Savannah College of Art and Design founder and president Paula Wallace wants her students to have everything they need to succeed in the entertainment industry. So she built them a huge, Hollywood-style backlot right there in Savannah, Georgia.
The 11-acre, three-phase expansion is located at Savannah Film Studios, just outside of downtown Savannah. Complete with multiple locations including a hospital, fire station, bank, hotel, florist, coffee shop, facades made to look just like historical buildings in downtown Savannah, and an LED volume screen for virtual productions, the backlot solves student filmmakers’ problems of having to compete with professional productions for expensive city film permits.
“The idea for the Backlot was actually born during a conversation a few years ago with SCAD chair of film and television D.W. Moffett, a star of film and TV himself,” Wallace tells MovieMaker. Moffett recently appeared opposite Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman in May December, filmed in Savannah.
“I asked, ‘What do our students need to make the best films possible?’ I’m ambitious for our Bees! I want them to have every resource to realize their professional dreams. D.W. said we had everything at SCAD Savannah Film Studios our students needed to create the finest student features on the planet, except a backlot. When D.W. talks, I listen,” she added.
The backlot currently has two out of three phases open, having completed phase two just this fall. Phase three, scheduled to open in fall 2025, will include a town square, city hall, single-family home, convenience store, and other facades, along with a 23,700 sq. ft. support building for two sound stages, eight classrooms, and an office space.
Read our full Q&A with SCAD founder and president Paula Wallace about the backlot below.
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SCAD Backlot Q&A With Founder and President Paula Wallace
MovieMaker: How were the facades chosen for the SCAD Backlot, and why are the new urban elements significant?
Paula Wallace: We meticulously planned the SCAD Backlot to provide settings most frequently required in screenplays like gas stations, hospitals, fire stations, shops, banks, and hotels. We’ve also included far-flung locales that student filmmakers might like to include in their films.
Savannah presents a filmmaker’s enchanted dreamscape, with architecture both historic and contemporary and boundless outdoor spaces in our parks and squares—just one reason Georgia’s the film capital of the world, not to mention the generous, film-friendly tax breaks and the fact that 10,000+ SCAD film grads lead the industry above and below the line, many right here in Savannah and Atlanta.
Not a day goes by that you won’t see a pro film crew somewhere downtown, and the need for space to shoot can present challenges for our students. Want to shoot in one of our lush squares on the same day a network TV crew needs it? Guess who’s getting the permit? Shutting down streets, securing authorization, and hiring the required security can be expensive for student filmmakers. I created the SCAD Backlot to solve all these challenges in one fell swoop.
With the SCAD Backlot, we literally invented a city-within-a-city—all the charm of historic Savannah, where student filmmakers and SCAD film and acting professors have free reign, without the impediments of bureaucracy and hauling mountains of SCAD gear across town. SCAD Backlot Phase I, which opened in Fall 2023, began by recreating a familiar landscape of façades, streetscapes, and interiors our students want to shoot.
The new urban elements for the Backlot Phase II, opened this fall, expands scenic and storytelling possibilities for our Bees beyond anything you find at other film schools: iconic Brooklyn brownstones, a classic New York subway entrance, a seedy city alleyway, a midcentury service station, a florist shop, the list goes on, not to mention fully outfitted and stocked shops for costume and production design. The Backlot buildings aren’t merely facades—they’re 3-D, home to magnificently curated interiors allowing for seamless transitions from exterior to interior shots. SCAD provides premier tools and resources to our Bees!
MovieMaker: What expertise did SCAD alumni and faculty contribute?
Paula Wallace: In concert with Paul Wonsek and Associates and our elite SCAD Design Group, we engaged SCAD professors in architectural history, preservation design, architecture, interior design, painting, and more—and of course our SCAD faculty from film and acting—for expert insights about design, cinematographic angles, colorways, aging and distressing techniques, and more. We invited SCAD production design faculty to make a wish-list for the production classrooms and maker spaces—and made everything happen. As with all SCAD construction, conveying the veracity, charm, and character of the streetscapes and architecture has been my top Backlot priority.
What is the biggest challenge in preparing film and acting students for the movie industry, and how does SCAD address it?
Paula Wallace: Anyone entering the competitive creative professions—from film grads entering the movie industry to entrepreneurs starting their own companies and working with established studios and brands—needs two assets: know-how and a network. SCAD delivers both. We provide the know-how through courses that invite students to create real results (films, runway collections, products, services, and more) for real audiences and clients in real time, all of which is made possible by one-of-a-kind resources like the SCAD Backlot and our two LED stages.
SCAD delivers the network, too—with superstar faculty like Craig Anton (Mad Men, The Office), Mark Tymchyshyn (Seinfeld, Malcolm in the Middle, George Lopez), and a host of others, including Dean of the SCAD School of Film and Acting and casting legend Andra Reeve-Rabb, who leads our two SCAD Casting Offices in Atlanta and Savannah, the only casting offices of their kind in higher ed, placing countless SCAD Bees on films and shows for Apple TV+, Netflix, Amazon, and just about every other studio and streamer.
And we haven’t even touched on the 80,000-strong SCAD alumni network around the world. Our team of SCAD Career and Alumni Success pros ensures that every SCAD grad enters their chosen industry with thousands of friends and allies. Those doors don’t open by themselves.
MovieMaker: I understand SCAD welcomes professional productions that give opportunities to students to use the Backlot. Why would SCAD’s Backlot and the streetscapes you’ve designed be appealing to lure professional productions to Savannah?
Paula Wallace: Production companies choose the Backlot for the same reasons our students love it—thanks to the Backlot’s plenteous scenic options and convenience and because the resource exists within SCAD’s Savannah Film Studios campus, teeming with more elite student talent than you’ll find anywhere else in the world. Which is an important point: Any professional production wanting to use the SCAD Backlot must engage and employ SCAD students and alumni. In the last couple of years alone, more than 200 SCAD alumni and students contributed their talents to Oscar-nominated films like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and May December.
Main Image: A photo from the backlot, courtesy of SCAD