Following the afternoon seminars was perhaps the day’s most anticipated event, a Q &A with Walden Media President Michael Flaherty and the presentation of an unfinished trailer for The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader (due out in December 2010). Revealing glimpses into the newest journey into Narnia, this time by the younger of the two Pevensie siblings (Edmund and Lucy) and their cousin Eustace, the footage already sparkled with a sense of magic and adventure despite its lacking final effects. And as Aslan told the young adventurers that “to defeat the darkness out there, you must defeat the darkness inside,” and Flaherty beamed with pride as he talked about how great Eustace’s transformation turned out—at least based on Dr. Williams criteria—the sense was that Dawn Treader might just have what it takes to go big this December.
But in a world that is not always as magical as we might like, the Biola Media Conference made sure to return to reality before sending us all away. Cue a final Q & A with Ralph Winter, a producer on many of 20th Century Fox’s biggest successes over the last ten years, and Terry Botwick, former Senior Vice President of CBS and former president and vice president of numerous other media companies, in which the men shared their story of setting off on their own to start a production company together… and how difficult it has been amidst today’s economic crisis.
Sure, I could have done with a schedule change that put “the hard reality” closer to the beginning of the day than the end. But when the day was over, what I came away from the Biola Media Conference with was a picture of the entertainment industry that, was, in fact, invaluably real. It is a magical business, it is bastion of creativity unlike anywhere else, and it is an industry where stories can come to life in ways you may never have imagined. At the same time, the movie business is also one of the riskiest business endeavors around, its technology is evolving faster than many of its players can afford to keep up with, and its creativity will never cease to be tied to the business arms that surround it. And even as Botwick and Winter’s tales of struggle and hardship felt like enough to make anyone want to run away from the industry and never look back, I was also reminded that often the greatest growth occurs through hardship, often it is only in times of hardship that we remember that we do not have to live by only our own strength and ability alone, and that in an industry that stands to have as great an impact on the world as the entertainment industry does… whatever it might take to make those in it better storytellers, more mature decision makers, and individuals who recognize the greater reality in which they live and create has got to be worth it.
