JPCatholic Announces Feature Film Program

John Paul the Great Catholic University is excited to announce the Feature Film Program, a revolutionary model of education that will integrate feature film productions into our curriculum. This platform will provide all film students with the opportunity to use elective credit to collaborate with alumni and professors in creating an annual, commercially distributed film.

George Simon, Professor of Film Production and Chair of Communications Media, is pioneering the program. “There is no other university positioned as well as JPCatholic to offer something like this,” he said. “The small size of our university, the talent and collaborative spirit within the student body, the expertise of our film faculty – all create this environment where we can offer this incredibly unique opportunity that no other film schools are doing.”

The program will offer the potential for students to earn multiple IMDB credits throughout their education, beginning as production assistants and working their way up to key leadership roles senior year. The annual productions will take place over six quarters, beginning in Spring and reaching an initial cut by the end of the following Summer.

The first project will be entering development in Spring 2021 and entering production in June 2022. The University has committed an annual budget to the Feature Film Program, and students may seek out additional funding to increase the budget of the film. Each project will be crewed primarily by JPCatholic faculty, students, and alumni, with production taking place in the San Diego area.

Over the coming months, students and alumni are invited to develop their story ideas, leading up to a pitching event on-campus in May. Selected pitches will be further developed, written, and refined in collaboration with the film faculty. Throughout the experience, they will craft a distribution strategy for the top scripts to determine which project has the greatest chance of succeeding in the marketplace. A single project will be greenlit by January 2022.

For more information on how the program works, please visit jpcatholic.edu/go/feature

About John Paul the Great Catholic University:

JPCatholic is “The Catholic University for Creative Arts and Business Innovation”, focusing on combining hands-on programs such as film, animation, graphic design, acting, and business entrepreneurship with a Catholic liberal arts education in theology, philosophy, and humanities. Launched in 2006 in the Scripps Ranch community of San Diego, JPCatholic relocated to a permanent campus in downtown Escondido in 2013 and has been accredited with WSCUC since 2015. JPCatholic operates on a year-round quarter system, with students earning a bachelor's degree in just three years.