Graduating senior Morgan Flynn began her career in film and television early on at the age of four, building an impressive resume over the years. She booked television shows such as “Judging Amy,” “Crossing Jordan,” “MADtv,” “Kidz History: The Revolutionary War,” “Cold Case” and “The Loop.” Flynn also appeared in the movies “World Trade Center” and “A Plumm Summer.”

Flynn’s academic and cinematic career has continued to grow with an acceptance to the University of Southern California, the School of Cinematic Arts and Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts.

Flynn worked in television through elementary and junior high school, working and studying on set to keep up with her schoolwork.

“I went through public school my entire life so I always was kind of in school and then I’d go to my auditions after school and when I would book something. I’d have a school teacher on set so I would do the appropriate number of hours of schooling,” Flynn said.

Here at Cal Lutheran, she has remained committed to her studies, double majoring in psychology and communications with an emphasis in film and television.

Assistant Professor of communication David Grannis introduced Flynn at the Lambda Pi Eta Communication Department Honors Society event last week, honoring her for her academic achievements. Flynn has been a student in Professor Grannis’ beginning and advanced cinema production classes.

“She’s been an excellent student. She was on the Dean’s List and received the Peterson’s academic Scholarship four years in a row, which is pretty unusual and she did her study abroad last year at Oxford, which was really cool. She’s [also] presented the last two years at the Festival of Scholars,” Grannis said.

As well as being accepted to graduate programs at USC and Chapman University, Flynn has applied to the producer’s program at American Film Institute and New York Film Academy with her “finger’s crossed” for yet another acceptance. With two prestigious offers already waiting, her decision will be based on choosing a program focused on either work experience or academia.

“It’s exciting because it’s been a process, since the fall or even really since the summer with just starting the entire grad school process,” Flynn said.

Flynn said that while she will never close the door on acting she knows she would like to pursue a career in producing. She first knew she enjoyed working as a producer after filming a short for her beginning cinema production class. Her latest project as a producer was the short film “Deprivation,” which portrays future prison systems in which prisoners are kept confined in deprivation tanks.

“Working with everyone through pre-production and through production, casting and just being involved in those aspects, that’s kind of when it really resonated with me and I started doing research about producing,” Flynn said.

Kevin Kunes, writer and director of “Deprivation,” said he didn’t expect the film to be chosen for production because he had not written the kind of script that would be easy to put into production. When it came time to bringing the script to life he said he was thankful to have Flynn’s organized mind as a producer helping him bring everything together.

“Somehow she was able to pull a few little legal strings and run a few favors and we had a wonderful location to shoot at in Los Angeles in an actual sensory deprivation tank. It was great, I think the film was better for it and I owe that almost entirely to my production staff of which was Morgan Flynn,” Kunes said. “She was there all the long hours into the night, during the production days and was a tireless script supervisor making all the notes I need to do post production correctly.”

“Deprivation” will premiere at Cal Lutheran’s Film Festival Wednesday May 11 at 7 p.m.

With Flynn’s many acceptances and applications to graduate film programs, she isn’t sure of which path she will choose, but with a successful background in film she is sure to go on and do great things no matter if on the production side of film or the academic side of film theory.

Taylor Rowlands
Staff Writer
Published May 4th, 2016