Hollywood director Jeremy Garelick feels right at home here in the village.
In a Dec. 6 open letter to his new Liverpool neighbors, Jeremy explained the hustle and bustle hereabouts as 2017 came to a close.
“As I’m sure you’ve noticed, there has been a bit more activity at the Liverpool School of Cinema in the past couple months,” he wrote. “For those of you who don’t know, we’re a fledgling film school that has taken up roots in the old Zogg school building.”
Jeremy is converting the 89-year-old building into a trade school for aspiring movie-makers.
“We want to mentor students by producing several films here – three to five annually – to give students hands-on training, so they know what it’s like to work on a movie set,” he said.
The movies, he said, would each be budgeted between $6 million and $15 million.
Although the film school won’t become fully operational for several more months, Jeremy and his crews began filming what he called “a small movie” on Thanksgiving weekend in and around Syracuse, including exterior evening scenes shot at Heid’s of Liverpool.
Lights, camera, action!
Because making movies requires tons of equipment, several rental trucks were hired to haul the gear from location to location. The trucks which were leased for the duration of the shoot – from Nov. 26 to Dec. 20 – were parked overnight at Zogg for four weeks.
“Those trucks will not live at the school permanently,” Jeremy promised.
On Dec. 17, crews planned to film from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the Zogg building itself, at 800 Fourth St. at the corner of Hickory Street. To facilitate that shoot, the crew ran a towable generator in the Zogg parking lot throughout the day.
“It’s not overly noisy,” Jeremy noted. “We’ve been using it in residential neighborhoods all month with no complaints.”
The director, whose biggest hit was 2015’s “The Wedding Ringer” starring comedian Kevin Hart, said he hopes to begin working with students here as early as this spring. Three local colleges have reportedly committed to collaborate with the proposed trade school.
After the village planning board granted Jeremy a special-use permit on June 26 to allow the Liverpool School of Cinema to operate as a trade school, he apparently finalized his purchase of the 6.9-acre property, including the 97,287-square-foot former high-school building. In 2016, the listed price was $1,295,000.
Jeremy and his filmmaking partner, director Will Phelps, welcome comments from their neighbors here. Contact them at [email protected], or call (720) 339-8119.
Helping hands
On Friday, Dec. 8, sheriff’s deputies called on a couple of Liverpool police officers to provide extra manpower on a burglary-in-progress on Parker Avenue, just north of the village. Sgt. Jerry Unger and Officer Kevin Greenwood assisted the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Office on the case, and Greenwood assisted in the apprehension of a suspect who had fled through neighboring yards.
“This was another fine example of teamwork and interagency cooperation,” said LPD Chief Don Morris.
Back on Aug. 10, Unger and Greenwood had to draw their service weapons during a traffic stop on the 600 block of Oswego Street, an incident that ended with the arrest of four men on drug and firearms charges.
