How to Get Your Car In a Movie, a TV Show or a Commercial

Have you ever watched a movie or TV show and wondered about the automobiles you see in street scenes? Those parked cars and the ones moving along streets and highways just didn't happen to be there when the cameras were rolling. They were hired as movie prop cars and each one of them earned their owner in the neighborhood of $300 for a day's work.

My father, my brother and I have had cars in movies, and you can too.

In some instances the vehicles are owned by the film production company, others are rented from a handful of rental sources that provide cars for films. But the vast majority of movie prop cars are owned by people just like you and me.

The fees paid to individuals whose cars are used on camera depends on the value and rarity of the car and how it will be used in a film. For instance, though $250-$300 is the going rate, a Mercedes Smart Car can rent for $500 a day since it's a relatively rare car not easy to find. Some expensive high performance cars will bring upwards of $900, or more, per day. But such studio calls for 'exotic' cars are few and far between, Eight out of 10 rental calls are for average looking cars, not exotic or classics.

'Daily driver' rental opportunities happen more frequently for movies or TV shows set in the present. You would usually be hard pressed to find any car more than five years old on current TV shows.

For 'period' pieces set in any decade in which vintage vehicles, from the early 'horseless carriages' to Muscle Cars are needed as props, the rental calls are less frequent, as fewer flicks of this type are made. But it happens.

One opportunity that immediately comes to mind and is the exception to the rule is the TV show Cold Case. Both daily drivers and classic cars can turn up any week. Though set in the present, the show's weekly plots depend upon flashbacks, often ten years or more, to portray the original crime. The 'flashback' scene cars most often used are almost always of the specific year of the crime or a year or two earlier at most. This current season they aired two different shows in which classics from the 1930s were in one, and more recent classics from the 1950s were in the other.