Guest Speakers

Jennifer Dornbush is a screenwriter and forensic consultant for film and television. Some of the productions she has worked on include Beauty & the Beast, Deception, Hawaii Five-O and White Collar, to name a few.

Jon Menick has starred in commercials including Burger King and Arbys. He has also guest-starred on TV shows such as The Flash, JAG, Night Court, The Twilight Zone, and Nashville.

Ryan Dornbush is Vice President of Operations and Human Resources at Alcon Entertainment. Alcon has produced films such as The Blind Side, The Book of Eli and Blade Runner 2049.

Nancy Stafford is an actress who is has also acted in over 50 television series and films including: Matlock, The Mentalist, Frasier, ER, Babylon 5, Quantum Leap, and U.S. Marshals.

Brady Nasfell has worked as a producer in film and television. He has also produced programming for Netflix, Fox Sports, NBC, VH1, Oxygen and Discovery Networks. We are proud to mention that Brady is a graduate of Asbury.

Albert Mason is a Visual Effects Producer for film and television. His commercial clients have included companies like Nintendo, Facebook, Bridgestone. Films he has worked on include: the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Spiderman-3, and The Polar Express.

Rob is a Director of Photography who creates compelling and stunning images in film for clients such as National Geographic, Discovery Channel, HBO Original Films, Smithsonian Channel, BBC, and many others. He has also worked on feature length projects like the Academy Award-nominated film Spellbound.

Barry's career began at Hanna-Barbera Studios, where he worked as an assistant animator on the pilot episode of the Smurfs. In 1981 he moved to the Walt Disney Studios where he lent his talents as an effects animator to such notable features as Tron, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. His feature directing debut was in 1998 with Mulan which became an instant Disney classic and earned over $300 million in worldwide box office receipts. For his work on the picture, Barry received the International Animated Film Society’s Annie Award for best individual achievement for feature directing. Other projects he directed include Arthur Christmas, Jack & Ben, and Walking with Dinosaurs.

Russell won an Oscar Award for his cinematography in Titanic. Other projects that he has shot include Ant-Man, Jobs, This Means War, A Little Bit of Heaven, Monster-in-Law, Terminator 2, True Lies, and many television productions.

Peggy was an Executive Producer at The History Channel® and a producer for CBS News, A&E and NBC Sports. Her work has won multiple awards including a Peabody Award, United Nations Bronze Award for excellence, Cine Golden Eagle, IDA award and Emmy Award.

Garrett is the recipient of an Oscar Award and an Emmy Award for his invention of the steadicam. His work can be seen in over 100 motion pictures and is highlighted in movies such as Rocky, Return of the Jedi, Raiders of the Lost Arc, and The Shining. Garrett holds 50 patents worldwide that include Skycam, Mobycam, Divecam, & Flycam. He is a member of the American Society of Cinematographers & the Directors Guild.

Chester Thompson has been a drummer for some of the best known groups in the world including Genesis, Phil Collins, Frank Zappa, Weather Report, Dave Koz, Neil Diamond, John Fogerty, Michael McDonald, Andy Williams, and Peter Cetera. Chester worked with audio students in Asbury's recording studio.

Asbury graduate DT Slouffman is a four-time national Emmy award winning television producer, director and writer. For almost two decades, Slouffman has embedded himself in the television industry as a part of nervous top-rated productions for ABC, TLC, Lifetime, NBC and Turner Sports. Two of his Emmy awards are for producing Olympics events for NBC and two of them are for NBA coverage on Turner. Other shows have reality television series, documentaries and studio shows.

Sean McComber has traveled everywhere from Dallas, Texas to Mumbai, India for his work, which focuses in Animation. In his animation career he has worked on many projects including Alvin and the Chipmunks, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, Hop, Yogi Bear, Open Season 2 and Land of the Lost.

Batchler is a well-respected and accomplished writer in the film and production industry. Batchler, along with her husband and partner Lee Batchler, are well known for their scripts including Smoke and Mirrors and Batman Forever.

JD Blair (drummer for Shania Twain), Shake Anderson (guitar for Stevie Wonder, Earth Wind & Fire), Thomas Cain (keyboard for George Benson, Ramsey Lewis, Dave Brubeck, and Ray Charles); Darrell Tibbs (drummer for Brian McKnight, Donna Summer, The Moody Blues, Neville Brothers, and Michael McDonald) provided a full day of workshops on worship music, the entertainment industry and the recording studio.

