Storage for Film and TV Production in LA: Sets, Props and Wrap-Outs

Production has a storage problem that no self-storage facility was designed for. The stuff is bulky, it arrives all at once, it has to be near the location, and the whole need lasts eleven weeks and then disappears.

That's roughly the shape of a portable container rental. Here's how productions around LA actually use them.

The Four Places a Container Shows Up on a Production

1. Set build and strike

Flats, platforms, and set dressing get built weeks before shooting and have nowhere to live in between. A container on the build lot means the shop floor stays clear. At strike, the reverse: everything that might get reused goes into a box that leaves when the lot does.

2. Props, set dressing, and picture vehicles' parts

Art department accumulates. A container parked at the stage or the practical location keeps the whole standing set of dressing in one lockable place instead of scattered across three trucks and a hallway.

3. Location swing space

Shooting in a real house or a real storefront means everything that lives there has to go somewhere for two weeks. A container in the driveway is the cleanest version of this: the homeowner's contents come out, get stored twenty feet away, and go back in on wrap day. Nobody's furniture takes a round trip to a warehouse in Sylmar.

4. Between projects

Grip and electric packages, camera support, standing set pieces, a costume house's off-season stock. When the work is intermittent, a month-to-month container at our Gardena facility costs a fraction of holding warehouse square footage year-round.

Why Ground Level Matters More Here Than Anywhere

Production gear moves on wheels. Road cases, carts, hampers, dollies. A self-storage unit means a loading dock, a corridor, and a freight elevator — three places for a cart to get stuck and three reasons a crew loses an hour.

A container sits on the ground. A cart rolls straight in. For a load-in that has to happen between wrap and call time, that difference is the whole thing.

Placement on Real LA Locations

The reason productions call us specifically is placement. Our containers are set with a remote-controlled rig — the truck can park on the street and walk the container the rest of the way in, inches at a time.

That means it goes places a flatbed can't reach: narrow driveways in Los Feliz, back alleys behind storefronts, tight industrial yards, the far corner of a lot where you actually want it rather than the first spot the truck could reach. We do this every day for homeowners with impossible driveways; a base camp is easy by comparison.

Locked, and Nobody Else Has a Key

You bring your own lock. We don't hold a copy, don't open it, don't inventory it. For rental gear you're carrying insurance on, and for anything under an NDA, that matters more than the price.

Sizes and What They Hold

• 5x8 — a props overflow, a costume rack or two, one department's kit. $99/mo at your location, $149/mo at our facility.
• 8x12 — set dressing for a single practical location, or a mid-size gear package. $199 / $269.
• 8x16 — the workhorse, and our most-rented size. A full set build, a grip package, or the entire contents of a house you're shooting in. $279 / $299, with 50% off the first month on this size.
• 8x20 — a large build, multi-department storage, or a full location swing. $299 / $379.

Delivery and pickup run $79 to $109 per trip. Month to month, no contracts, no early termination — which is the point when a show gets extended by two weeks or wraps early.

Two Things Worth Knowing Before You Book

Heat, and the way around it. A container sitting on a lot in August is an uninsulated steel box. Fine for lumber, grip, hardware, road cases, and dressing. Not fine for film stock, certain adhesives, wax, or practical effects materials with a temperature spec. The fix is simple: our Gardena warehouse bays are climate controlled, so anything temperature-sensitive lives with us between shoot days rather than on the lot. Plenty of shows run exactly that split.

Timing. We can usually deliver next day, and inside 24 hours when a schedule moves — which on a production it always does. Call the moment the date is soft, not once it's locked.

Camo, If You Want It

Ours come in camo. Some productions love that and some need a plain box in the background of a shot. Tell us which and we'll send the right one.

Let's Talk Schedule

Tell us the location, the dates, and roughly what's going in it. We'll tell you the size, the cost for the run, and whether it should live on your lot or at our Gardena warehouse between phases.

We deliver across Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and Ventura Counties. Call 310-515-9122 — a real person answers — or get a quote online.