Behind The Scenes

Movie and TV crews frequently choose Gwinnett County as a filming site. Here are some of the big-name productions that put Gwinnett in a starring role.

OFS Has the Blues

Norcross’s OFS Optics—for decades a manufacturer of optical fiber and cable— began expanding into film production in the early 2010s when it introduced Baby Blue. The outdoor multimedia production site consists of 150 shipping containers that provide an enormous backdrop for blue screen (sometimes called green screen) visual effects. Baby Blue was originally built for Furious 7, the seventh entry in the Fast & Furious franchise, and proved that OFS could take on major Hollywood productions. The site provided the digital backdrop for spectacular sequences involving parachuting cars and the late actor Paul Walker running up the back of a bus teetering on the edge of a cliff.

Baby Blue’s success inspired OFS to scale up by adding Big Blue, an outdoor location backed by 350 shipping containers for even larger-scale scenes in blockbusters like The Hunger Games: Mockingjay –Part 2 and entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

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Wakanda’s High-Water Mark

OFS’s Big Blue served as the location for one of Black Panther ’s most memorable scenes: the duels on the waterfall cliffs overlooking the mythical kingdom of Wakanda. The 2022 sequel, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever , used both Big Blue and Baby Blue for a sequence that involved even more water, as Namor, hostile prince of an undersea kingdom, flooded Wakanda’s capital city. Reams says that production used two 300,000-gallon tanks, which had gates that allowed water to be released gradually. Baby Blue housed a village set with watertight retaining walls hidden in the buildings, and Big Blue turned into an elevated riverbank when production excavated a pool about 10 feet deep so performers and vehicles could emerge from underwater. “At the end, they filled in the pool and repaved it, so apart from a newer patch of concrete, you’d never know it was there,” Reams says.

Is There a Doctor on the Lot?

While most productions leave no trace behind after filming, the 2022 Amazon Prime superhero movie Samaritan, starring Sylvester Stallone, left an unexpected legacy at OFS. Samaritan built a hospital set on the OFS lot but made an agreement with the studio to leave it standing. “Because it saved them money not to tear it down when they were done, they left it in place,” says OFS studio manager Mike Reams. “Since then, we’ve had three to four shows shoot there, plus music videos.”

Reams says that having standing sets that resemble hospitals or police precincts can attract lower-budget productions. “Shows without as big a budget can’t go build a hospital, but they can utilize a space that’s preexisting,” Reams explains.

Make a Wish in Loganville

In Tom Hanks’ 1988 comedy Big, the fortune-telling Zoltar machine grants a boy his wish to transform into an adult. Apple TV+’s new series The Big Door Prize depicts a similar machine that changes destinies in a small town. The production, briefly known as “Zoltar,” has transformed the heart of downtown Loganville into the fictional town of Deerfield.

According to Robbie Schwartz, media relations specialist for the City of Loganville, the production involved adding murals, painting approximately one city block, and staging a street festival. “They put a deer statue on our Town Green and built a shell of a building on one of our vacant lots to serve as an ice cream parlor,” Schwartz says. Season one of The Big Door Prize stars Chris O’Dowd and debuted on Apple TV+ this spring; filming for season two is now underway.