Rodney Charters, a distinguished director and cinematographer, is most widely recognized as the cinematographer for the popular television political thriller “24”, starring Kiefer Sutherland as agent Jack Bauer. It was Rodney’s keen understanding of documentary filmmaking that was needed to create the intense realism of “24” never before seen on a network primetime series. Charters’ first feature was working 2nd Unit on the film,"Youngblood". He has been nominated twice for an Emmy for Outstanding Cinematography, and in 2013 The American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) awarded him the Life Time Achievement Award for Television.

Peter J. Lehman's career as a composer, sound designer, and mixer spans over 20 years in creative audio. His work on "Braveheart" garnered an Oscar for Best Sound Effects Editing. Along with his accomplishments as a veteran sound designer, he has composed a produced music for several blockbuster feature films including The Prince of Egypt, Mulan, True Lies, Jerry Maguire, Homeward Bound, Outbreak, and Grumpy Old Men. His audio work for gaming projects includes notable products from Electronic Arts such as Madden NFL Football, Superman Returns, and NCAA Football.

Hakem, an Asbury graduate, is a sports anchor for ESPN’s SportsCenter and Baseball Tonight. He was previously an anchor and reporter for NBC4’s sports department in Washington, DC. Dermish has worked on sports events around the country including the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, the Kentucky Derby, the Indy 500, the 2003 FIFA Women's World Cup, and numerous other events for ESPN, CBS and NBC.

Andrea Nasfell is an award-winning screenwriter whose most recently produced film is the family comedy Moms’ Night Out directed by the Erwin Brothers for Sony AFFIRM/Provident Films. She also wrote the TV movies Silver Bells and Christmas Angel, the most-watched movie on UP TV in 2012. Her films Christmas with a Capitol C and What If… were both nominated for Epiphany Prizes in TV and film. “What If…” was selected by Movieguide as one of 2010’s “Ten Best Films for Family Audiences” and Christmas with a Capitol C won their Faith & Freedom Award. She is a graduate of Asbury University.

John is a film and television Production Designer and Art Director who has worked on a number of films including Ghostbusters, 3D Muppet Movie, Disney’s Earth Star Voyager, Hello Dolly and Cleopatra. His design work for Disney included the façade for Main Street Disneyland and master planning Walt Disney World’s EPCOT.

Michael Flaherty co-founded Walden Media in 1999 with his former college roommate, Cary Granat. Walden's Mission is to rekindle curiosity and recapture imagination through the development and production of family films and literature. Walden has financed and produced a number of films, such as The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, Charlotte's Web, Bridge to Terabithia, Holes, Because of Winn-Dixie, and Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D.

Brian Godawa is the screenwriter for the award-winning feature film, To End All Wars. Most recently, he adapted to film the best-selling novel The Visitation by author Frank Peretti for Ralph Winter (X-Men, Fantastic Four), and wrote and directed Wall of Separation, a PBS documentary and Lines That Divide, a documentary on stem cell research. He is attached to direct his award-winning horror script, Cruel Logic, for Boulevard Pictures. Mr. Godawa’s scripts have won multiple awards in screenplay competitions and his articles on movies and philosophy have been published around the world. His book, Hollywood Worldviews: Watching Films with Wisdom and Discernment (InterVarsity Press) is in its ninth printing.

Bruce Broughton composes in almost every medium, from theatrical motion pictures and television to computer games, in styles ranging from large symphonic settings (Silverado) to contemporary electronic scores (the recently Emmy-nominated The Dive from Clausen's Pier). Broughton has written the scores for major motion pictures such as Tombstone, Lost In Space, and Young Sherlock Holmes. With 23 nominations, he has received 10 Emmy awards. His television credits include the main title themes for "Jag" and Steven Spielberg's Tiny Toon Adventures, as well as the scores for countless television series (Dallas, Quincy, Hawaii Five-O).

Sarah is an Emmy-winning producer who is the Director of Original Programming and Development for the HGTV, DIY and Great American Country networks. She also oversees some programming at the Travel Channel.