This story was created in partnership with SCAD.
This year, the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) will finish construction on the first phase of its landmark film complex announced in 2021 — a sprawling, 11-acre expansion of its existing Savannah Film Studios that includes a Hollywood-style film backlot, a next-generation LED volume for virtual production and multi-camera soundstages. The newly opened backlot features 17 stunning street facades and over 4,500 square feet of dressed set spaces that include homes, cafes, retail stores and classrooms.
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Two additional phases of construction are slated for the coming years, which will add scenes like a New York loft, a “Big Apple” subway entrance and a town square. After construction is complete in 2025, the facilities will ultimately span over 250,000 square feet — making the expanded Savannah Film Studios the largest and most comprehensive university film studio complex in the nation.
Established in 2014, Savannah Film Studios was founded with a mission to prepare students for creative professions, as SCAD’s School of Film and Acting exponentially grew and Georgia began to gain in popularity as a global hub for filmmaking and production. This rise in production, however, began to force students to compete with major industry films and series shooting in Savannah — making it increasingly challenging for students to obtain the permits needed to shoot on location.
“While Savannah is gorgeous, iconic and remarkably film-friendly, challenges do remain. Want to shoot in one of our lush squares on the same day a major professional crew wants it? Guess who’s getting the permit. Need to show your heroine driving to church or traversing the street to buy flowers? By law, filming in the street requires Savannah PD on site for safety, costs that add up for student filmmakers,” shares Paula Wallace, president of SCAD. “So we got to work, piecing together industrial parcels of land bounding the Savannah Film Studios building — constructing the world’s biggest jigsaw puzzle — and literally created a city within a city.”
When planning out construction for the backlot, key faculty members tactically and carefully prioritized spaces that would be difficult for students to obtain permits — like emergency rooms, coffee shops or police precincts: “We were very mindful and very strategic in each aspect of the sets we were choosing and where they would go,” says Andrea Reeve-Rabb, dean of the School of Film and Acting. “Our first phase being Savannah is based on the same reason the industry chooses Savannah as a location: It’s a versatile place that can be turned into anywhere it needs to be. So our students who are studying production design are also able to work as art directors and redress these buildings in real time.”
From cinematography to acting, students across disciplines will have access to the new facilities. The resources will be fully integrated into students’ curriculum, as cinematography students learn to light and shoot on location on the backlot, or work with game design students to learn how to light a virtual production. Students from SCAD’s campuses in Savannah, Atlanta and Lacoste, France, are all able to use the new resources as well — with the new LED volume allowing them to seamlessly collaborate on multi-location shoots.
“When you’re a SCAD student, there’s nothing that you’re going to create without reaching across the aisle to your creative partners,” Reeve-Rabb says. “We actually created a course that’s called collaboration in the arts that brings together six different disciplines — dramatic writing, acting, film, sound design, production design and costume design — to learn how to work together and learn each other’s language. So having all these different resources all in one place became very appealing to us as educators and as practitioners of industry.”
Wallace adds: “The backlot is a professional playground for makers and dreamers in every SCAD discipline — a scenic array for fashion, photography and branding shoots, staged readings for dramatic writing students, a tabula rasa for architecture and interior design renderings. The LED volume stages provide countless and wondrous opportunities for animators, motion media designers, game developers. And students carrying out assignments for SCADpro — SCAD’s in-house design studio that solves real-world business challenges for Fortune 500 companies — will increasingly use our virtual production facilities to create mini commercials, animations and more for their clients.”
While the expanded studios are directly intended to support students enrolled in the School of Film and Acting, School of Animation and Motion, and School of Creative Technology, they are also open to industry professionals for use — with one important caveat: “SCAD students must be involved in the productions in some way because we exist entirely for the benefit and education of our students, and any interaction must present meaningful learning opportunities for them,” explains Wallace. “The ultimate learning experience is a full professional production taking place entirely at SCAD Savannah Film Studios, such as a TV show shot over an entire quarter, with SCAD students interning under the guidance of their professors.”
Given that SCAD’s backlot, LED volume stages and soundstages are the only ones in Savannah, it’s difficult to imagine a better hands-on learning opportunity for students — especially considering that The Glorias, May December and other films shooting in Georgia have already cast and employed SCAD student filmmakers, actors and designers above and below the line. “These are the tools our alumni will need to work at any studio, in any part of the world, on any production they can imagine. Our students and their families have entrusted their professional futures to SCAD, and in return, SCAD is delighted to provide them with every tool they could possibly need to ensure those futures,” Wallace says.
In today’s dynamic world, institutions must constantly evolve to keep pace with the advances in technology. But SCAD’s dedication and commitment to remaining at the forefront of the industry — evidenced by the incredible technology in the university’s new construction — helps ready students for whatever their careers might bring. “SCAD future-proofs our students by developing them as storytellers who master the tech and employ it. Adaptable, inventive and highly skilled storytellers will always be in demand,” Wallace says.
Reeve-Rabb echoes that sentiment: “In film, the landscape is always shifting. But if you focus on the fact that it will always be about storytelling — what connects us as a human race — then you can adapt to all of these new circumstances. And I think whatever comes next is something that we teach our students.”
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