Another possible movie set site: here’s a look showing how empty the spaces are before the moviemakers arrive at the OFS site in Norcross. Mike Reams gives details about the site.
By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
OCT. 13, 2023 | The one obvious aspect you get should you visit the OFS movie production facilities at I-85 and Jimmy Carter Boulevard is the open vastness of its studios. What was once Western Electric’s cable manufacturing plant today still turns out fiber optic cable, but with automation, the cable making aspect takes less room, freeing up other giant space for movie-making.
The production spaces are so very big-big-big-huge! But when you first see them, there’s nothing indicating that they can be a sound stage or set for movie making. It’s just open space, looking like a warehouse. Altogether, it is 160 acres of movie-making campus, just 20 minutes from downtown Atlanta. It offers over 300,000 square feet of space to the film industry, with 30 to 40 foot ceilings plus 11 acres of outdoor open space.
The major impact is the sheer size of the space. Several shootings can take place here at the same time.
- There’s the 80,000 square foot west stage.
- A 60,000 square foot two floor steel structure.
- A 50,000 square foot east stage.
- Three different outdoors areas for filming: two four-acre sites and another of three acres.
Skilled craftsmen can turn these vast spaces into anything they want, from a big city street, to a cozy bar, and recently on an outside location, into a peaceful river setting, completed with a tire hanging from an over-the-water tree, awaiting a drop into the “river.”
While the inside spaces are big, there’re the tremendous open grounds on the back side of the property. This area is lined with several 300 foot long walls of five deck-high cargo containers awaiting the blue or green screens to turn this giant container wall into a scene for the next movie.
The only indication that something unusual might be going on here in front of one row of cargo containers is a yet-to-be-finished set of a New York street, halted because of the recent strike. It’s merely a giant steel and wood facade of the front of buildings—halfway finished.
These spaces for movie sets began in 2012 after the OFS fiber-optic cable manufacturing plant was in the process of revamping after major changes in the industry. The plant, which once had 5,000 people working there 24/7, is now down to about 400 employees, reduced some because of automation, but also because of a worldwide drop in fiber demand.
Gwinnett County bought 104 acres of the OFS site property for $34.3 million in May of 2018 to enhance the possibility of films being shot here. A total of 70 productions have been produced at the OFS facility since the county assumed ownership. This includes music, commercials, feature film, episodic TV, single-day location, student films and production office space leases from production companies. The first movie shot here was Identity Theft in 2012, followed in 2013 by Fast and Furious Seven.
All this has helped attract other movie-makers to Gwinnett. Right up the street, Eagle Rock Studios at 470,000 square feet has the largest TV production studio facility in the U.S. under one roof. All this film work in Gwinnett provides employment for a wide array of skills, from carpenters, electricians, caterers, seamstresses, dry cleaners, equipment rental, et al. It’s become an entirely new industry for Georgia and Gwinnett County.
Mike Reams of Johns Creek oversees the movie-making aspect for OFS. A Duke mechanical engineer, he joined AT&T out of a master’s progra at Georgia Tech, and eventually slid into overseeing the movie-making aspect.
Betcha no one in Gwinnett even thought this cable plant would become a movie-making site!
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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