Member Spotlight: Colin Gunn, documentary filmmaker

Colin Gunn uses a video camera to serve as an eyewitness to worldviews.

In the process, the Scottish-architect-turned-Texas-filmmaker exposes his viewers to a Biblical perspective on controversial topics like homosexual politics, feminism, public education, and digital culture—and possibly, in the near future, health care.

While doing so, Colin and various collaborators have racked up these awards at the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival:

• Best Political Film in 2004 for Shaky Town: The Gospel Truth about Homosexuality and the “Tolerant” City of San Francisco.
• Best of Festival in 2007 for The Monstrous Regiment of Women.
• Best Documentary and runner-up for Best of Festival in 2012 for IndoctriNation: Public Schools and the Decline of Christianity in America.
• Runner-up for Best Documentary in 2012 for Captivated: Finding Freedom in a Media Captive Culture.

His newest film, Act Like Men: A Titanic Lesson in Manliness, was released in April on the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.

Colin immigrated to the U.S. in 1999, seeking a nation with “more liberties” than he found in Scotland. That part of the United Kingdom is “a lot more socialist” than the U.S., he says, practically a welfare state with “nationalized health care and extreme gun control.”

Of course, marrying his American wife, Emily, helped him make his decision to stay in the States. Now with eight children, the Gunns live happily in Emily’s native Waco, Texas, educating their children and making movies.

Filmmaking wasn’t the career Colin originally envisioned, though. He started as an architect and became interested in three-dimensional animation used for virtual walk-throughs of buildings. Colin changed careers around the time Toy Story was released in the mid-1990s.

“I decided that was what I wanted to do—I wanted to do 3D animation,” he says in his Scottish brogue.

Colin got a master’s degree in the field and ended up creating art for video game pioneers Atari and Midway Games, stints that would later inform his film Captivated, a critique on the effects of digital media. He eventually moved into the “safer, saner side of gaming—virtual world technology,” creating virtual worlds for military and medical use.

“But after a while, I was looking for a way to more clearly present a Biblical message,” he says.

That’s when the idea of documentary filmmaking occurred to him, and, in 2003, he and his brother, Euan, who has “video skills,” made Shaky Town to show how those clamoring for “tolerance” toward homosexuals are both intolerant and politically powerful. Although Euan, who still lives in Scotland, hasn’t been able to work directly with Colin on more projects, he “helps when he can.”

The vision remains intact, though.

“I believe there is a purpose of communicating messages through this format that draws people’s attention to particular issues that are important to the Church,” Colin says. “We believe these are problems that need to be addressed.”

One of those problems he’s interested in addressing is health care.

“Health care has similar issues as public education: government control, government intrusion, high expense, low quality as a result of the government intrusion,” he says. “If potentially we make a film on health care, it will be as important for the Christian community as IndoctriNation has been, because it’s the other aspect of our lives, besides education, that we all inevitably have to deal with. With a film on health care, we hope to persuade many more people not only to get off the government system but also to consider using Samaritan Ministries.”

The documentary form can handle topics like these in a way that is otherwise difficult to do.

“The purpose of a documentary is to bring eyewitnesses to testify to an issue. It’s not just us with opinions. It’s not political punditry. This is us defending a position in a Biblical sense, where we bring two or three witnesses to testify to the truthfulness of a matter. That’s why documentaries are so useful.”

For instance, when Colin made IndoctriNation by traveling to several states on an old school bus with his family, he interviewed public school principals, current and former public school teachers, and “the people who are effectively whistleblowers.”

“They’re our eyewitnesses,” Colin says. “And then we have the expert witnesses who are the scholars and the historians who can also add the other side. So it’s kind of like a court case before a jury, which is our audience. We’re using these witnesses to come in and speak to the issue. That authenticates an argument instead of me just presenting a case like a sermon or a book. We present visual testimony.”

For Colin, filmmaking is a ministry.

“It’s about communication and teaching,” he says. “We’re given this great responsibility to communicate the Biblical worldview as it relates to these issues. We know that there’s real good blessings that come from that, where people can be taught on an issue and really react to it in a powerful way.

“The purpose of our films is to make known what God’s Word says to each aspect of the subject matter. Our goal is to make it very explicitly Christian. Our films will probably only have a Christian audience because of that, but that’s our desire: We’re communicating to the people of God to hopefully get change on those issues where I think there needs to be change.”

There’s been change in the quality of Gunn Productions movies as Colin and his collaborators, such as Joaquin Fernandez for IndoctriNation and Phillip Telfer for Captivated, have improved their techniques with each film. Part of that is the accessibility of better equipment and software for relatively lower cost, as digital technology evolves. And part of it is just learning by doing.

“There’s no mystery to what we do,” Colin says. “There are some skills that we’ve had to learn, but really it’s all about practice and going out there and trying to get good at it.”

An emerging, supportive Christian film community helps as well. Several people from that community came alongside Gunn Productions to help on IndoctriNation in different ways. For instance, The Wintons, a bluegrass group whose family also are Samaritan members, helped with music for IndoctriNation, and Colin gave them feedback on their own movie, Rescued: The Heart of Adoption and Caring for Orphans. John Moore, who made the popular Widow’s Might, helped record the narration for IndoctriNation after Colin played a supporting role in Moore’s movie.

“Most of my friends are through the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival community,” Colin says. “We talk frequently on the phone with all the other documentary filmmakers that we know. When we come up with a film idea, we’ll probably pitch it to our peers first. There are lots of opportunities for us to discuss and brainstorm and even help each other. What has happened over the last few years is we all tend to be working together on different projects at different times, which is amazing. It’s a very good, healthy situation.”