Facilities and Labs

Production

Download the Production Handbook (pdf) to learn more about the School of Cinema policies on equipment use, on-set safety, and access to facilities.

The animation lab supports production in digital and analogue animation.

Hardware:

  • 18 Mac Workstations
  • Clintiq Tablets
  • Canon DSLR Cameras
  • Digital Audio Kits

Software:

  • Adobe Creative Suite – Adobe Animate, After Effects, Premiere Pro, Photoshop
  • Blender
  • Krita
  • DragonFrame
  • TVPaint Animation

Location:

  • Fine Arts 3rd Floor

Hours:

Instructor approval is required and only available to students currently enrolled in animation and post-production classes.

An HD production Mac lab.

Hardware:

  • 16 Mac workstations

Software:

  • Adobe Creative Suite
  • Blender

Location:

  • Fine Arts building, 3rd floor

Hours:

Instructor approval required and only available to students currently enrolled in animation and post-production classes.

Please read through the CEL guidelines (pdf) before using the lab.

Five stop-motion rooms support both 2D and 3D capture using any medium including clay, puppets, armatures, cutouts, mixed media, paint-sand on glass, blue and green screen effects.

Hardware:

  • Canon DSLR Cameras
  • Six Animation Stands with Back and Top Lights

Software:

  • DragonFrame
  • Adobe Creative Suite

Location:

  • Fine Arts 3rd Floor

Hours:

Instructor approval required and only available to students currently enrolled in animation and post-production classes.

Supporting courses in animation, post-production sound and editing, interactive storytelling, and digital cinematography. The lab has been optimized to teach 3D animation.

Hardware:

  • 15 iMac, 27"

    • 3.4 GHz i7 Intel Core processor
    • 12GB RAM

Software:

  • Adobe Creative Suite
  • Blender
  • DaVinci Resolve
  • Krita
  • Microsoft Office
  • Soundsnap

Location: 

  • Fine Arts Building, Room 349

Hours:

Instructor approval is required and only available to students currently enrolled in production classes.

Offering students and faculty access to a wide variety of film, video, sound and lighting equipment, including:

  • Arri SR 16mm, Arri SR II Super 16mm cameras, Bolex 
  • Arri SXT plus/5 piece PL Cine Prime lens set 
  • Canon C300, C100 (Mk I & II), BlackMagic Cinema Camera 2.5K 
  • BlackMagic Pocket Cam 4K/6K 
  • Black Magic Ursa Mini 
  • Panasonic EVA 
  • Canon Cine prime lenses, Rokinon prime lenses and matte Boxes 
  • Canon T3i DSLR 
  • Kino Flo, Mole Richardson, and Lowel Lighting Kits, LED Panels 
  • Sound Devices 722, Zoom F4, F6, H4N, H6, Tascam DR100 & DR60 Audio Recorders 
  • Sennheiser Boom Packages and Wireless Lavaliers, EV RE Omnidirectional and Cardioid Microphones, etc. 
  • Gels (Color and CTO/CTB), Flags, C-Stands, Gobo-arms, Scrims, Snoots, Flex Fills, Silks, Reflectors, Diffusion, etc. 

The Equipment Room also provides paying jobs for a few dedicated graduate and undergraduate students.

Location:

  • Fine Arts Building, Room 126

Hours (as of 10/27/2021):

  • Mon-Fri: 9:30 a.m. - 5 p.m.
  • Sat-Sun:  CLOSED 

Direct Line (415) 338-1770

Enabling students with the use of a state-of-the-art facility with a wide array of flats and backdrops for various scene construction.

The 30 x 40 x 30-foot facility’s many features include:

  • A wide array of flats and backdrops for constructing scenes
  • Raising and lowering Light Grids
  • 40K power sources
  • 12’ x 12’ Green Screen
  • 50’ black and green curtains 
  • Doorway Dolly 
  • 60” LED monitor
  • Lights and grips ranging from Mole Richardson 5Ks, and 2Ks, as well as softs, stands, grips and LED light sets

Location:

  • Fine Arts Building, Room 143

Hours:

  • Available during normal campus hours.
  • Available for use by Cinema faculty and students only.
  • Check the Sound Stage Manager's Manual and the Sound Stage Request Form to reserve. View the lab schedule.
     

Download the Sound Stage Handbook (pdf) to learn more about the policies using and booking the sound stage.

Check out the School of Theatre & Dance's prop shop for costumes, props and scenic rentals.

Learn more about the prop shop

Post-Production

The 16mm Lab gives students access to a multitude of School services and facilities, such as Edit Bays, Animation Studios, the Foley Stage, and the Mix Stages. Additionally, the 16mm Lab houses an impressive array of traditional film editing and optical printing equipment. It also provides students with unique working opportunities for the School.

The 16mm Lab is currently only open by appointment.

Location:

  • Fine Arts Building, Room 416

Phone:

  • (415) 338-1857

Hours:

  • By appointment

The SF State Cinema Department provides students and faculty with a wide array of individual Edit Bays to work on their films.

The Edit Bays contain:

  • Black magic 3 ball color controllers Control Surface for DaVinci Resolve 
  • Soundly on-line software library 
  • Adobe Creative Cloud 2020 
  • Avid ProTools 
  • Adobe Creative cloud 2021 
  • Maya 
  • Toast Digital capture hardware and software 
  • Digital transfer station for Mini DV, Hi 8, VHS, Cassette, video disc, and digi beta

Film to Tape:  Rank Cintel Turbo 2 16/35 flying spot scanner with DaVinci Renaissance color and timing front end which is output via AJA i/o HD Apple ProRes Converter directly into Final Cut Pro.

