It's pretty uncommon for a security company to be listed on Yelp, as they are a private business that is hired by film productions. So in terms of reviews, the only people actually purchasing services from the guard company should be the only one's leaving reviews. Of all the reviews I've read for this business, only one was from someone who actually retained the services of Cinema Security for their security protection services on a location film shoot.
I've been using Cinema Security for over 5 years, and as a location manager, I've found their service to be flawless. Other reviewers have often been people affected by filming, not people who have hired these guards. They complain about how the guards have put up No Parking signs or how they have been rude to area residents, but think for a second about the big picture, to understand why these people may have such biased, one-sided opinions of this guard company. Residents are annoyed as hell that a film production is in their neighborhood, taking up parking, etc., and they walk up to security because of the inconvenience, and all these negative emotions tend to spew out at the first security person they meet. Most guards are WONDERFUL at listening and empathizing with these angry, annoyed people, but sometimes it happens that the anger directed toward the guard hurts the guard.
You try to be calm and kind when you have angry neighbors yelling at you. This is the main thing all these guards deal with every single day. It's a tough job. Most of them respond very calmly and Kindly.
I won't claim to say that all their guards are perfect and always have been, because everyone has bad days. But what I will tell you is that these guards CARE more than any other company, about trying to make everyone happy. I've had guards come up to me over and over to tell me about the neighborhood and who we need to be sensitive to, and who we need to help, what problems we could mitigate to make everyone happier in the neighborhood. So all these negative reviews aren't really the whole picture, they're one tiny microcosm of the world of film security companies. They're the people who were really angry because of filming and decided to make a security guard company the scapegoat. It's lame.
I also saw someone mention something about No Parking signs and how the guard company was putting them up themselves. Here's a little insight into that process: LA DOT puts signs up 48-72 hours prior to filming. Angry neighbors or area people OFTEN ILLEGALLY REMOVE THESE SIGNS. So it is quite common to put signs back up after the neighbors illegally remove them. Just because they saw a guard putting signs back up does not mean it's illegal. It means that perhaps the neighborhood should not do as much filming for a while, if all the neighbors pull down the DOT signs as soon as they go up. It means the neighborhood maybe needs to talk to the one neighbor doing too much filming and Film LA about frequency issues, so that it can be managed in a better way than illegally taking down parking signs. Leave a and review for your neighbor as a film location, not the security company that has deal with the fallout from that neighbors actions.
Oh and one last note about their guards constantly getting high; in my five years I haven't had that experience once. I've done about 700 commercials and have had no issue with drug abuse from the guards on my sets. I hire about 8-10 guards every shoot, so that's a total of 7,000 guards in that five years without anyone abusing drugs on my sets.
This team has some of the most empathetic and caring people for the community I've ever worked with, and they help me do my job well. Highly recommend. read more