SWAU entry wins first at film festival
News
The first group of students from Southwestern Adventist University to enter the SONscreen Film Festival are on their way home after winning first place in one category and having other entries nominated.
The annual SONscreen Film Festival was created by the North American Division of Seventh-day Adventists to encourage young Christian filmmakers.
Randy Yates, SWAU professor of communication, says he encouraged his students to put something together for the Festival, but left it up to them to decide.
Since then, the students put in a lot of work to create one music video, one comedy spot, and three public service announcements. After finishing their projects, the students had to come up with the money to get to the Festival and back. Between savings, bake sales and other fund raising events, the group was able to rent an RV that could transport them as well as all the equipment they took.
On April 8, a group of six headed to Simi Valley, California in the RV for the sixth annual SONscreen Film Festival. The group included SWAU students Gavin Lawry, Luis Ruiz, Emile Moline, K. C. Lopez, Aaron Weber, and radio-TV-film consultant Stew Hardy.
Lawry says, "On the way we created a documentary on how we got to SONscreen. It was great because it gave us the experience of having to get the project done in a limited amount of time."
According to Lawry, the documentary was completed and the group was allowed to show it at the beginning of the festival.
During the festival, Emile Moline won first place in the category of public service announcements with his piece entitled "Be a Star in Someone’s Life." The other SWAU entries made it to final consideration.