Eric Lockwood

Down in the dim room of Studio B, stationed behind camera 3, Eric Lockwood waits for the countdown to signal the start of filming for Tonight at Olivet for his studio production class.

“15 seconds to media,” he hears in his headset. He checks his camera’s focus one more time, it’s showtime.

Lockwood is from La Salle-Peru, Ill., about an hour and a half west of campus.

“It’s sort of in the middle of nowhere,” Lockwood said, “but we’re known for being close to Starved Rock State Park, which is in Utica, like 15 minutes away from where I live.”

There is not much to do in town, according to him, but there is a big theatre community in the area, allowing for his family to go see either school productions or shows at the theatre “in the next town over.”

At home, he has his parents, Kirk and Dawn Lockwood, and his older brother, Alec. Both of his parents work at Illinois Valley Community College, his father as an English Professor and his mother as an Educational Technologist. His brother is a recent graduate from Cedarville University and is now working as a graphic designer for Bradley University in Peoria. In addition to his human family, he also has his cat, Jyn, and two turtles, Kooper and Rufus, to look forward to whenever he visits home. But aside from his family and pets, what Lockwood misses most about home when here at school is his church community and the fellowship he gets to have with them every week.

Lockwood did not start out as a freshman at Olivet, he studied for two years at Illinois Valley Community College, the same school where his parents worked. Despite having only been at Olivet for a year and a half, he says some of his best memories come from working on the projects for various communication classes.

He found Olivet because he was looking for a Christian university.

“I thought it would be beneficial to have education with a Christian purpose, as they say,” he said, quoting from the school’s mission statement. This was the university his parents recommended to him and encouraged him to visit. At that visit, he spoke with the chair, Dr. McLaughlin, about the communication department. Learning about the film studies program, he knew that that was exactly what he wanted to do.

“I didn’t really think that was an actual possibility for me as a career…seeing that a Christian University had a film studies program was really exciting to me and that was one of the major factors that made me decide to go to Olivet.”

But why film studies? Lockwood said that he’s always loved movies and all the details behind them, from IMDB trivia to bonus features on DVDs.

“I thought that was just something that I would have to go to California and study at a big, you know, art school to do or something like that. But when I found out that Olivet, which is only an hour and a half away from my house, had a film studies program, I knew that that’s what I wanted to do.”

His sophomore roommate, Caleb Torgerson, agreed. They met last year through the Communication department, bonding over their love for film.

“Most evenings we are likely watching a movie to relax, then talk about what we liked and didn’t like and maybe what we would have done differently,” he said. They’ve been in multiple classes together, including this semester, appreciating the advantage of being able to talk about the class content together and ask for feedback on their group projects.

Next semester Lockwood is headed out to California for the to the Los Angeles Film Studies Center, required for his major. He hopes to be involved in writing or editing when he gets there, and get more familiar with good places to hang out around town, in case he stays there after graduation. His dream job is anywhere he can use his “filmmaking abilities to tell meaningful stories that bring honor and glory to God.” Even if the project is not directly or obviously Christian, he still hopes to be able to promote Christian values throughout all his future work.