Nobody tells you about this part.

Every producer learns it the hard way, usually on a morning when a rental house will not release the package or a distributor has just said yes. Here are two of the people we are building Mula for.

A producer in a director’s chair with a script in her lap
Producer, line producing her own featureDani Reyes

Dani found out what E&O was the week a distributor said yes.

Second feature, $1.2M. Producing it and line producing it, because the budget cannot afford both.

Eleven months after wrap, the yes came, and the list came the same afternoon: E&O insurance at one million per claim and three million total, a title report and an opinion, a copyright report, script clearance, the chain of title, a cue sheet, a QC report. Thirty days. She called the broker a friend recommended and heard “call one month prior,” which would have been useful advice eleven months ago.

Two of her twelve songs turned out to be cleared for festivals only. The agreement with her composer never said who owned the score, the one line every one of those contracts is supposed to have. One in the morning, a tab open that says “what is E&O insurance,” and what kept her up was not really the money. She raised it from people who trust her, and the film might die over a folder of PDFs.

Two crew members over a camera rig on an outdoor set
Two-person production companyMarcus Bell

Marcus lost a Thursday to one word on a certificate.

Music videos and branded work, two or three shoots a month, out of an apartment in Koreatown. He issues every certificate himself because there is nobody else to do it.

Thursday, seven in the morning. Twelve people on the sidewalk outside a warehouse in Boyle Heights, a picture car idling, a drone operator checking his batteries, and a property manager standing at the gate reading a PDF on his phone. The certificate says “blanket additional insured.” The lease says “scheduled.”

The manager does not open the gate, because the difference between those two words is the difference between his boss being covered and not, and he has been told which one to look for. Marcus’s broker opens at nine. The label’s rep is watching all of this from her car. The reshoot day, which he never quoted, costs six thousand dollars.

I can’t stand watching someone lose the film they made over paperwork nobody explained to them.

The rental house, the location, the city, the distributor each want their own piece of paper, each with its own wording and its own clock, and the last one, the distributor, asks for things you needed on the first day of prep. A licensed broker can issue the certificate the day you ask, with the words the location asked for. Software can keep the file, the record of everything you sign, as you go, so the list is mostly done before it arrives. And you should know what all of it costs before you sign anything, which is the whole company in one sentence.

Christian Jackson, founder

What Mula will do.

The certificate is already there

The certificate is in the property manager’s inbox before anyone thinks to ask.

Nothing surprises you

The all-in cost is on the screen before you sign a location agreement.

One number, up front

One fixed package priced by your budget, next to what six vendors would have charged.

A licensed broker behind it

Every certificate carries a licensed broker’s name. Wrong wording is fixed within the hour, on us.

If either of these is your week, get on the list, and you go first when we open in Los Angeles.

Get on the list