To be fair, I've never hired any lighting or other film equipment in London before - so I don't have any other local media hiring agency with which to compare my experience with Circus Media to - so I don't know if it was pretty standard for London when it comes to film equipment hires or not....
That said, let's start with the good: The people at CMC were really really nice... very courteous.... willing to help... I would even say accommodating when it came to the days I needed to hire and the fact that the exact pieces I needed didn't exactly add up to their minimum daily hire charge (£80). As a whole, these are really kind and understanding people.
The not-so-good: Service was pretty slow - both with pick-up and return I believe I was there for *well* over an hour - practically two for the pick-up. I was told that the next time this wouldn't be the case since my details etc. are now entered into the system - but still, good for *you* know if it's your first time hiring from them - and it would have been good for *me* to know (i.e. they probably should have told me) so that I wouldn't have been running so entirely late on an already tight schedule. Also, even though I went through an itemized list of my equipment needs with them more than once, in the end, I ended up taking lighting with me that didn't exactly meet my specs since they'd apparently already hired out the one light that I *really* wanted.
C'est le vie... such is life with lo-fi indie film I guess... but if you use their services, I would *definitely* make sure that you have more than one in-writing confirmation sent to you indicating that they have and will have an itemized list of the equipment you need on the day of hire... might save you a bit of work and trouble! read more
