This summer, Professor of Screenwriting and Associate Dean (School of Communication Arts) Sean Gaffney, adjunct professor Shun Lee Fong, and Media Communication major Sabina Boyer ’27 received screenwriting awards from the Faith & Family Filmmakers Association (FAFF).
Gaffney and Fong received the Grand Prize Award for Best Screenplay, Best Adventure, and Best Comedy for “Frustration” (screenplay by Gaffney, story by Fong). Boyer received Best Short Screenplay for “Proofing Hoomans” and Best Romantic Comedy and Best Family Feature for “Christmas Across the Hall” (also runner-up for Christmas Feature and third place for Faith Based).
“‘Frustration’ is about a man chasing so many of the wrong things and watching his life spiral down as a result. And the kindness of a town of strangers opens up all the things he actually needs in life,” Fong said. “In terms of what inspired the story, I had a line of dialogue that kept reverberating in my head: ‘The sweetest frustration is when you chase what you want, but catch what you need.’ I thought about the times I’ve found myself chasing all the things I wanted, but how God gave me what I needed instead.”
“This indie comedy asks the question, “What if we stop pursuing what we want, and open ourselves to the good and perfect gifts instead?” Gaffney said. “Jesus makes clear that what we are to ask for is to be ‘in my name’ – which carries a nuance beyond Veruca Salt’s ‘I want it now!’ rant in ‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.’”
“‘Proofing Hoomans’ is written as an animated allegory, centering around a Teddy Bear who goes on a quest to prove that humans exist,” Boyer said. “On the other hand, ‘Christmas Across the Hall’ brought my own spin to the genre of romantic comedies. Really a found-family story at heart, it tells the story of a single dad and his daughter being brought into an unlikely community of renters in their new apartment building, focusing on the surprising ways that different people are brought into our lives.”
As an undergraduate student, Boyer reflects on Gaffney’s mentorship.
“Asbury professors have helped me tremendously in getting to this point, but none more than my advisor Sean Gaffney,” Boyer said. “Even though he wasn’t able to give notes on my feature script because it was part of an Asbury competition (which it won at the Highbridge Film Festival this spring), I have had the chance to learn so much from him about the craft of screenwriting, even beyond class time, thanks to our weekly meetings.”
The Asbury University Media, Journalism, and Digital Storytelling Department offers majors in Media Communication and Multimedia Journalism. Online majors include Digital Content Creation and Instructional Design & Media. Graduate programs include the MFA in Screenwriting; the MFA in Film & Television Production; the M.A. in Communication; the M.A. in Digital Storytelling; and the M.A. in Instructional Design, Innovation & Leadership.