Rental Houses in the LA area?

[Jackson Miller]

Hello guys. I live about 40 mins - an hour east of LA. I have never actually dealt with renting any kind of gear... ever. So I don't know exactly how to approach this. First off, do you usually rent lighting gear from places that also rent out cameras, audio and grip stuff, or is it better to go to audio specialty stores? Should I just search lighting rentals in my area? How do I know if these are good places with nice prices and equipment? Are there any directory sites that have listings of rental houses that you can point me to? Or, it would be awesome if anyone could recommend lighting rental houses. Sorry for all of those questions haha. I would like to be able to call around. I assume that the best places are close to LA, which I can drive to, but it would be much more convenient to find a place closer to me (supposing they are a good place). So yeah. I am gonna call around and get prices.

How does the pricing usually work? Any student discounts? lol. I need a pretty basic setup I think, and stands and gels... and flags and barndoors etc. I just need some soft light and some hard light. Haha. I don't really know specifically what to ask for. I am shooting a 15 minute no/low budget film with a 5dmarkii, with day and night interiors and exteriors.

Any help, is appreciated. Thanks.

 

[dougspice]

LA411.

If you're going to be renting a bunch of stuff, I haven't found better than Cinelease in terms of price and capability. But I wouldn't go in there to rent just a light or two. If you're doing that, which you probably are, Wooden Nickel is probably your best bet. A few other recommends would be Birns & Sawyer and Rosenthal Group. If you're REALLY renting next to nothing, maybe EVS.

Almost all of these places will rent out lighting gear on a 2 or 3 day week, so it's pretty cheap.