Andrew Kenneth Gay
Professor & Chair, Communication & Digital Cinema
MFA, Entrepreneurial Digital Cinema, University of Central Florida, 2010; BFA, Film Production, University of Central Florida, 2006; BA, English & Philosophy/Religion, Flagler College, 2003
Andrew Kenneth Gay teaches Digital Cinema courses in storytelling, screenwriting, directing, producing, production management, film festival programming, career design and development, and short film production. He earned the university’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2021. He is the former board president of Film Southern Oregon, sits on the board of the Oregon Media Production Association, is a programmer for the Ashland Independent Film Festival, and serves on the Teaching Committee for EDIT Media (Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Teaching Media).
Andrew is an active scholar and media artist, and his recent creative works have included a commissioned 360° spherical video essay for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival called “The Road We Travel In Between” (2017) and the OSF-produced experiential play, Take Them Into the Dirt: An Immersion (2017), of which he was a co-creator and director of media and VR. Andrew has also published peer-reviewed scholarship on screenwriting and script development, including the article “Start Me Up: Lean Screenwriting for American Entrepreneurial Cinema” in the Journal of Screenwriting (2014), an entry on German writer/director Ula Stöckl in Women Screenwriters: An International Guide (2015), the chapter “The Cowboy, the Spaceman, and the Guru: Character and Convention in the Screenwriting of Toy Story” in Toy Story: How Pixar Reinvented the Animated Feature (2018), and the chapter “Lean Script Development in the Available Materials School of Filmmaking: This is Dedicated to The One I Love” in the forthcoming Palgrave Handbook of Script Development (2021). He is currently co-editing a new Handbook of International Screenplay Theory for Bloomsbury Academic expected in 2023. He also published the online open educational resource (OER) Screenplayology.com, which is used in college screenwriting classes across the globe. Before becoming a full-time educator, Andrew worked as a freelance production coordinator, production manager, and assistant director in commercials, reality television, and independent film, and for such companies as Red Bull, Discovery, and Disney. He has written, directed, and produced for both fiction and documentary media, including his 2011 feature film, A Beautiful Belly, now streaming on Amazon Prime.
Office: Britt 243
Phone: 541.552.6669
E-Mail: Andrew.Gay@sou.edu
Brandon Givens
Instructor, Manager of Southern Oregon Digital Media Center
MIIS, Digital Art, Film, and Media, Southern Oregon University; BS, Communication with a concentration in Radio, Television, and Film, Southern Oregon University, 1999
Brandon Givens oversees all operations of the SOU Digital Media Center and manages the DMC’s for-hire production services, offering employment and professional preparation of our Digital Cinema students. He teaches classes in Studio Production for Film & Television, Promotional Video, and Broadcast News. He has previously worked as a production services manager, live television director, news photographer, commercial producer/director, and television production instructor.
Office: SOU Digital Media Center
Phone: 541.552.6892
E-Mail: givensb@sou.edu
Howard Lavick
Instructor
MFA, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, 1977; BA, Photojournalism, University of Minnesota, 1968
Howard Lavick is a retired Associate Professor and the former Interim Associate Dean of the School of Film & Television at Loyola Marymount University. He is a Vietnam veteran who served in the Army from 1969 to 1971. He spent one year in South Vietnam, where he was a combat photographer with the 25th Infantry Division and a reporter with Pacific Stars and Stripes. He was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for his reporting of the South Vietnamese combat mission into Laos in 1971. Under his leadership, the film program at Loyola Marymount grew from a department with 250 students to a School of Film and Television with more than 700 students. One of his proudest academic achievements has been as the guiding force behind the development of the SFTV-Bonn (Germany) film program that is now in its 14th year. He retired in 2015 and now teaches production and cinema studies classes at both SOU and St. Mary’s School in Medford.
