Georgia buildings peachy for Hollywood

Read reviews of movies opening today on myAJC.com/goguide and in today’s special movie section, B1.

On a hot and humid late afternoon in August, long before the November chill descended on metro Atlanta, dozens of young men and women, decked out in their best clubwear, chatted and waited to get into downtown’s hottest nightclub — The Georgia State Capitol.

No, that's not some kitschy new theme bar. It was the actual Gold Dome. Earlier in the day, a production crew had transformed the 125-year-old state building into a hot Miami nightclub, complete with a well-appointed bar in the Rotunda and oversized leather couches by the south stairwell.

The costuming of the seat of Georgia government was done for the benefit of “Ride Along 2,” the sequel to the popular buddy-cop comedy starring Ice Cube and Kevin Hart, and was one of almost 100 movies, television shows, commercials, music videos and other productions shot on a handful of state properties.

The movie industry's affinity for filming in the Peach State is due to a tax credit — one of the most generous in the nation — passed in 2005 and then juiced up in 2008 by the General Assembly. Lawmakers banked the tax credit of up to 30 percent of qualified spending would draw interest, but they likely could not have known how popular state-owned properties would become as locations.

Since 2008, the Georgia Building Authority has collected $1.6 million in rent and other fees from production companies for permission to roll camera at the Capitol, the old archives building or other state properties.

GBA spokesman Paul Melvin said the authority has not marketed state buildings as backdrops.

“It’s been word of mouth by way of the location managers,” he said.

The most popular state-owned location is the old State Archives building just a block away from the Capitol. The 49-year-old building has been vacant since 2003 when the state archive was moved to a new facility in Morrow. Since then the state has been trying to come up with the $5 million to demolish it, a fate which could bring a tear to the eyes of location managers.

Since 2009, the GBA has collected $851,000 in rent — more than half the state’s total take — from more than two dozen projects, including “The Blind Side,” “Kill the Messenger” and a Delta Airlines commercial that seemed to run every 30 seconds during Atlanta Braves broadcasts this past season.

“The archives building is so unique,” Melvin said. “The movie folks just love that building.”

Michael Jones, a location manager based in Atlanta who rented the old Archives this summer to film scenes for the Jeremy Renner thriller “Kill The Messenger” gave the building good reviews by way of a backhanded compliment: It’s “generic.”

“It’s an awesome building to shoot at,” he said. “We can show a period building without having to modify it.”

That’s important if you are trying to make Atlanta look like anyplace other than Atlanta. Melvin said the “sterile” nature of the building make the lower floors easy to transform into a hospital or police station or whatever, while the upper floors are attractive for projects that need a 1960s-style office building as a backdrop.

“Kill the Messenger” also shot scenes in the Capitol, but Jones said that building is a little more trouble.

“It’s a hard location to shoot at, because even when (the Legislature is) not in sessions, it’s still a lot of logistics going in and out of the Capitol,” he said.

In addition, Jones said the Capitol is crammed with a lot of Georgia-specific artwork that productions either have to shoot around or they have to hire a conservator to move and store them. When “Ride Along 2” built a bar in the rotunda, the production just used tarps to hide the busts of Button Gwinnett and the state’s other Founding Fathers.

The second most popular state-owned locale is almost the direct opposite of the sterile and generic old Archives. Pullman Yard, a derelict industrial site in the Kirkwood neighborhood, has earned nearly $250,000 since over the past five years just for being itself.

“We did a lot of work there,” said Ken Lavet, location manager for newly released “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1.”

Lavet said the location is prized for its “down and dirty” look. And it is popular because Atlanta does not have a lot of options for that particular look, he said.

Melvin said money raised from movie and television productions goes back into the GBA budget and is used to fund the upkeep of all state-owned properties. Both Lavet and Jones praised the state for being good partners with the film industry.

“They are not pushovers, but they understand what it takes to make a movie,” Lavet said.