COURTESY OF LYTEHOUSE STUDIO16 WINTER 2019 MOVIEMAKER.COM
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BROOKLYN’S
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Lytehouse Studio offers
cutting-edge production facilities
without skyline-high Manhattan rates
BY RYAN COLEMAN
VEN BACK THEN cheap
apartments were hard to
find in Manhattan,” says
Peter MacNicol during his
opening monologue in
Sophie’s Choice. Shot exiting a dark train
station from below, MacNicol steps into a pool
of golden New York sunshine and continues,
“So began my voyage of discovery, in a place
as strange as Brooklyn.”
The Brooklyn of the 1940s, as it’s portrayed
in director Alan J. Pakula’s 1982 holocaust
epic, doesn’t differ that much from the Brook-
lyn of today, at least in appearance. The de-
cades of gentrification and hyper development
have introduced more glass and steel, but
the bones of the beloved borough’s working
class, industrial roots still provide the gritty
“authenticity” that continues to define it. The
bricks and stoops and trees and comparatively
large spaces have made the area irresistible
to hordes of young professionals who could
afford to buy into the storied authenticity
without facing many of the ugly realities that
come with “true” grit.
New York is the cradle of moviemaking, and
the state offers one of the most competitive
tax incentive programs in the country. Produc-
tions can earn back 40 percent of qualified
expenses and 45 percent on post—the highest
refundable rates in the country. Each borough
that makes up the state’s star city is stuffed
to the gills with art directors, sound stages,
equipment rental houses, trained talent, and
ready-made locations. But which borough is
the best for moviemakers?
“The short answer,” writer and moviemaker
Chris Osborn tells MovieMaker, “is that you
kind of can’t avoid Manhattan.”
Matthew Seig, a Media Specialist at
The New York Foundation for the Arts
agrees: “Images of Manhattan are instantly
recognizable all over the world and if that is
indispensable to your story, you have little
choice other than to shoot there.”
Hunter Arthur Moran, Creative Director at
Lytehouse Studio in Brooklyn, concurs. “Ev-
eryone wants to shoot in Manhattan. It’s like
this strange good old boys club where every-
one knows each other. They use these studios
because of the culture behind them regardless
of the price point, which is sometimes double
compared to what Brooklyn has to offer,”
Moran says. Lytehouse Studio represents the
best of what Brooklyn has to offer—premium
services in a state of the art facility at rates
Manhattan can’t match. At a year old, the
embrace of a newer studio like Lytehouse by
moviemakers on both sides of the bridge is
part of the shift taking place in NYC.
The very things that once made Manhattan
attractive now flag it for many as a prohibitive
place to shoot. “Everyone knows that
Manhattan is insanely expensive and full of
savvy businesses looking to extract the very
last penny from anyone, right down to the
lowest of low-budget independent filmmak-
ers,” says writer-director Michael M. Bilandic.
Manhattan’s resource-rich film community
proves for many to be inaccessible. But there’s
a “sense,” Bilandic added, “that Brooklyn can
be anything. If you can think of a scenario it’s
likely that you can find a place to match it in
Brooklyn. The range of neighborhoods and
facilities is seemingly endless.”
Brooklyn offers a solution to not only
Manhattan’s cultural challenges, but its logisti-
cal problems. In interview after interview,
moviemakers, programmers, and city stew-ards involved in film all brought up one thing:
Manhattan presents a logistical nightmare.
“You have to park these huge trucks on the
street outside and lug all this equipment up
four flights of stairs, whereas in Brooklyn, you
can just cross the street and load in directly to
the shooting site,” Moran explains.
Madeline’s Madeline writer-director
Josephine Decker chimes in: “The streets are
wider. The people are slightly more spread
out,” Decker says. “And if you need to get a
bunch of child pirates riding bicycles, this is
an easy place to do it. Especially in Red Hook.”
Brooklyn’s rangier landscape, more diverse
population and aesthetics, and mitigated tacti-
cal challenges (including a notoriously simpler
permitting system) seem to make it a better
choice for indie moviemakers.
Located in East Williamsburg, Lytehouse
is primed to enjoy the spoils of this cultural
shift from a Manhattan to a Brooklyn state of
mind. Founders Helene Safdie and Ira Levy
have built a full-service production agency for
photo, video, film, creative and art direction—
pre-and post-production—from the ground
up. They boast 4,000 square feet of unob-
structed space, 20-foot ceilings, direct drive-in
access on the ground floor with full turns, and
rooftop space looking off as far out as the
East Village and Queens.
Lytehouse is fully furnished to handle
e-commerce, brand content, and production
from strategizing creative design, hiring talent
and crew, and wrapping up post-production
through project handoff. The studio is
centrally located in the thick of what every
subject we interviewed referred to as, “where
all my film friends live.” New York is thriving,
Brooklyn is experiencing a sort of “golden
age,” and Lytehouse aims to be in the thick of
this scene for many years to come. MM“E
TOP OF THE LINE: A ROOFTOP VIEW OF
LYTEHOUSE STUDIO’S BROOKLYN HEADQUARTERS
LYTEHOUSE’S SPACE OFFERS A HAVEN FOR
MOVIEMAKERS TRADING LOW-BUDGET BLUES FOR
BROOKLYN CREWS