Vincent A. Villanueva
I was born on January 14th, 1976 to two long-haired parents Omar and Caroline Villanueva in the small little town of Kingsburg, CA just about 20 miles south of Fresno. I am blessed/cursed with a younger sister, Valerie, who is a Senior at Kingsburg High School. After going through the Kingsburg School system, I decided to pursue my passion of music in Los Angeles. In the Fall of 1994, I started my four year career at the University of California - Los Angeles (UCLA) and graduated cum laude in 1998 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree from the School of the Arts and Architecture.
I was heavily involved with clubs and organizations at UCLA including the UCLA Marching Band, Awaken A Cappella (as both Director and Member), UCLA Wind Ensemble, Kappa Kappa Psi and SAA.
An avid fan of music and film, I decided to pursue each of these fields while studying at UCLA. By first taking an internship at RCA Records, I was put in charge of filling orders for the Promotions Department from radio stations all across the country. The company had just moved to its offices in Beverly Hills and was in the middle of reorganizing their Music Library so I was responsible for coming up with a system to do so.
The next job was one with Warner Bros./Regency Vision Films in the Winter of 1997. There really was no position for me, but with my charm and devilishly handsome looks, I was able to sway the office assistants into giving me a position! The film that was being done at the time was called Goodbye Lover and starred Don Johnson, Patricia Arquette, and Dermot Mulroney. You may not have heard of it because, well, it was really bad! The internship ended. I took it as a learning experience.
The final internship was with Showtime Television on a show called "Rude Awakening." This was a GREAT job. At the end of the 4 month stint, I was offered a position as the Assistant Production Coordinator. However, because of a prior committment to work at Bruin Woods (UCLA's Alumni Family Camp), I had to turn it down.
That brings me to another high point in my college career, Bruin Woods. I was able to meet some of the most amazing people there and continue to keep in contact with them. There were some crazy times (times that I can't share over the internet), but they will always be engrained in my head. For those of you reading this who worked with me, never forget "Fingers to you all," the Fuerstein Boat Experience, Dawnya's "coldsore", and those Saturday night party's! However, after a summer of working with the Teddy Bear age group (3 - 4 years old) and Katie Barry-Wersching, I knew that it was time to hand over my end of Randy the Rope to someone else and start looking for a real job. Enter DreamWorks SKG.
Everyone asks how I landed this job and who I knew to get it, but in all reality, I knew NOBODY at DreamWorks when I applied for this position. The story goes a little like this:
I was sending out resumes and interviewing at a couple of places that I had interned with when on one Saturday, my friend Britta Skumawitz called me from the Biltmore Hotel. She was at a conference for recent UC Alumni and told me that I should come down here dressed up and with my resumes because they weren't checking the credentials of people who paid for the conference. The kicker is that at the end of the day, there was going to be a career fair. So, I got dressed up and went to downtown. After passing out my resume and getting ready to leave, I saw DreamWorks' booth. I told her that it would be, "cool to work for Steven Spielberg," so I turned my resume in. They called me on Monday for both a development position and a facilities position. I interviewed for both on Wednesday and on Friday, I found out that I had a job! The rest is history.
After completing work on SPIRIT and SINBAD, I finally moved over to the Film Music Department. It has been such a great experience. The people I work with make the job sooooo worth it. How many people can say they have a job where they can deal with something they love and have a great time doing it. I have worked on mostly the live-action movies, but have also filled-in where needed for the Animated stuff as well. Although my name no longer appears in the credits, I still work on each and every film that DreamWorks does in some capacity.