Here’s (almost) everywhere ‘White Noise’ was filmed in Northeast Ohio

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Northeast Ohio is ready for its closeup once again.

“White Noise” opens at the Cedar Lee Theatre on Friday before premiering on Netflix on Dec. 30. Director Noah Baumbach (“Marriage Story”) and stars Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig filmed the movie last year in places like Cleveland, Cleveland Heights, Peninsula, Wellington and several local college campuses.

“‘White Noise’ is a great example of the hundreds of local jobs that are created in the motion picture industry in Ohio,” said Greater Cleveland Film Commission President Bill Garvey prior to the film’s local premiere on Monday.

• ‘White Noise’ review: Disaster movie filmed in Cleveland is an entertaining enigma

Indeed, the film, with a budget of over $100 million, was shot almost entirely in Northeast Ohio. Some of the local crew members spent as long as a year on the project including pre-production, filming and post-production.

Based on the acclaimed novel by Don DeLillo, “White Noise” is about a college professor named Jack Gladney (Driver) who, along with his wife Babbette (Gerwig) and their four children are forced to evacuate after a train vs. tanker trunk accident causes an airborne toxic event. Northeast Ohio steps in for the suburban college town of Blacksmith and its rust belt urban center Iron City during the 1980s.

“This was the first time I’ve relocated with everybody and we lived in another place,” Baumbach said in the film’s production notes. “We really got to know the section of Ohio we were in, which is closer to Cleveland. We shot all around the state. The Gladney house was in Oberlin. Wellington became Blacksmith. Downtown Cleveland was Iron City. Akron, Kent State – and then we’d find ourselves on a totally remote highway hours from anything else. All these locations further inspired the look and design.”

Baumbach, director of photography Lol Crawley and production designer Jess Goncho did an outstanding job of creating the “everytown” look they were going for. Much of the film was shot inside the former Walmart and other vacant space on Severance Circle in Cleveland Heights. So, you’ll need a keen eye to recognize any local landmarks, but it’s not impossible.

Here’s a list of the shooting locations we spotted:

• The Terminal Tower can be clearly seen twice in the film, in the background of the seedy Iron City motel where a pivotal scene takes place near the end of the film, and then during a driving scene on the way to a hospital.
• That seedy motel was constructed at the base of the Innerbelt Bridge in the Flats.
• The shuttered Target in Bedford was transformed into an A&P Supermarket for the film. The grocery store is portrayed as a beacon of hope in the movie and is the setting of an elaborate end-credits dance scene.
• Camp Daffodil, where the Gladneys end up after they’re evacuated the first time, is actually Camp Manatoc in Peninsula.
• The exteriors of the fictional College-on-the-Hill were shot at Andrews Osborne Academy in Willoughby.
• The thrilling lecture scene where Jack and a fellow professor, played by Don Cheadle, compare the upbringings of Hitler and Elvis, was filmed at the old Cleveland Play House at E. 85th & Euclid.
• A second-floor dining room at the Kent Student Center at Kent State University was turned into a perfectly ‘80s faculty cafeteria where Driver and Cheadle’s characters engage in deep conversations with fellow professors played by André Benjamin. Jodie Turner-Smith, Sam Gold and George Drakoulias.
• The chem lab where Smith’s neurochemist Winnie Richards analyzes the mysterious pills Babbette has become addicted to was shot at Baldwin Wallace University’s Wilker Hall.
• Driver’s character undergoes an MRI at the Autumn Harvest Research Facility, but Jane Addams Business Careers Center students and teachers may recognize it as their school.
• The actor’s classroom scenes were filmed at the University of Akron.