Over its 35-year history, the Savannah College of Art and Design has mastered the art of extreme makeovers — from gutting abandoned properties around Savannah’s Historic District to converting parking garage spaces into micro-housing on its Atlanta campus.
For its latest transformation, the college has taken a 23,000-square-foot former production studio on Louisville Road and upgraded it to a sleeker, student-friendly space called Savannah Film Studios, nearly doubling the amount of room for its film and television program.
SCAD bought the building from Meddin Studios for an undisclosed sum over the summer and has spent the intervening weeks painting, remodeling and stockpiling it with new film and editing equipment.
SCAD alum Nick Gant opened Meddin in 2009 and had landed several film and television projects before running into financial problems in mid-2013 and eventually filing for bankruptcy.
During an open house tour Friday, representatives of the college showed off some of the upgrades the college has made over the summer to several of its buildings, ending at its latest acquisition in west Savannah.
View Spotted photos from the open house tour.
In a little over a month, the college has installed new video editing bays, mixing suites, a lens testing room, an equipment checkout area, a green room and other amenities for students.
“This space mirrors exactly what’s going on in the real world,” said Joerg Schodl, a professor of film and television who led the tour through the studio.
The space has three studios, two especially for shoots using chroma key compositing. In the largest studio, Schodl pointed out the Techno-Jib, a special crane with remote camera mount for advanced film shoots.
According to Schodl, little equipment came with the acquisition, so SCAD bought new hardware to get the space ready for fall semester. One of the costliest renovations was boring through the warehouse’s thick cement walls to install ductwork for air conditioning.
A meat-packing plant in its former life, the building has oversized walk-in cooler doors adorned with burlap-covered soundproofing to dampen the echo. Schodl said the “creepy” maze-like configuration of the building with its cement walls and floors made it a popular setting for student horror films in previous years.
A screening room with digital surround sound will eventually have a computer for students to color correct their thesis films, said Schodl, and a sound studio is rigged for automated dialogue replacement, also known as ADR or dubbing.
He said they also plan to lease the space to companies coming from out of town to do larger film and TV shoots.
In an interview in Variety magazine, SCAD’s dean of film and television, Gregory Beck, said the studio will allow the program to expand and provide more hands-on experience for both undergrads and graduates.
Among the other highlights on Friday’s tour was a new entryway at Crites Hall and a complete renovation of Norris Hall. Formerly home to its sequential art program, Norris serves the college’s growing international student body with ESL and language enhancement classes.