MOVIES

Austin Studios spruces up, struts its stuff

Celebrating $6 million in renovations, Austin Studios throws a party and shows it's ready for the big time

By Chris Garcia
AMERICAN-STATESMAN FILM WRITER
Thursday, January 29, 2009

Austin Studios, the 20-acre filmmaking spread on the spot of the old Robert Mueller Airport, has just been endowed with a $6 million array of impressive and high-tech upgrades, from extensive soundproofing to a gigantic three-wall green screen, the largest in Texas.

All of the renovations have put its operators at the Austin Film Society, the nonprofit organization located on the sprawling studio grounds, in a giddy mood. Finally, after eight years building a sturdy track record of movie, video and gaming productions, Austin Studios boasts Hollywood-quality facilities for world-class artistry. They talk about this with a collective glint in their eye, abundant smiles, effusive superlatives.

"Clean bathrooms!" blurts Rebecca Campbell, executive director of the film society.

It's true: They are very excited about the new lavatories. Industrial air-conditioning systems, acres of insulation, motorized doors, state-of-the-art lighting, fire sprinklers, but it's the restrooms that animate Campbell and Catherine Parrington, director of studio operations. Maybe because bathrooms are so tangible, so earthbound. Who doesn't love a gleaming commode?

"Hey, it's a big deal," Parrington says with a laugh. "We have a restroom facility now. It's a facility!"

Campbell, Parrington and Robert Steinbomer, the lead architect of the renovations, are leading a guest on a tour of the upgrades, most of which are in Stages 3 and 5, former hangars for small aircraft. The other three hangars have not be upgraded and are used for on-site vendors, set construction, prop storage and low-budget film shoots.

Everything in Stages 3 and 5 looks shiny and new. Slick black acoustic padding checkers the freshly painted walls. The once-huge entrances have been narrowed considerably, and its doors now roll open and shut with the push of a button. Just above the doors jut large red lightbulbs, called wig-wags, which glow forbiddingly when a film is shooting inside.

The green screen, known as a "cyc wall" in the industry, is still white on this day, awaiting gallons of chroma key green paint, which will be applied and dried by Friday's coming-out party marking the studios' reopening. (The party, 'Make Watch Love Film,' happens from 6 to 8 p.m. at Austin Studios.)

"Let's look at the bathroom," Campbell says. "All you need to know about them is that they are legal and within code."

That and that they look spiffy, spotless, unbesmirched by human habit. The new bathrooms are indeed glorious.

Onward, to the humongous air-conditioning units that can pump 50 tons of cooling into Stages 3 and 5 with gusts and gusto.

Campbell and company knew from Day One, sometime in 2000, that the studios needed work. Spartan steel shells for lodging parked planes, the hangars were never actual "sound stages," meaning they were devoid of soundproofing and insulation, as well as lacking air-conditioning, which is unthinkable during a Texas summer.

So shooting a movie — which demands tyrannical environmental control — in the hangars was like recording a classical music concert in a tin can. Rain pattering on the steel roof made a cacophony, as did passing birds and planes or nearby construction.

"Everybody knew that they weren't perfect, yet there were people making films in similar environments," Steinbomer says. "But it's not good. People made a lot of films here and they put up with it. It was cheap and it enhanced the industry. But eventually there were much bigger productions that couldn't tolerate the sound problems."

"Miss Congeniality," "The Rookie," "Grindhouse" "Stop-Loss," "Friday Night Lights" and the remake of "Friday the 13th" (which opens Feb. 13) are but a few major features that used the studios, sinking millions of dollars into the local economy.

Last year, filmmaking at the studios translated into $100 million for Austin.

"It really caught on," Campbell says. "There was a lot of production here and it poured money into the economy. The city was thrilled and told us that they would like to make us a permanent fixture."

But business has waned, partly because other states, such as Louisiana and Michigan, offer irresistible tax incentives for film productions, and partly because the studios weren't up to snuff.

"Word got out that there are these great, big structures that you can shoot in, but once you get here the conditions aren't that great for filming," Parrington says.

Without air-conditioning, cast and crew sweltered miserably during the shooting of the A&E series "Rollergirls" one summer. And then came the big-budget Truman Capote biography "Infamous," which erected numerous sets in Stage 3. The old doors rattled when the wind blew. Birds flapped and tweeted inside.

"They were having a really tough time getting the takes they needed," Campbell recalls.

The filmmakers shut down production there and moved elsewhere.

Soon after, in November 2006, Austin voters approved a $31.5 million bond package for local arts groups. Austin Studios received $5 million of that for upgrades and another $1 million from Austin Energy and Austin Water Utility.

Before the windfall, the studios, which leases from the city in partnership with it, spent $1 million of its own cash to make improvements, such as spraying the hangar walls with Icynene foam insulation to dampen sound and building a screening room. Campbell says they kept a wish list of necessary upgrades that would cost $13 million.

They got almost half of that figure, and, like the hangars, these people look re-energized and ready for anything. Campbell calls the renovations a "quantum leap" from where they were just last summer. (During the tour, she points out the spruced-up production office in Stage 3. "You should have seen how nasty it was," she says, nose crinkled.)

"We've got the facilities now to keep productions in Texas and play with the big guys," Parrington adds. "We can compete with California to New York and everywhere in between."

Richard Linklater, founder of the Austin Film Society and the face of Texas independent film, beams with pride. This moment for the studios has been a long time coming, necessary and well-earned.

"We don't have to apologize anymore," Linklater says. "Before we had stages that had sound problems as if you were shooting on location. You could hear planes above and during the summer the metal sort of expanded and you'd hear these pop sounds about every 45 seconds — in the middle of a take, inevitably. Sound people weren't too thrilled.

"A sound stage is a sound stage, and they weren't sound stages. Now we can look someone in the eye and say they're sound stages. It's the real deal."

cgarcia@statesman.com; 445-3649