E-Mail: lavickh@sou.edu
Christopher Lucas
Senior Instructor, Digital Cinema
PhD, Department of Radio-TV-Film, University of Texas at Austin; MA, Department of Radio-TV-Film, University of Texas at Austin; BA, The Evergreen State College
Christopher Lucas was awarded a doctorate in media studies from the University of Texas in 2011 with specializations in media industry studies and film studies. He teaches courses in documentary and non-fiction cinema, screenwriting, cinematography, film editing, and online journalism. His publications include “Contemporary Hollywood Cinematography,” from Cinematography, part of Rutger University Press’s Behind the Silver Screen series, and “Cultural Policy, the Public Sphere, and the Struggle to Define Low Power Radio,” in the Journal of Radio Studies. He has presented research at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, International Communication Association, Broadcast Education Association, and Popular Culture Association. In 2005, he co-founded and edited flowjournal.org, a popular site for scholarly media criticism. Dr. Lucas also works as a writer and filmmaker. He produced the documentary Above All Else, which premiered at SXSW in 2014, and numerous shorts and commercial projects as a staff producer with Fiege Films in Austin, Texas. He was an associate producer on The Sensitives (Tribeca, 2017) and Living Springs, an interactive environmental documentary about Barton Springs in Austin. He has been a participant in the Spotlight On Documentaries Forum at IFP’s Film Week and Doc Society’s Climate Story Lab.
Office: Britt 242
Phone: 541.552.6425
E-Mail: lucasr@sou.edu
Vaun Monroe
Assistant Professor, Digital Cinema, Communication
MFA, Film & Media Arts, Temple University 2002; BA, Liberal Arts, The Evergreen State College, 1998
Monroe teaches storytelling, screenwriting, directing, and film analysis in SOU’s Digital Cinema program. He has taught African-American film studies at Cornell University, Ithaca College, Morgan State University, Columbia College Chicago and Wiley College. He is an award winning director of numerous plays with productions mounted at ETA Creative Arts, The Artistic Home, The American Blues Theatre and The Goodman. He was a film programmer for “Black Perspectives” for the Chicago International Film Festival and is a member of the African American Film Critics Association. His artistic interests lie in the humanistic, dramatic portrayal of Blacks in America. He considers himself a modern-day griot who utilizes the mediums of stage, film and television to narrate stories of the Black community.
Office: Britt 132
Phone: 541.552.8201
E-Mail: monroev@sou.edu
Courtney Williams
Instructor
BA, Philosophy, Harvard University
Courtney Williams teaches location shooting for film and video, with an emphasis on pre-production and on-set management. She began working in film production in 1998 during the rise of independent film in New York City, starting as a Production Assistant and becoming a First Assistant Director, on feature films, shorts, and commercials. She has collaborated with independent producers to write and pitch features, documentaries, and episodic series; and has had original projects considered at HBO, Showtime, Black Label, Alcon, Lionsgate TV, CBS Sports Network, and aired on Discovery and TLC. In Ashland, Oregon, she writes, directs, and produces digital media for commercial and non-profit clients on both coasts.
E-Mail: williac12@sou.edu
Precious Vida Yamaguchi
Associate Professor, Communication
PhD, Communication & Media Studies, Bowling Green State University, 2010; MA, Communication, Pepperdine University, 2005; BA, Studio Art, Humboldt State University
Dr. Precious Yamaguchi teaches intercultural and international communication at SOU. Her academic research is interdisciplinary, focusing broadly on issues of culture, identity, generation, technology, social media, and international textile markets. Her single-authored book, The Journeys, and Strength of Japanese American Women: Stories and Life Experiences During and After World War II, was published by Lexington Books in 2015. She has received the Distinguished Faculty Award, a Raider Academy Award, and the Queer Resource Center’s Erika Giesen Outstanding Faculty Award during her time at Southern Oregon University, and also a Top Paper Award from the National Communication Association. When Dr. Yamaguchi is off-campus, she enjoys traveling, painting, hiking, and spending time with family and friends from all over the world.
Office: Britt 256
Phone: 541.552.6241
E-Mail: yamaguchp@sou.edu
Contact the Digital Cinema Program
SOU Digital Cinema Program
1250 Siskiyou Blvd.
Ashland, OR 97520
541.552.6669
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