The Hollywood Reporter – August 14, 2019

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Top 25 Film

Schools

25

CA L S TAT E

NORTHRIDGE

LOS ANGELES

It costs a fraction of the oth-

ers on the list, but this state

school is still top-notch. “It has

a blue-collar mentality,” says

alum John Hampian (’05), who

set up an internship for CSUN

students when he was running

the production department for

Mad Men (he’s now vp production

at Lucasfilm). “It’s roll up your

sleeves, we’re going to learn by

doing.” Recently, the school added

AR and VR courses and rebooted

its Entertainment Industry

Institute Symposium

(this year’s speakers

included Marvel exec

producer Michael

Grillo, class of ’71).

“When I think of

CSUN, I think of sitting in a

soundstage, getting work done

and joking around,” reminisces

Hampian. “It was where all the

fun was.”

TUITION $6,972 (undergrad); $8,406

(graduate)

ALUMNI Tiffany Brown, manager

of television at Kevin Hart’s

HartBeat Productions; Brian

Miller, senior vp/GM, Cartoon

Network Studios

Written by Trilby Beresford, Tara

Bitran, Kirsten Chuba, Mia Galuppo,

Katie Kilkenny, Pamela McClintock,

Tatiana Siegel and Rebecca Sun

who’ll soon be stepping down
as director (replaced by film
scholar Celine Shimizu in the fall).
There’s been some money spent
on new hires, too; experimental
media artist Rosa Park and sound
designer Bethany Sparks have
joined the faculty.
TUITION $7,270 (undergrad);
$8,704 (graduate)
ALUMNI Annette Bening,
Lisa Cholodenko, Steven Zaillian

24

BOSTON UNIVERSITY
BOSTON
The screenwriting and
production courses are being
retooled for the streaming age,
with students writing, produc-
ing and directing “micro” series
rather than traditional film school
shorts. The school
is working on better
interaction between
departments, with a
new class this spring
in which screenwrit-
ing faculty will partner with
production faculty. “It’s long
overdue,” says department chair
Paul Schneider. “We want to break
out of the silo that have screen-
writers writing projects that are
not developed for production
and production courses that lack
strong screenplay content.”
TUITION $54,729 (undergrad and
graduate)
ALUMNI Jim Gianopulos, Jennifer
Getzinger, Josh and Benny Safdie

Getzinger

Hampian

Annette Bening (far left) and August Coppola (center with sideburns, brother of Francis Ford
Coppola and father of Nicolas Cage) were among those who celebrated the groundbreaking of
San Francisco State’s Fine Arts building in the early ‘90s.