He Moved From Hollywood to Convert a Small Town Ohio High School Into a Film Production Studio. Will Business Follow?

Thirty miles east of Cleveland, past the horse farms and cornfields off 422, is where Berkshire High School sits relatively quiet, save for the faint buzz of construction inside its gymnasium and the odd UPS driver parked out in front.

In the next five years, the scenery is fit to change. By the end of the decade, that red brick, century-old building on the fringe of Burton could be one of the most active film studios in Northeast Ohio.

That's the end goal of Det Chansamone, a 53-year-old producer and visual effects artist who paid $425,000 for the school last April, a month before its students relocated to a newer building up the road.

Calling it, appropriately, Schoolyard Studio, Chansamone and his team of three intend to remake the old Berkshire into a filmmaker's mecca, one complete with two standing sets, two sound stages, a recording studio, photography space, prop storage, catering kitchens and a dozen units of lodging for out-of-town crews. All while keeping its locker rooms, nineties-era chemistry texts and glimmering trophy cases somewhat as they were.

In other words, doing what one might build in Los Angeles for a fourth or fifth the cost.

"But the industry is here," Chansamone said, sitting in a meeting space in the old principal's office. "We have a certain amount right now, but we definitely need to build it up." With Schoolyard, "basically, we're going to help build that industry."

Chansamone was piqued with the prospect of owning his own studio, as to produce a children's TV series in the works, and he said he settled on the Burton school in part because Cleveland's growing film industry. Just in July, Ohio's legislature increased Ohio's flimsy $40 million cap on its film tax credit for out-of-state studios, which offers a rebate for 30 percent of their expenditures, to $50 million. By next July, it'll grow to $75 million.

As for how Schoolyard will work in tandem with those added tax incentives is unsure, but promising. In the past decade and a half, the time the state's had its Motion Picture Tax Credit, it's been a host to hundreds of projects, with 145 feature films setting up shop in Ohio — Noah Baumbach's White Noise and Shaka King's Judas and the Black Messiah being two of the most recent.

Though eight projects have been awarded tens of millions, including a Disney feature and an M. Night Shyamalan title called Trap, experts say the Ohio industry still lags behind many other states with more shining credit lures for producers and their phalanx of crews that follow them to movie sites, bringing precious investment dollars. For comparison, Indiana budgets up to $300 million in yearly incentives. Pennsylvania offers $100 million. And Georgia, the Hollywood of the South, has no limit at all.
"In three years, we've lost about $689 million in spending because of that cap," Bill Garvey, the head of the Greater Cleveland Film Commission, told Scene, suggesting that "two-thirds" of interested producers were turned away due to the lack of funding incentives. "Ultimately, we want to be a leader. This is about investing locally."

Garvey, who worked as a location scout for two decades before helming the Commission, said both Schoolyard's promise in its stage offerings and its location in "Small Town America" could dovetail nicely with the tax incentive's lure in the next few years.

"That's the exciting thing about Ohio—stories aren't just told in nice weather," Garvey said. "Weather is an advantage. Architecture is an advantage. And, I mean, studio stages are just another tool in that toolbox to attract production."

But before any grandiose change to the industry is made, Chansamone just wants to make art. And give smaller studios the space.

On a recent tour, Chansamone, and his newly-hired social media manager, Heather White, showed off Schoolyard's production room (Berkshire's old Computer Lab), its in-progress screening space (the band room), and an event space (the converted Discovery Lab), which will, one day, overlook an outdoor greenhouse a story below. Scattered around the cafeteria are hospital furniture items the team bought from auctions. Upstairs will be a courtroom.

Though Soundstage 01, with its dusty gymnasium floor and unfinished black paint job, is a long way from its full functionality, Schoolyard has been host to a few local productions—a way to fund at least a $12 million investment—which Chansamone refused to name. "We had a horror movie scene shot here this weekend," he said in the downstairs locker room. He nodded to a shower stall. "Yeah, we still have a bloodied mop. There was 'blood' to clean up."

Besides the hearts of local film elites, Schoolyard's move-in has won over its handful of locals, after some convincing. (Burton Village Council had to rezone the parcels to allow a movie studio to function.) Lori O'Neill, the real estate agent who helped sell Berkshire High to Chansamone, was so enthralled by Chansamone's vision that she later signed on as a manager. Her husband Bob enlisted as well, as creative director.

"What they wanted to do was something completely different and very exciting. But also, we knew enough about the film industry in Cleveland to know they could have an impact," O'Neill told Scene in the conference room. She made a slight jab to Berkshire's four other bidders. "And secondly, how interesting is manufacturing versus somebody [like Det] coming here. Right? To do something creative?"

And to have Netflix series or Sony Pictures films shot here, in this tiny village of 1,400?

"I'd just worry about the noise, you know," Jodi Morton, a nearby resident, told Scene sipping tea at the nearby Coffee Corners, a block down from Schoolyard. "Well, not just the noise. But is it gonna change the character of the town? Burton is a small town."

"Where is it again?" resident Victoria D'Ambrosia said, sitting next to Morton. When informed Schoolyard was a minute walk north, she added, "Oh, well. I haven't really heard much about it, to be honest."

It's likely townsfolk, all 1,400 of them, will know about Chansamone eventually: he and his wife and co-owner, Kiyomi, their 16-year-old son, Taizo, and his pug Ellie, are currently living in a converted apartment on Schoolyard's second floor. (The entire upstairs will on day be housing for cast and crew.) In other words, Chansamone is a Burtonite, and will be, most likely, indefinitely.

"Everybody's been amazing," O'Neill said.

"They're all coming by, shaking hands, saying, hello, how can we help?" White added.

"I think they see that gives the kids an opportunity," Chansamone said. "They all understand. 'Hey, my kids, when I ask them what they want to do, they want to be carpenter or, like, a landscaper.' And it's like, there's so much more to life, and you can go and do other things."

He added, "But I think people kind of see, like, 'Hey, why would a movie studio want to set up base here? And so it piques everybody's interest."

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