Atlanta's Electric Owl Studios gives sustainable film production new wings

Having successfully worked together on Doraville’s Third Rail Studios, Dan Rosenfelt and Michael Hahn recently joined forces again. They have co-founded the new Electric Owl Studios, set to open June 8, and are touting it as the greenest studio on Earth.

Located in Dekalb County across the street from the Indian Creek MARTA station, the 312,000-square-foot production facility will boast six sound stages – – four 20,000-foot stages and two 30,000-foot stages. The studio can host one major movie at a time for production or two large television shows. It will be the first studio in Atlanta that is LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified.

With their history of working in the area, Atlanta was an easy pick for the studio. Both men agree that current tax incentives drive television and film production to the state of Georgia. Yet the attraction is more than that. “There’s a diversity of people and a diversity of locations to film in,” says Rosenfelt. “In a quick amount of time, a production can base themselves wherever they want to in Georgia but have a major city environment or a rural environment, water, etc. in a very small footprint.”

According to Hahn, only six filming locations in the world have those ideal elements in terms of crew, infrastructure and the ease of access — New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Vancouver, London and Georgia. “Of all those locations with the infrastructure and crew that is needed to produce a movie, Georgia is the most affordable place,” says Hahn. “It’s at the top of everybody’s list, and that is continuing.”

When Rosenfelt and Hahn started to think of their next studio after they sold Third Rail to Gray Television in 2021, they wanted to see what was lacking in the marketplace around the world. After all, a well-built sound stage is — essentially — very similar to any other. “It’s a quiet, sound-proof box,” says Rosenfelt. “We wanted to elevate the concept. We think of it in terms of it being a boutique hotel for movies and TV shows, [offering] short-term stays with our customer service, making sure [clients] are comfortable and happy in our spaces. The work can be done efficiently without hassle and extra cost. That is the most important thing. We wanted to create that type of environment for them, and we noticed a gap in the marketplace in sustainability at production studios. We looked around everywhere and could not find a studio that has built into its DNA environmentalism and sustainability.”

The studio’s amenities include solar panels that will offset a large portion of the electrical use, LED lights, water filters in every production office and water bottle refills in every building so big plastic water coolers aren’t needed. The studio will also employ a food dehydrator, so catered or craft services meals that may normally be tossed can now be dehydrated and turned into mulch to re-use for local landscaping. Other perks include 48 EV charging stations, living walls, high efficiency HVAC, carbon-negative concrete and solar golf carts.

The June 8 opening will feature an official ribbon-cutting ceremony and an open house with local government leaders, partners, vendors and press. An evening cocktail event will take place with members of the film industry. “We want to showcase all the people that contributed to this project coming to fruition, our Georgia companies,” Hahn says. “We feel that’s important.”

Electric Own has four or five projects circling in the sky, “ready to land soon,” he says, adding that studios tend to make last-second decisions as they budget schedules, cast and crew. Between Hahn and Rosenfelt, their clients have included Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, NBCU, Paramount, Sony, Lionsgate, Netflix, Apple and Amazon.

For Hahn, who is from Atlanta, this is his third film and television studio development project, starting in 2013. His company, Capstone South Properties, is the developer of Electric Owl Studios. Rosenfelt moved to Atlanta in 2016 to work with Hahn on Third Rail.

The two expect to open an 18-acre Electric Owl Studios New York office in 2025. Their goal is to be a leader for others to follow. “Other studios have done things here and there,” says Rosenfelt. “Our hope over a little bit of time is that we can be a leader in the sustainability space and help guide others to do this work. We have no desire to be the only ones like this. We want everyone to copy us and to make a difference in the industry.”

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Jim Farmer covers theater and film for ArtsATL. A graduate of the University of Georgia, he has written about the arts for 30-plus years. Jim is the festival director of Out on Film, Atlanta’s LGBTQ film festival. He lives in Avondale Estates with his husband, Craig, and dog, Douglas.

Atlantaatlanta filmCapstone South PropertiesDan RosenfeltDNA environmentalismElectric owl studiosfilm productiongreen studioLEDLEED certifiedMichael HahnThird Rail