compensation; Comprehensive General Liability and Business Auto Policies; and Guild/Union Travel Accident Insurance.
Wrap-up Coverage
Our wrap-up clients are ad agencies or record companies who can help themselves or their clients realize significant savings by participating in a program DeWitt Stern sets up to insure all their productions. These programs, made up of all requisite insurance coverages, are far more efficient and cost effective than traditional coverage. Ad agencies and record companies have realized substantial savings by participating in our wrap-up programs. [back to specialized products and services]
For more information, please contact:
| New York Team | Glendale Team |
| Robin Dutt | Jennifer Bond |
| Assistant Account Executive | Assistant Vice President |
| 212-297-1437 | 818-623-5435 |
| rdutt@dewittstern.com | cbond@dewittstern.com |
| Casey Grabowski | Christina Born |
| Assistant Account Executive | Vice President |
| 212-297-1450 | 818-623-5434 |
| cgrabowski@dewittstern.com | cborn@dewittstern.com |
| Rona Katz | Scott T. Brady |
| Assistant Vice President | Managing Director |
| 212-297-1466 | 818-623-5404 |
| rkatz@dewittstern.com | sbrady@dewittstern.com |
| Peter A. Marshall | Kathie Davis |
| Senior Vice President | Account Manager |
| 212-338-4320 | 818-623-5433 |
| pmarshall@dewittstern.com | kdavis@dewittstern.com |
| A. LeConte Moore | Richard Eisenberg |
| Managing Director | Senior Vice President |
| 212-297-1486 | 917-693-0022 |
| cmoore@dewittstern.com | reisenberg@dewittstern.com |
| Stacie O'Beirne | Sabina Fischer |
| Vice President | Senior Account Executive |
| 212-297-1427 | 818-623-5426 |
| sobeirne@dewittstern.com | sfischer@dewittstern.com |
| Yasmine Ramos | DeMille Halliburton |
| Assistant Vice President | Vice President |
| 212-297-1431 | 818-623-5405 |
| yramos@dewittstern.com | dhalliburton@dewittstern.com |
