LOS ANGELES — A humble high school in the Los Angeles Unified School District got a celebrity makeover this fall when A-list actor George Clooney helped transform it into a training ground for future jobs in the industry. Launched in August, the Roybal Film and Television Production Magnet is designed to be a pipeline of sorts for behind-the-camera entertainment jobs.

“Our industry, really since its inception, has been pretty poor at inclusion,” George Clooney told an auditorium full of Roybal’s inaugural class of students Wednesday. “Usually the way we try to fix it is at the end of the process, and that hasn’t worked out very well as we’ve seen.”

The film and television industry has 65,000 jobs that are behind the camera, from visual effects supervisors and costume designers to camera people and makeup artists. 

“These are jobs that unless you know about it, you can’t chase them, and there’s whole communities that haven’t even heard about this,” Clooney said. “They don’t know anything about it. We aim to change that, and we aim to make sure that our industry is part of that.”

Last year, Clooney leveraged his Hollywood clout to bring together fellow A-list actors and the movie studios that hire them to create the Roybal Film and Television Production Magnet Fund. Amazon Studios, Disney, Fox Corporation, NBC Universal, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery have together contributed $4 million to seed the new program. 

“This is expensive to get going, but they bought in,” Clooney said, adding that the studios aren’t just financially supporting Roybal but will employ graduating students with internships, apprenticeships and actual jobs.

Clooney said he hopes to prove the concept in LA and then take it to New York, Atlanta and Chicago. Doing so, he said, “can very quickly change the face of our industry in a big way.”

Clooney is among a star-studded school advisory board that also includes Kerry Washington, Eva Longoria, Mindy Kaling and Don Cheadle, the latter of whom were also at Wednesday’s event.

“Hopefully we will be able to provide a pathway for you to get into this industry, find lucrative jobs and have greater representation in this business that we’ve been fortunate enough to be in for many years,” Cheadle told the first crop of 150 Roybal Film and Television Production Magnet students.

The magnet opened with freshmen and sophomores and will expand to 11th and 12th grades over the next two years. If successful, the pilot program could expand to other schools in the Los Angeles area.

According to UCLA’s 2022 Hollywood Diversity Report, minorities account for 43% of the U.S. population. While people of color have reached proportionate representation on screen, they remain underrepresented behind the camera.

“If these opportunities are not created, our children are left out,” Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said. “And when our children are left out, the adults who they should become and will become will never have the opportunity they should. Talent is evenly distributed. Opportunity is not. And that makes a difference.”

The idea for the film and television production magnet started four years ago with “a small team dreaming of providing more possibilities to our students and community,” said Roybal Principal Blanca Cruz. “If we are to facilitate real change as educators that will transcend the classroom walls and yield positive outcomes in the lives of our students, then teaching and learning must also change. It must also be different than it has been for so many years. Roybal Film and Television Magnet is a great example of that needed change.”

In addition to the many actors that serve on Roybal’s board and the movie studios that are helping to fund the school, costume designer Ruth Carter, cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt, film editor Michael Tronick and animation artist Vicky Pui are among the many industry players who have joined the new Roybal Industry Council to help develop career pathways for students attending the school. 

“You’re going to have to help us because this is new,” Clooney told the Roybal students, who screamed enthusiastically throughout Wednesday’s visit from its founders. “This is education, and in our industry, no one really thinks of education. If you think of actors, you don’t really think of education. Look at me. You just think, 'Oh, he’s just the best Batman.'”