MFA Production Design

Our two-year MFA Production Design program is second to none — an intensive hands-on experience designed to equip production designers with the latest conceptual and practical skills needed to succeed and thrive as professional designers in the entertainment industry. We encourage designers to discover their own conceptual approach to film design in collaboration with fellow production and visual effects specialists.

Drawing and design skills are paramount to sophisticated development of film design, but fundamentally what we do is develop a story, so knowledge of culture and sophistication of story structure is central to the design process. These are all areas that contribute to a mastery of production design. First and foremost, a film designer is a dramatist, developing a story for the screen.

In the first year, students design two films in collaboration with fellow MFA producers, directors and cinematographers, bringing designs to life on soundsstages and on modified locations, learning to work practically within production schedules and budgets. They take a full curriculum of classes in production design: A production design workshop class taught by our program director where students develop fully realized portfolio projects and are mentored on the practical films they will make each semester. Several classes in digital design will also be taken where they learn the latest techniques applied to production design: SketchUp, SketchUp Layout, Procreate and Rhino, to name a few.