In the first session, which was used primarily for welcome and introduction and included thoughts from all of the speakers, Doug Phillips, president of Vision Forum, started things off by communicating the faculty’s vision for the Academy and the independent Christian film movement as a whole.

“You’re going to network, you’re going to learn, and you’re going to get hands-on training,” he told the 200+ students. As he outlined and previewed the upcoming sessions, I had little doubt that he was right.

Mr. Phillips is a dynamic speaker and very inspiring, echoing many of the principles of the Rebelution as he speaks of filmmaking: “We need to find the best young men and young women and collaborate in a God-honoring way.”

As several of the faculty members pointed out, we are currently facing an exciting opportunity in the area of filmmaking. Technology is converging in such a way that technology that was previously unavailable or unaffordable is now readily accessible to even the amateur filmmaker.

The next sesions is Part 2 of Biblical Worldview and the Theology of Christian Filmmaking, where Mr. Phillips will lay a Christian foundation and define what he terms “epistemologically self-conscious filmmaking.”