The 25th SCAD Savannah Film Festival will be screening three films that were filmed in Georgia.
“Till,” “Devotion,” and “The Menu” were filmed in Georgia with “Devotion” and “The Menu” being filmed here in Savannah.
A combination of over 60 SCAD students and alumni worked on the productions filmed in Savannah in various departments.
“Everything that we teach, every protocol that we teach, every set behavior that we teach, the way you shoot, the way you organize a shoot, the way you wrap a shoot, the way you get locations, everything to the fullest extent that we can mirrors the professional world,” said D.W. Moffett, professor and Chair of Film and Television at SCAD.
Moffett, like other professionals working at SCAD, offers students real world knowledge from actively working in the film industry.
Moffett is a working actor. He’s a regular in the new FOX series “Monarch” with Susan Sarandon and Trace Adkins. He’s also been in “Bosch” and “Chicago Med” to name a few recent ones.
“I get emails from students saying, ‘D.W. I just finished my first day and it was just like SCAD.’ Or I hear from professional mentors that visit SCAD senior film sets and they say, “Holy cow, I was just out at that shoot you have going on street, and that thing was better run than most television shows I’ve been on,’” said Moffett.
That is the kind of feedback tells Moffett that he is approaching things correctly with the students. Things like this that factored into SCAD being on MovieMaker Magazine’s 2022 list of the 40 Best Film Schools in the U.S. and Canada.
“SCAD is an easy institution to praise,” said MovieMaker editor-in-chief Tim Molloy. “Georgia is a cinematic powerhouse, which creates lots of opportunities for students and recent graduates, and the close-knit sense of community and commitment to excellence is obvious the moment you set foot in Savannah.”
“When I worked on ‘The Menu’ I recognized so many faces. Not only were there close to 50 students and alumni but my professors were working on set as well. That was so inspiring to me, working alongside them,” said Jordan Meeler.
Meeler is currently perusing her M.F.A in performing arts at SCAD. She received her B.F.A. in film and television from SCAD in 2018 and has worked on various projects locally since then including the hit series “The Underground Railroad.” She worked on the film “The Menu.”
“The Menu” stars Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicholas Hoult and Ralph Fiennes. In the movie a couple (Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult) travels to a coastal island to eat at an exclusive restaurant where the chef (Ralph Fiennes) has prepared a lavish menu, with some shocking surprises.
“I was still in school when I worked on ‘The Menu.’ It was a really rewarding experience for me to see, to watch the playback and how they act in between takes, how they interacted with the director, and how the process of getting into an emotional scene,” said Meeler.
Matt Yocum received his B.F.A in sound design from SCAD in 2015 and has worked numerous projects since then including “Devotion” which he served as one of two supervising sound editors.
Devotion, an aerial war epic based on the bestselling book of the same name, tells the harrowing true story of two elite US Navy fighter pilots during the Korean War. The movie stars Jonathan Majors and Glen Powell.
“We rigged the whole plane with microphones on the inside of the cockpit on the exterior, and then they flew this plane around. They would do all kinds of maneuvers that we were asking them to do. We got lots of authentic and great sound recordings for the film,” said Yocum.
Yocum has made enough hours on set that he was able to join the union. Something that Moffett is proud of and says is one of the goals to have students to reach as they advance in their careers.
“I love the union. I’m a union man. We’re very lucky to have a city government that gets film production. We’re very lucky to have local unions that get that student interns are not stealing jobs but understand they are future union members,” said Moffett.
The Savannah College of Art and Design celebrates 25 years with the 25th annual SCAD Savannah Film Festival, taking place in person October 22–29, 2022. Tickets are available at filmfest.scad.edu