Location:

  • Fine Arts Building, Rooms FA447B, 443, 439, 437 and 428

Hours:

  • Mon-Fri: 9:30 a.m. - 5 p.m.
  • Sat-Sun: 9:30 a.m. - 5 p.m.

View the lab schedule to make reservations. Only available to students currently enrolled in production classes.

The Foley Stage is used by students and teachers to record sound effects and voice dubbing in post-production for their classes and productions.

Highlights include:

  • Protools HD for the state-of-the-art sound recording
  • Adobe cloud Audition software 
  • 10 separate pits for gravel, sand, metal & water
  • 7 different walking surfaces
  • Sennheiser 416, Neuman 84 mics 

Location:

  • Fine Arts Building, Room 446A

Hours:

  • Mon-Fri: 9:30 a.m. - 5 p.m.
  • Sat-Sun: 9:30 a.m. - 5 p.m.

View the lab schedule to make reservations

Classes, students, and teachers alike use the Sound Mixing Stages to improve and lay the sound mixes for their films and learn new and emerging techniques.

The Mix Stages feature an impressive repertoire of software and equipment:

  • Digi C-24, Surround Panner with Protools HD

    • Dolby Surround Tools, allowing for a 5.1 Surround Capable mix 
  • Custom TAD array speakers are hidden behind a large projection screen and controlled by a Soundweb 9088iis network controller to tune and time align the room 
  • A 60GB sound effect library equipped with Soundminer metadata search engine software 
  • Avid S-1 audio controller 
  • 7.1 Speaker array 
  • Protools Omni hardware interface 
  • 2K-4K projection

Location:

  • Fine Arts Building, Rooms 447A and 448A

Hours:

  • Mon-Fri: 9:30 a.m. - 5 p.m.
  • Sat-Sun: 9:30 a.m. - 5 p.m.

View the lab schedule to make reservations

Supporting courses in animation, post-production sound and editing, interactive storytelling, and digital cinematography.

Hardware:

  • 14 iMac, 27"

    • 3.4 GHz i7 Intel Core processor
    • 12GB RAM

Software:

  • Adobe Creative Cloud 2020
  • DaVinci Resolve Studio
  • Final Cut Pro 7.0.3
  • TV Paint Animation 10 Pro
  • Z Brush
  • Autodesk Maya 2013
  • Final Draft 
  • Movie Magic Budget & Scheduling
  • Microsoft Office 2011

Location:

  • Fine Arts Building, Room 338

Hours:

  • Mon-Fri: 9:30 a.m. - 5 p.m.
  • Sat-Sun: 9:30 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Sign-In with the Cinema Studies Center Monitor

Research and Study

A wide collection of rare film and critical theory books, journals, and films was donated to the School by Professor Bill Nichols. Faculty can check material out or graduate students can use the room for study.  

Location:

  • Fine Arts Building, Room 316

A meeting place for student group projects and other School related meetings (including clubs). Students can also use the space to study, view reserve materials (DVDs, etc), and work on two open computers.

Location:

  • Fine Arts Building, Room FA 344

Hours:

  • Mon through Thu: 9 a.m. – 9 p.m.
  • Fri: 9 a.m. – 6 p.m.
  • Closed Sat & Sun

The Jennifer Hammett Room and the seminar rooms (FA344A and FA344B) may be reserved on a limited basis by members of the School for the current academic semester.

A 149-seat screening venue, the Coppola Theater is the School's main screening space.

The Coppola Theater is primarily an instructional space.  On rare occasions, the School of Cinema will consider requests from campus departments and programs throughout the university for the use of the screening facility.  Fees for hours of use, set-up, clean-up, theater manager and projectionist will apply.  We are unable to accommodate requests from individual students or campus student organizations to hold screenings and events in Coppola Theater.  Requests can only be made for the current semester.

Location:

  • Fine Arts Building, Room 101

Reservation Procedures for Coppola Theater:

  • Email Connie Carranza (ccarranz@sfsu.edu) to find out about availability.
  • Complete the Room Request and Policy Agreement Form (pdf) (both pages).
  • Email the room request and signed policy agreement to Connie Carranza (ccarranz@sfsu.edu) or deliver to the School of Cinema office, FA 245. If your request is approved, you will receive a confirmation email along with copies of the reservation documents for your records. The event is not considered confirmed until this time.
  • Please note that reservation requests received less than one week in advance are unlikely to be processed and confirmed in time for the event.

Email Connie Carranza at ccarranz@sfsu.edu with any questions.

The Cinema Media Library holds hundreds of film titles, from early films in 16mm to student films, M.F.A. thesis films, a wide range of releases (domestic and foreign films, from narrative, documentary and experimental films) on Blue Ray, DVD and LaserDisc formats. The library serves the teaching and research mission of the School.

  • Thesis Film Collection
  • Film Finals Collection
  • Hollywood Film Collection
  • Foreign Film Collection
  • Documentary Film Collection
  • Television Collection
  • Animation Collection
  • Experimental Collection

Location:

  • Fine Arts Building, Room 349D

Hours:

  • Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday: 8 a.m. – 5 p.m.
  • Direct Line (415) 405-2449

The documents on this website/webpage might not be fully accessible to persons with disabilities. We are working to fix these accessibility barriers. If you experience difficulty in accessing this content, please contact the School of Cinema by email at cinema@sfsu.edu and we will provide you with accessible alternatives.