Savannah's SCAD Film Studios Completes Expansion With New Soundstages and Backlot

The Savannah College of Art and Design has finished its SCAD Film Studios expansion in Savannah, Georgia, adding two new professional soundstages and a street set of more than 50 building fronts, according to Variety.

The centrepiece is a Hollywood-style backlot. Its facades are built to pass for different places: historic Savannah, New York City streets and small-town America. Visitors walking the set would find brownstones, storefronts, restaurants, urban alleyways, a subway entrance and a suburban neighbourhood. The first section of the backlot opened in fall 2023, and the studio complex now covers 16 acres.

The final phase adds two purpose-built soundstages of nearly 9,000 square feet each. A new 17,000-square-foot building houses production design and costume design work, so the teams who build sets and dress actors can sit close to the stages where the shooting happens. Those are practical matters, but they decide how quickly a crew can move from a sketch to a finished set.

The complex is a training ground as much as a production lot. SCAD is a university, and its students work on real sets alongside professionals. Andra Reeve-Rabb, dean of the SCAD School of Film and Acting and executive director of SCAD Casting, oversees that side of the operation. Variety reports that the studio is also being used by "American Idol," the television singing competition.

Two performers have joined the college as artists-in-residence. Leslie Odom, Jr. and Nicolette Robinson will work with students and use the campus facilities. Odom plans to develop and rehearse his upcoming national holiday tour on one of the new soundstages before it begins on November 27. The tour runs through December 22.

For Savannah, the expansion adds to a campus that already has a named place in the local film scene. For students, it means more hands-on space than a classroom can offer. For visiting productions, it is one more option in a state where film crews have worked for years, and where a studio campus of this size can host shoots without building a set from scratch.

SCAD Film Studios also has a sister facility in Atlanta. Variety reports that it includes an LED volume stage, which uses large video walls to display backgrounds behind actors, along with broadcast studios and editing facilities.

The expansion is now complete, and the studio is open for use by students, faculty and visiting productions.