One recent SFCM graduate has composed a path right to a local Emmy award. 

2025 Technology and Applied Composition (TAC) graduate Theo Popov was on hand to accept an award for his composition work on Possible Selves: Overcoming the Odds in Foster Care on July 25 as part of the 2025 Los Angeles Area Emmy Awards. Popov also graduated from SFCM with a MM in Composition, working with faculty David Conte. 

“It is a beautiful story, equal parts heartrending and heartwarming, and a uniquely insightful glimpse into the California foster care system,” Popov said of the film. The PBS documentary follows two teenagers, Alex and Mia, as they navigate their high school years and strive to attend college while living in the foster care system. “It's really a fantastic film, and I couldn't be more proud to have been a part of the creative team behind it.”

Theo Popov (L) and the director of the film.

The collaboration started years ago when Popov met the director of the film, Shaun Kadlec. “He was going through countless hours of footage,” Popov continued, “and it was a film I immediately wanted to be involved in. Luckily, Shaun gave me a chance to mock up some music, and he liked what I did, and that was the beginning of a very rewarding collaboration and a close friendship.” 

The Los Angeles Emmy Awards are presented by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS). The awards honor locally produced programs in categories like News Coverage, Culture and History, the Arts, Human Interest, Music, and the Environment. 

Popov strived for his music to not overpower the film, which already dealt with heavy subject matter. “We spent many hours carefully talking through each scene element and meticulously crafting a delicate soundworld that gently heightens the narrative without excessively overdramatizing it.”

Theo Popov and the creative team behind the project.

Popov has worked in film composition before. During his time at SFCM, he was one of 15 students in the inaugural Sound and Cinema Fellowship with SFFILM, where TAC students handled original score, sound design, and sound mixing on four different films that premiered at the San Francisco International Film Festival in April 2025.

Recently celebrating its tenth year at SFCM, the TAC program gives students a direct path into the worlds of film and video game scoring, audio engineering, live performance, emerging new media, sound design, and popular music production. 

For Popov, this experience was unique, in that director Kadlec was also familiar with music making: “Shaun is a trained musician with an ear every bit as acute as mine.” He found the whole experience rewarding, as a chance to share his music-making skills, while sharing a powerful message. “The stories told are very real and powerful in and of themselves, and so we wanted the music to act as seamless glue in their translation to a story for the film screen.”

Learn more about studying Technology and Applied Composition at SFCM.