THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER -- No. 22: San Francisco State University, San Francisco
The Bay Area university’s School of Cinema is one of its larger undergrad programs, with 1,200 enrolled students (although its highly competitive M.F.A. program accepts only 15 graduate students a year). The wide-ranging curriculum includes 45 production courses, film theory classes and a new spotlight on Women in Film. Alumnus Jonas Rivera, the Oscar-winning producer of Inside Out, remembers being in an animation class at SFSU in the mid-1990s and seeing Luxo Jr. — Pixar's groundbreaking short introducing two animated desk lamps — for the first time.
“I had prided myself at the time as a fan of hands-on animation, and I put my nose up at computer animation,” he says. “But that short was shown in that class and it just melted me.”
He was still in school when he landed his first job — an internship at Pixar.
Photo by Hannah Anderson