Less than 60 days after Gov. Granholm signed into legislation a new, aggressive and far-reaching film production incentive program, Ahptic Film & Digital and The Gillespie Group held a press conference to announce the formation of City Center Studios. Pat Gillespie of The Gillespie Group and Matt Martyn, T. Dominic Cochran and Jon Berlinski of Ahptic shared their plans for the construction of a 71,000-square-foot studio and production facility on Cedar Street between Michigan Avenue and Saginaw Highway.

The facility will also include editing suites, a screening room and office space—in short, everything needed to take a major motion picture from its very beginning to its release. By bringing together the full-service production and post-production expertise of Ahptic, as well as their connections in the film industry, with the real estate development experience of The Gillespie Group, these two entities are partnering to bring new economic, employment and creative opportunities to mid-Michigan.

Ahptic Film & Digital, founded 11 years ago, offers production and post-production services, specializing in 35 mm, HD and 4K formats. Commercial clients include Audi, Toyota, Dow Corning, Two Men and a Truck®, VH1 and many others.  Recently, Ahptic produced Nelly Furtado’s video for her latest song Do It, which reached number one on MTV’s Total Request Live. Besides serving commercial clients, Ahptic has assisted on over 32 feature films, including Escanaba in Da Moonlight, Grosse Pointe Blank and Buffalo Skies. Matt Martyn, executive producer, T. Dominic Cochran, cinematographer, and Jon Berlinski, creative director, who met through their common ties to Lansing Community College and Michigan State University, came together to form Ahptic, a business based on their shared passion for filmmaking, considerable (and growing) creative and technical expertise and ambitions which may have seemed lofty 11 years ago but are being realized today.

Pat Gillespie founded The Gillespie Group in 1994 as a privately held real estate development and management company. Specializing in residential, commercial and mixed use developments, Gillespie has ownership in more than 15 residential communities and over 600,000 square feet of commercial/mixed use space. Downtown Lansing developments include Prudden Place Apartments and the newly built Stadium District and Townsend on the Park. Currently, Gillespie is pursuing plans for Marketplace, a mix of residential and retail space on the site of the Lansing City Market.

As soon as information about the new incentives package started circulating, the principals at Ahptic began  discussing the possibility of being the first to take advantage of the opportunities this legislation presented. While those talks were going on, Pat Gillespie was thinking along the same lines. When Gillespie contacted relevant officials in city and state government, he was told, “You might want to talk to Ahptic.”

Martyn said, “Pat had the real estate piece and we had the film industry contacts and the technical and creative piece. Together, we knew we could take our plans to the next level.”

Born and raised in Lansing, Gillespie said, “We are committed to the revitalization of Downtown Lansing. City Center Studios will bring film crews, actors and other production people to the community, and retailers, restaurants, hotels and other businesses will all benefit.”

In addition to that, as Cochran said, “We want to reverse the brain drain in the area. This venture will bring good, well-paying jobs to the region; we will be collaborating with both Michigan State University and Lansing Community College to train the specialized, highly skilled workforce that the industry demands.”

Berlinski added, “Initially, film companies will probably bring their own crews in to work on their picture, but as the local workforce is trained, the companies can save money by hiring local crews—and it will be a great opportunity for LCC- and MSU-trained professionals to be able to work here at home.”

“In fact,” said Martyn, “we’re already fielding calls from people with local ties who would love to return to the area—just this week, I’ve had three e-mails from film professionals working in L.A. who want to relocate to Lansing.”

Recently, Ahptic’s three partners made a trip to California to talk with film company executives. Martyn said, “Usually, you get bumped down the line when you make this kind of trip, but we found ourselves getting bumped up. And the studios kept bringing in more and more people to talk with us. We ended up talking with some very high-level executives at places like Warner Brothers, Paramount, Lionsgate, DreamWorks and Columbia. We discovered that interest is even higher than we expected!”

Berlinski added, “One studio exec. said to us, ‘We threw in 80 million dollars in Pennsylvania last year. I don’t see why we can’t do that in Michigan next year.’”

In addition, said Cochran, “We’re expecting a proposal from a studio that wants to start shooting here in the near future.”

“And it’s not only film studios who are interested,” said Martyn “We’ve also had inquiries from television studios who are considering locating production here. It would be great if there were a successful TV series based here in Lansing. There’s always the possibility that it could be here for years!

“It’s not just the plans for the soundstages and offices that are attractive to the movie studios. Lansing is like an Anytown, USA. Within a 10- or 20-minute drive, we have farms, woods, small towns, urban settings, a beautiful campus at MSU, the state Capitol—all kinds of places to feature in a movie.”

In addition to the variety of locations in and near the city, Lansing offers a symphony orchestra with recording studios for scoring, no location fees for state facilities and properties, Capital Region International Airport (also a major UPS hub), downtown and nearby restaurants and clubs, executive housing nearby along with many downtown lofts for long-term stays and a city and state government which welcomes new business ventures.

Besides Ahptic and The Gillespie Group, other collaborators in the project are the City of Lansing, Harvest Music + Sound Design, Studio (Intrigue) Architects and ACD.net.

Plans for the new facility include:

•          Two 24,000-square-foot stages, which can be combined for a 48,000-square-foot stage.

•          Full stage services, including lighting and grip, cameras, sound and video services, heavy equipment rentals, storage space, set construction, HVAC, security, stage managers, catering, wireless Internet, as well as other needs to be determined as plans progress.

•          Production offices with conference and meeting rooms, wardrobe rooms, freight elevators, phones, intercom system, copy services, mail drop, janitorial services, furniture rental, concierge services, a fitness facility and other amenities.

•          Post and screen facility with 7,000-square-foot total ADR (Automated Dialog Replacement, also called "looping,” which refers to the replacement of dialogue in post-production of a film or video), Foley and re-recording stages, color correction suites, a screening room with 4K projection on a 30-foot screen, full HD offline/online editorial facilities and graphic/animation suites with shared high-speed storage.

•          Data connectivity directly connected to a metropolitian FiberOptic Gigabit Ethernet, connected to a Tier 1 Data Center for storing production work and secure telephone/intercom service.

According to Gillespie, “We are working with an architect who has designed this kind of facility before; the preliminary design is done, and we’ll start building as soon as we get a solid commitment from a studio. Once we have that in place, construction should take nine or 10 months.

“Lansing is a center for government, education, the insurance industry—and now we have the opportunity to add another major piece to that. It’s exciting, and we’re looking forward to seeing what develops.”

Shakespeare said, “All the world’s a stage.” Who knew that someday that could include Lansing?