Debra and Cody Chesneau are gearing up for the opening of Film Quality Studios, a film and media production studio opening up in Flowery Branch on Dec. 5.
For the mother and son duo, this opening has been more than a year in the making. Last April, the family sold their business, Fuel Quality Services, but was able to keep the physical building. Although she had worked in a totally different business since 1984, Debra felt ready to flex her creative muscles.
“Debra wanted to go and utilize that space to be for film and television, because that’s something that she was passionate about,” Cody said.
A little over a year later, the 12-acre site will be open at 4584 Cantrell Road in Flowery Branch this week. The site is also the location of Film Quality Services, a media and live-streaming company also in the Chesneau’s oeuvre – Debra runs Film Quality Studios while Cody runs Film Quality Services.
“We always went by FQS, so we’re keeping the FQS going,” Debra said.
Although Debra didn’t always work in production, she always had a hankering to be involved in something creative. When her daughter did theater in school, Debra could usually be found helping out behind the scenes.
“There’s a whole other show going on behind the show, if you’ve ever been behind the curtain in a theater,” Debra said. “I just loved doing all that, and that really got me the bug for wanting to continue doing something in that creative world.”
In the six months after the Chesneaus sold the family business, they talked to other studios and people within the production industry to figure out what clients were looking for from a studio. Cody – who has previously worked in content creation and the world of live-streaming – said that in his experience, most studio spaces that provide film services are set up specifically for film. Film Quality Studios, however, aims to provide support for not just film, but things like live broadcast as well.
Cody said the studio space can accommodate almost any type of live event or live broadcast, as well as film, photography, and more. Film Quality Studios aims to provide creatives a space where they can shoot, edit, and manage projects all from a single location, or function as a homebase for crews who are shooting on location in the surrounding area.
“I don’t see us making Marvel movies,” he said. “We’re not Electric Owl, we’re not Trilith. But that’s not really our intention of the space. I think our intention of the space is to be able to help the independent filmmakers in North Georgia and create a homebase.”
According to Film Quality Studios’ website, the entire site includes 4,000 square feet in Studio A and 2,500 square feet in Studio B. The site also includes resources such as green rooms, editing suites, hair and makeup areas, production offices, and more. Equipment rentals are available, and the site is also equipped with backup generators and internet redundancies.