If you drove past the Neufeld Garage in Randolph last week it may have looked more like a diner from the 60’s than a place to get your car fixed.

One of the building’s owners, Garry Neufeld, says the popular event venue was being used by Amazon Prime for a series they were filming.

“Manitoba seems to be the hotbed of movies these days,” laughs Neufeld who says earlier this month, a tour bus full of directors and producers showed up on his property and began discussing their vision for the film.

Over the course of this past week, that vision began coming to life. However, before any filming could be done, the space needed a retro facelift. Neufeld indicates that his garage was outfitted with new lights, paint, and windows specifically made for cameras to shoot through.

“We have a new design scheme now,” comments Neufeld, “for our patrons, things will look a little bit different.”

In fact, Neufeld says his facilities were so transformed that it caused a bit of a hiccup for a local event they were hosting over the weekend.

“They changed all of our signage to say ‘Amwell Diner’ and people were driving by looking for Neufeld Garage, but there was no Neufeld Garage.”

The Neufeld Garage's regular branding was covered for a few days last week (Photo credit: Garry Neufeld).

On the day of the shoot, Neufeld says he was surprised by the mass amounts of people and supplies surrounding his property.

“We had about 150 people on site with 10 semi-trailers, another 10 equipment vehicles, and I think a lot of passers-by were very curious as to what was going on.”

Neufeld says the film crew even shut down the road directly adjacent to the garage for a period of 8 hours.

“It was quite an undertaking,” comments Neufeld, “we were happy to be a part of it and the people were so great to work with.”

Other than the new paint job, the film crew left as suddenly as they had arrived and left no trace of their presence. Still, Neufeld has a feeling they will be back. He says the assembly of movie makers so liked his garage that they told him to expect similar filming requests in the future.

“I’m sure we’ll get some repeat customers out of this,” Neufeld offers, “and we would definitely do it again.” 

The film containing scenes of the Neufeld Garage is set to be released sometime this coming fall.