About San Francisco Film School
San Francisco Film School is a nationally accredited institution educating artists and technologists in film, music, and sound. Since its inception, our school has been dedicated to the reimagination of the art school model, and to building a more creative and powerful education environment.
Our school nurtures the aspiring creative’s aesthetic spark while providing the critical hands-on training necessary to have a successful career in the creative arts and new technologies. This conviction now extends beyond film to the disciplines reshaping how the world hears, including game audio, spatial sound, music production, and interactive media.
Why New Music Production?
Music production is the craft of turning an idea into a finished record: writing, recording, sound design, mixing, mastering, and delivery. It once took years of studio apprenticeship to learn, mostly by watching. This program teaches it directly, in a deliberate sequence that starts at zero and ends with finished, release-ready work.
The curriculum spans the genres producers actually work in: pop, hip-hop, R&B, electronic, rock, country, and experimental music, with techniques that transfer across all of them. Students record live musicians and vocalists, design original sounds through synthesis and sampling, mix to professional standards, compose for film and television, and learn the business structures that sustain creative careers: copyright, publishing, licensing, and revenue.
No experience is required to begin. The sequence is built for absolute beginners and paced so that beginners do not stay beginners for long.
Two Credentials, One Curriculum
The Professional Certificate is a 36-credit, three-semester program completed in one year. It concentrates the core of the craft: production, recording, synthesis and sound design, vocal production, mixing, scoring for visual media, and the business and portfolio capstone.
The Associate of Science is a 60-credit, five-semester degree completed in 20 months. It contains the entire certificate curriculum and continues into advanced studio production, audio mastering, live sound and event production, and general education designed for creative careers.
Every certificate course counts toward the degree. Certificate graduates can continue into the Associate of Science without repeating a course or losing a credit.
Graduates are prepared for roles including:
- Music Producer
- Recording Engineer
- Mixing Engineer
- Songwriter-Producer
- Vocal Producer
- Media Composer (Film, TV, Web, and Advertising)
- Live Sound Engineer
- Assistant Mastering Engineer
The Program
The Associate of Science is organized as five twelve-credit semesters, each with a clear center of gravity: production foundations; recording and sound design; mixing and media; advanced production and business; and mastering, live sound, and career launch. The Professional Certificate follows the same spine across three semesters. In both programs, every course is hands-on, and every semester adds finished tracks and projects to a professional portfolio.
The programs are offered two ways. In-Person students attend classes on campus in San Francisco. Hybrid students complete the majority of their coursework online from wherever they live. Both formats follow the same curriculum with the same faculty, and both include one Residency Week each semester: five days of concentrated, hands-on production.
Residency Weeks are where the most demanding work happens. Students measure and hear professional acoustic environments, record live musicians on a large-format console in a professional studio, and complete intensive mixing sessions in a professional monitoring environment. Associate of Science students go further, directing their own advanced recording sessions and mixing live sound on professional PA systems.
Every student receives a personal equipment package early in the program and keeps it during school and after graduation: a MacBook Pro, a professional audio interface with studio headphones, a MIDI controller, and two microphones chosen for different jobs, an industry-standard dynamic for instruments and amplifiers, and a large-diaphragm condenser for vocal production. Software includes a permanent license for Ableton Live Suite along with Pro Tools and Logic Pro, so students graduate fluent in the three DAWs they are most likely to meet professionally. Every tool required to complete the program is in the package or provided by the school; there is nothing else to buy. Together, the package forms the foundation of a professional home studio that stays in use long after graduation.
Both credentials culminate in Music Business and Portfolio Development, where students learn the structures of the industry, including copyright, publishing, licensing, and revenue streams, while assembling a polished portfolio of finished work for clients, employers, and their own releases.
Whether the goal is releasing your own records, producing for artists, composing for picture, or engineering sessions in rooms like the ones you will train in, the program builds the skills, the catalog of finished work, and the professional footing to begin.