A Major in Film & TV Production Will be offered at La Sierra University
by AT News Team
Because of its location in southern California, La Sierra University is an ideal location for the second academic program in cinema offered by the denomination’s higher education institutions. Southern Adventist University has a program that trains students in the production of animated movies and computer games.
The new program will take in its first class this fall and lead to a bachelor of fine arts degree in film and television. It will “prepare students for work in movie studios or on independent documentaries and feature films,” reported The Press-Enterprise, the daily newspaper in Riverside, California, near the campus. Instructors will include award-winning directors, producers and writers.
Rodney Vance will direct the program. He has 28 years of professional experience writing plays and books, and producing and directing television, film and radio dramas. He has also served the Adventist Church as a pastor and educator.
“Ever film major, from the moment they step on campus, has access to cameras, lights, microphones, editing equipment, everything necessary to create film, television episodes or content for the Web,” Vance is quoted by the newspaper. He told the reporter that three resource instructors he has already recruited are Carrie Spect who was an assistant director on the TV dramas E.R. and Alias; Stew Harty, founder of LA Digital, one of the world’s largest providers of editing software; and Terence Ford, brother of actor Harrison Ford and an actor and producer on his own.
La Sierra University may become the place in southern California where students can take classes in Christian theology and Biblical studies at the same time they learn the skills of contemporary story-telling through the media. But this may just be a return to its roots. In the 1960s a studio was built next door to the campus farm where a series of black-and-white 16 mm movies were produced featuring Bible studies. They were used by many Adventist evangelists in that era.
Wow, here come the Adventist movies from LSU!
When a pastor at the Claremont, CA Adventist church 3 decades ago, I asked David Osborn, then chaplain at LSU, whether he thought that movie-going was acceptable in the Adventist denomination, and he replied negatively.
About that same time the LLU board thought carefully about approving the University's request for the first Christian ethics center in the nation, but after several months of reflection finally granted the request, with the stipulation that none of the Center's ethicists should be viewed as speaking for the denomination on ethical issues–something surely not being asked for.
And it wasn't that much earlier that the study of law was frowned on by church leaders, ironic in light of the prominent role that legal counsel now plays at church headquarters.
Back in the 80s the late Richard Hammill and Raymond Cottrell were overheard musing how the first PhDs were earned by Adventist scholars only back in the 1930s. Now there are thousands.
The pioneers who lauded education had no idea that their commitment would result in highly educated members who would lead to faithful members entertaining ideas, studying subjects, and producing media that would seen as satanic not that many decades ago.
But such is progressive revelation.
Interesting that the US Adventist university most carefully positioned (in the market) as "conservative" and its counterpart Southern Californian "liberal" sister not only seem highly preoccupied with creation/evolution, but now with cinema. It makes sense: To convey an image, you need both a message and media. I foresee many "tough marketing battles" between these two universities, though in reality the marketing is a great deal more about window-dressing than fundamental left/right positions. One good professor recently told me, "You hear so much about how conservative we are and how liberal they are, but in the classroom we're really pretty much the same."
Perhaps one university can specialize in black and white retro releases, the other in 3-D color???! Regardless, I have had SO many friends who have had to literally go to Hollywood to pick up the training they've needed to get top jobs in the film industry—people so visually talented, it was impossible to envision them in any other possible vocation. In the process, they have tended to fall away from the Adventist culture, and that's a seriously sad problem for their parents, pastors, schoolmates, and mentors.
On a related topic, it was not acceptable to have a college or academy band in Adentist education until well after the turn of the 20th century. It was feared that band music would be an entry influence to—you guessed it—ballroom dancing.
One wonders how many souls will be in the Kingdom as the result of this venture? What guidelines will be set up to insure that the high standards of the SDA church are inviolate?
Excellent! Arriba LSU!
-johnny jr.