RANTOUL — Flyover Film Studios is named for the unique location of its soundstage: the former Chanute Air Force base in the Village of Rantoul. The space is a huge half-barrel hangar with over six acres under its roof, about four stories high.
What used to hold massive aircraft is now filled with movie sets, including a police station, a grandmother’s living room and a prison cafeteria.
Jen Shelby, president and co-founder, said she and the other founders had been producing films together for years and came to the Rantoul hangar in 2022 to shoot a film on the old base.
The five founders, who also own the production companies Shatterglass Studios and The Line Film Company, came together to create their own studio.
“Just in our poking around and seeing how much empty space there was, we approached the Village and said, ‘This hangar would be a great place to put a soundstage,’” Shelby said.
Flyover Film Studios, which launched in late 2022, has already been recognized by state leaders for bringing notable economic growth to Illinois.
In January, Gov. JB Pritzker and representatives from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO) visited Flyover Film Studios to celebrate the growth of the film industry in central Illinois.
They noted that in 2025 alone, the film industry generated $12.3 million in economic activity in the Champaign County region.
“Because of trailblazers like Flyover Film Studios, our state is a premier destination for film production,” Pritzker said in a statement.
Flyover Studios was also recognized as Rantoul Area Chamber of Commerce 2025 Business of the Year.
The studio was recognized for its “small-town revitalization that defines Rantoul’s ongoing growth” and for “helping put Rantoul on the map as a place where art, technology, and business come together,” according to a spokesperson for the organization, in an emailed statement.
The many logistics of filmmaking
Many people don’t realize that filmmaking is largely logistical, Shelby said.
Flyover Studio aims to be a one-stop shop for filmmakers, she said, to help them manage those variables. She said the studio keeps large stores of equipment in-house, allowing for more cost-effective productions.
“Shooting for a movie like ‘Moses the Black,’ we shot in 23 days,” she said. “We actually wrapped out a couple days early, which is almost unheard of in the industry.”
Vijay M. Rajan is a filmmaker who moved to the area from California several years ago. His latest film was shot with Flyover Studios, which gave him more value per cost than he could have gotten anywhere else.
“When I first told my investors that I wanted to film in central Illinois, their reaction was, ‘What? We’re going to have to fly in and that’s just going to add to the budget.’ And I said, ‘No, I really believe I could do it for less here.’” He said, “And then when they got out here, they were thrilled.”
Shelby said a lot of the studio’s success can be attributed to the props and wardrobe they’re able to recycle and store. She said productions in big cities often create a lot of waste.
“We have about 70,000 pieces of wardrobe. Just thousands of things and set walls and substitution flooring and windows and the list is pretty endless,” she said.
She said Flyover also has a lot of sets filmmakers can use, and if they’re looking for additional places to film,central Illinois offers a variety of locations.
Mark Brown, director of event service and film at the tourism group Experience C-U, helps catalog those filming locations. He said their list has grown in recent years, with the addition of places like churches, barnhouses, siloes and even jail cells.
“We even have the old Ford County Jail up in Paxton, which they could do a jail scene from 1940 in there,” he said.
Brown said while some property owners may be unsure about lending their space for a film, many find it to be a fruitful experience in the end. He said one such case was Saint Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Church in Urbana.
“The church was definitely hesitant at first, but once they were kind of enlightened as to what that what the scene was going to entail, they were all for it,” Brown said, “I reached out and said, ‘Did you feel like it went well?’ They said it went very well and they agreed to be part of our location database permanently for future productions.”
Cultivating local talent and crew in central Illinois
Flyover Studio’s success can also be attributed to staying local, Shelby said. One way the studio does this is by tapping into local talent for visual art.
“We need local artists that we can call on to put their work in a film. Anything you see in a movie, they’ve had to sign a release to use it,” Shelby said, “So why not have original art, and pay local community people to supply that art?”
Rajan said local talent is also essential when it comes to the film crew. He said he was delightfully surprised by the skill and enthusiasm he found among his colleagues in the C-U area.
“I remember the tech boom before these big Silicon Valley giants were giants, and everyone was working out of their garage.” He said, “And Champaign, weirdly, has that kind of feeling to me. Everyone is very entrepreneurial. It also has it without that predatory Silicon Valley feeling.”
Shelby said though the local film industry has been growing rapidly, she wants to see talent and crew here flourish even more.
“We’ve really gotta build up the crew in this area so that if we get a huge movie or TV show that comes to town, we’ve got the workforce here to handle it,” she said.
In the past, she said her production company Shatterglass Studios has secured grants to train film students from Parkland College and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Now, she said Flyover is working toward more educational outreach, for both film students and local filmmakers.
“We’ve done what we call ‘Four by Fours,’which is sort of a speed dating [workshop] for a filmmaker,” she said.
The events offer four different classes, a half hour each.
“So it might be wardrobe, hair and makeup, casting and camera,” she said.
Shelby said she wants folks to be able to find their niche – and the studio welcomes people from a variety of backgrounds and skill levels.
Flyover Studios hosts free community education events to help people learn about workshops and opportunities for casting, wardrobe, cinematography and more.
Workshops are open to community members without prior experience; some are free and others are ticketed events.
The studio’s next workshop is a camera intensive at the Rantoul Business Center from March 13 to 15.