I began writing film criticism in the early 2000s. In addition to writing blogs about children’s media and filmmaking for many years, I wrote both print and online articles for Filmmaker magazine from 2011 to 2021. In the print magazine I covered topics like the logistics of releasing films through online VOD platforms, postproduction for interactive films, data visualization and graphic design in documentaries, and how universities and film schools are adapting to teach virtual reality. My online articles emphasize animation, social issue documentaries, postproduction, and especially emerging fields like transmedia, interactive film, installations, and augmented and virtual reality; in the process I’ve interviewed filmmakers like Robert Rodriguez, Steven Spielberg’s editor Michael Kahn, animator Glen Keane, and The Lion King producer Don Hahn.

All of my online Filmmaker articles are here, and here are a few samples:

• “New Paths Forward: The Immersive and Interactive Works at Tribeca 2021”

• “Virtual and Actual Realities: The Narrative VR and New Media Works in the Sundance 2021 New Frontier Section”

• “Four Lessons for Filmmakers from Julian Rosefeldt’s Manifesto”

• “VR.edu”

• “My Favorite Film Screenings of 2017”

• “Animation in 2016: The Year in Review”

My photo of Julian Rosefeldt’s video installation Manifesto, with Cate Blanchett, at the Park Avenue Armory in 2017

With a background in Mormonism, since 2001 I’ve helped establish the field of Mormon film studies, publishing the book Mormon Cinema: Origins to 1952 and over sixty printed articles or presentations, given at conferences in Utah, Ohio, New York, and Mexico City. I taught the first university course in Mormon film, created an annual academic forum which is now over twenty years old, curated film screenings at the annual Sunstone Symposium at the University of Utah, edited film content for BYU Studies, Irreantum, and Mormon Artist magazine, and contributed to books by Praeger and Oxford University Press—the latter for the book Latter-day Saint Art: A Critical Reader in a chapter titled “Moving Pictures: Subjectivity and Mormon Identity in Documentary Film,” in which I highlighted films by women, LGBTQ+, and BIPOC filmmakers both within and who have left the church. I won an award in criticism from the Association for Mormon Letters in 2008 and 2019, and a research grant from the B.H. Roberts Foundation and Mormon History Association in June 2023 for my forthcoming book on the history of Mormon film from 1953 to the present.

Anastasia learns her identity from her music box in Don Bluth’s film, in a scene based on the Mormon temple ceremony

Most of my articles have been in print journals, but here some online samples:

• “God’s Army: An Appreciation on Its 25th Anniversary” Dawning of a Brighter Day, 2025

• “Lands Before Time: Plan of Salvation Typology in the Films of Don Bluth” Irreantum, 2023, nominated for an AML Award in Short Form Criticism

• “Poly-wood! Mormon Polygamy in the Movies”  Sunstone magazine, 2016

• “What Is Mormon Cinema? Defining the Genre”  Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 2009 

• “A History of Mormon Cinema” with Gideon Burton  BYU Studies, 2007, named by the editors as one the ten best articles in the journal’s fifty-year history