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www.postmagazine.com 29 POST MAY 2015 We're a Petri dish of creativity. We don't look at anything traditionally here; we turn everything on its ear. It's all about how creative people come together and synthesize ideas. We want our students to be visual media ninjas!" Students get exposed to professional working environments right on campus. SCAD opened Savannah Film Studio last fall; the fully-equipped soundstage fea- tures greenscreen production, a Techno crane, Foley stage and screening room, and includes rentable space. The TV Producing Studio in SCAD Atlanta once housed the city's Fox News channel. "We occupy one floor now and are con- structing two more with another stage, greenscreen, motion capture and sound recording area," says O'Hailey. It offers rentable space that's production-ready. All edit bays are outfitted with Avid, Apple Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere systems, as well as Autodesk Smoke. Audio post is performed with Avid Pro- Tools. An extensive equipment inventory enables students to check out cameras — from prosumer to professional models — wireless mics and lighting kits. But learning isn't confined to the classroom. O'Hailey, an industry pro- fessional like other instructors, brings real-world experience from her time with Disney and DreamWorks to SCAD. What she calls "extra learning oppor- tunities" include festivals, screenings and workshops with top names in the business. SCAD's Savannah Film Festival, now in its 26th year, has hosted Jeremy Irons, Alexander Payne, Stan Lee, Oliver Stone and Lily Tomlin. The most recent Atlanta-based aTVfest hosted a preview of the ABC TV series, American Crime, with star Timothy Hutton; Lee Daniels, Terrence Howard and Mindy Kaling were also festival guests. Internships are elective for undergrads except for those in the TV production program where four internships are re- quired for the degree. SCAD interns have worked on The Vampire Diaries, The Fol- lowing and The Walking Dead — a group of students built the wall protecting Alexandria for the most recent season of The Walking Dead. While illustrious alumni such as Neil Helm, now a character animator with Pixar, and Zach Parrish and Nathan Engelhardt, who worked on the Oscar-winning ani- mated feature, Big Hero 6, are pursuing careers on the West Coast, and others are working around the world, O'Hailey is glad to see that Georgia's production tax incen- tives and thriving film and television scene enable many SCAD graduates to remain in the state. "We're very engaged in bringing legislative committees to the school to show them how the talent base is growing to meet Georgia's needs," she says. VANCOUVER FILM SCHOOL Across the continent, the Vancouver Film School (www.vfs.edu) runs an array of In addition to SCAD's greenscreen stage (pictured), students (below, left) have access to many pro apps.