Inside a Los Angeles Unified School District campus, teenagers are learning to pull camera focus, mix sound and operate boom poles alongside coursework that keeps them on track for four-year colleges. The Roybal Film and Television Magnet just marked a milestone: its first full four-year cohort graduated in 2026, and of the program's 46 seniors, 96% are now attending a four-year college, university or community college, while 4% went directly into workforce-development programs.
The school, housed within the Edward R. Roybal Learning Center, was founded by George Clooney, Grant Heslov and Bryan Lourd, who partnered with LAUSD in June 2021 to establish the program, according to the Entertainment Industry Foundation. It opened its doors in August 2022, and as the Los Angeles Times reports, it combines college-preparatory classes with hands-on instruction in camera work, editing, sound and other production crafts. The magnet is open to any student who qualifies to attend an LAUSD high school.
Roybal currently enrolls 200 students across grades nine through 12, with a goal — per Principal Blanca E. Cruz, as cited in the Times report — of growing to 500 students over the next couple of years. That ambition echoes what organizers told the Entertainment Industry Foundation back in 2021, when they said they expected to impact nearly 500 students over five years. The student body is 78% Latino or Hispanic, 8% African American and 14% from other ethnicities, according to the same Times reporting.
From Classroom to Clooney Film Set
In ninth and tenth grades, students study all areas of film and television production before choosing a career pathway in eleventh and twelfth grade, according to Roybal's own program description. Those pathways include postproduction, technical production and crafts, and the coursework layers in the 15 A-G classes required for entry into California's four-year colleges. The Times article notes that tenth graders will soon take Film Production 100, a dual-enrollment course with L.A. Trade Tech that serves as the introductory class for Hollywood CPR, an IATSE-signatory training program.
For 18-year-old Roybal graduate Xavier Calderon, now a freshman at NYU Tisch's film and television program, that pipeline has already paid off. Since the end of September, the report notes, Calderon has been working his first job in film as a paid production assistant on “In Love,” the Grant Heslov-produced movie starring Clooney that's filming in New Jersey. Calderon said Roybal gave students without resources or opportunities a chance to succeed, according to the same reporting.
Other current students are getting union-level exposure before they even graduate. Adan Hernandez, who is participating in the Hollywood CPR trainee program, selected the grip pathway, and IATSE Local 80 members have introduced Roybal students to grip work and boom pole operations, the Times reports. The school also averages 25 to 30 guest speakers each year and offers Fox Entertainment and Walt Disney Co. summer fellowships open to graduating seniors and Roybal alumni who are college freshmen.
Backing From Studios and a Star-Studded Advisory Board
Running a school like this isn't cheap. Before Roybal launched, it was projected to cost 20% to 25% more to operate than a standard school of its size, with an annual budget of about $7 million, and organizers projected $2 million to $3 million annually from Hollywood partners. The founding partners have contributed more than $4 million in philanthropic funding, which the program has used for specialized equipment, custom curriculum and program coordinators, according to a Roybal spokesperson cited by the Times.
Backers include Walt Disney Co., Fox Entertainment and Netflix, and Roybal partners with IATSE and Avid. The advisory board includes Don Cheadle, Mindy Kaling, Kerry Washington and Eva Longoria. Heslov, for his part, has said people who want an entertainment career should go where the work is, and he believes the best stories will be told and made by humans — a comment that lands differently against the backdrop of an industry wrestling with how AI fits into production.
George Clooney was unavailable for an interview for the Times story, according to a representative, so the article's framing of his vision for Roybal comes largely through his collaborators and the students the program has produced.
Scaling Beyond Los Angeles Amid an Industry in Flux
Roybal was modeled after the London Screen Academy, a free, state-funded U.K. academy established by Working Title Films founders Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner. That blueprint has since traveled: partner programs modeled after Roybal have opened within school districts in New York, Newark, New Jersey, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, with the Roybal Film and Television Magnet Fund providing those partner schools advisory support, teacher development, curriculum and access to industry partners. Karen Williams has said the plan is to deploy the curriculum through similar schools across Los Angeles County and LAUSD, per the Times report.
The expansion push comes as the program has redirected its fundraising priorities toward core objectives tied to sustainability and growth, and as it has considered developing an AI curriculum that treats the technology as a tool rather than a replacement for human talent. That's against a backdrop the Times describes as production declines, budget cuts, diminished studio inclusion programs, a shift toward international production and the rapid rise of AI — all adding challenges for efforts to diversify Hollywood's workforce.
What the labor-market numbers can—and can’t—show
FilmLA Research reported 19,694 permitted on-location shoot days in Greater Los Angeles in 2025, 16.1% fewer than in 2024. That measures filming activity, not hiring or job openings, so it does not by itself show how many entry-level crew jobs are available.
A June 2025 analysis by the Los Angeles Center of Excellence for Labor Market Research projected 2,556 annual regional openings through 2028 across the occupations it studied, compared with a three-year average of 3,239 related educational awards. Those broad occupation-level estimates are not forecasts of entry-level openings for Roybal graduates.
Union members and experts cited in the reporting say Hollywood film crews still lag in diversity and inclusion, even as California and Los Angeles grapple with rebuilding as a production hub amid productions moving elsewhere. Roybal’s stated goal is to help diversify Hollywood’s below-the-line workforce by training students from underrepresented communities for behind-the-scenes film and television careers—one grip, one PA gig, one graduating class at a time.
