Jan. 13, 2014

Should a documentary film one day be produced about Scott Thurman’s quest for higher education, the camera might well draw down first on a 1998 calendar and pan from there to an irresolute young man seated at Amarillo College in the presence of a veteran faculty advisor by the name of Dr. Paul Matney.

Matney, who today presides over the College, sizes up the capricious freshman and proposes he consider giving mass communications a whirl.

The suspense builds until Thurman, a product of Amarillo High School, appears willing to heed Matney’s discerning advice.

Fast forward to Dec. 21, 2013, when Thurman’s email to Matney reads: “The Revisionaries has won a Columbia duPont Award for excellence in broadcast journalism . . . Thanks for all the guidance through Mass Comm way back in ’99 and ’00. Your advice and support put me on the path that made this award possible.”

Matney indeed was Thurman’s first advisor at AC, and Thurman’s much-lauded independent documentary film,The Revisionaries, truly is among the 14 works singled out to receive 2014 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

It is not the first accolade garnered by the AC graduate for his film about how textbooks are selected by the Texas Board of Education, but it certainly is as prestigious as any—considering such journalistic luminaries as CBS News, NBC News and ESPN also are listed among the winners.

To hear Thurman tell it, Matney did a lot more than merely point him in the direction of AC’s television production studio; he helped the young man procure valuable working opportunities at local network news affiliates and also with the College’s PBS station,  which provided both financial support and the chance to hone his editing skills on footage housed in the vast video library. Thurman also was chosen to be a student producer and personally produced a half dozen TV commercials for AC.                                                                                                                                                                     

“Dr. Matney and the faculty at AC definitely put me on the right track,” said Thurman, who went on to obtain degrees from Texas Tech University and the University of North Texas. “I came away from AC with an associate degree and the ability to shoot video, edit video, work the sound board and produce actual commercials.

“I was especially fortunate because the digital equipment at AC was top-notch, literally cutting-edge stuff. My experiences at AC were outstanding and gave me a jump that put me ahead of a lot of the students I met at the university level. I was actually a working broadcast journalist before I ever left AC.”

The Revisionaries, directed in 2012 by Thurman and produced by Silver Lining Films, Magic Hour Productions and Naked Edge Films, captured the Special Jury Prize that year at the lofty Tribeca Film Festival. The film subsequently was acquired by Kino Lorber, an international distributor, and it premiered theatrically Oct. 5, 2012 in Dallas.

The Public Broadcasting Service’s Independent Lens aired an abridged version of the film early in 2013, and it won the Independent Lens Audience Award. It was the PBS exposure that served as a catalyst for the duPont Award.                                                                                                                                

Thurman, who presently resides in Austin, says he will always consider AC a major stepping stone to his career. He is swift to recommend that students take advantage of opportunities as they arise at the collegiate level.

“I stress all the time that college isn’t about paying a fee and being given an education,” he said. “It’s about taking full advantage of all the resources it provides. It’s about being proactive and always actively pursuing the next level of success. You can’t expect things to just drop in your lap.”

Nor can one predict what will happen when a capricious freshman meets a discerning advisor.

“I do think it’s incredible that my first counselor at AC is now the president,” Thurman says. “That’s so cool.”