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Podcast: S8 Ep. 17
Date: June 17, 2025
Title: LU Moment: Lights, camera, action with Gordon Williams | S8 Ep. 17
Host: John Rollins

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JOHN ROLLINS: Welcome to the LU Moment, where we showcase all the great things happening with °®Éñ´«Ã½, faculty, staff, students and alumni. I'm John Rollins, Associate Director of Community Relations and Public Affairs here at LU, and I want to welcome you all to this week's show. Today's guest is an award-winning content creator whose projects have screened at over 100 film festivals and venues and have earned distribution deals from entities such as Amazon Video and more. It's my pleasure to welcome Gordon Williams, °®Éñ´«Ã½ Television Studio Operations Manager to the show today. Gordon, welcome to the show, and thanks for joining me today on the LU Moment.

GORDON WILLIAMS: Greatly appreciate the invitation.

JOHN: You didn't have to go too far, huh?

GORDON: No just right upstairs.

JOHN: Love it. So, you told me you've been employed at LU for over 26 years. Tell me more about this. This has been nearly three decades for you. So, how's that journey been?

GORDON: It's been very good. If I go back to college time, I was initially thinking about going to Sam Houston State, but I came to a summer program here at Lamar at the end of my junior year and came over and made connections and found out more about the university. So, I decided to come to school here. And after graduating college, I worked at a local TV station, and then I got the job here in the department where I learned my craft.

JOHN: Okay, so it literally started at Lamar, you got the degree here, stayed local, and then this position came open, and you're like, I think I'm going to go for that?

GORDON: Most definitely.

JOHN: Did you have a mentor here during your time here who maybe led you to wanting to apply for this position?

GORDON: At that time, O'Brien Stanley and Dr. Larry Elliot were here. So yeah, they were instrumental in my development as a media professional. Those professors that I had during the time, they kind of planted the seeds and guided me and helped me create a music video entertainment program called G Sharp. We were known as the MTV for Beaumont. We would actually play music videos and then travel to different spots on campus and in the community, and we did 26 shows over a year and a half. So that led to an internship at Black Entertainment Television. So yeah, it all started here.

JOHN: There's a fun fact for you. So the MTV of Lamar, I like it, or Beaumont, I guess. Okay, very nice. Well, I had a couple of those professors as well, so I'm glad to hear that they've mentors for quite a while now. And O'Brien is still here, yes, so let's hear a little bit more about your background. What brought you here to LU initially? I know you said you had looked at another university. What kind of made you make that decision? And where did the love for film start?

GORDON: Growing up, I would sit on the floor and watch movies and television, and just out of curiosity, wondered how those things were made. So, that led me here to °®Éñ´«Ã½. The television studio program was just getting off its feet again in the mid 90s. So yeah, I saw it as an opportunity to kind of come in and learn, and the entire space was new to me. So had an opportunity to learn, yeah, and make mistakes and keep learning and go through their process. So just that curiosity, love for media, music, entertainment, led me here.

JOHN: Well, you said you said you kind of came at a time of resurgence for the program. That had to be kind of neat too, almost like you're ushering in this new era of LUTV or film and broadcast, or, you know, all the above.

GORDON: Most definitely. Again, seeing the opportunity, also being able to work for my fellow classmates and we created a bond working in that space and television studio, and thankfully, I've been able to do that for over two decades and have students have a similar experience to what I had. So yeah, that was one of my goals in coming back, was to make sure students had an equal to or better experience than I did here.

JOHN: I love that, and you could see it firsthand, the bonds that you created here. You're watching them make those real-world connections as well. Plus, just what y'all offer there. I mean, they're literally, are they scripting the shows as well? I feel like they're probably involved from start to finish.

GORDON: Yes, there are writing, producing, editing, going out and shooting their own stories. We try to run it as closely to a professional entity that you would see at a quote, unquote, regular television, right? But our students are competing against professionals like the local Press Club too, and they're being successful. A number of our students are on your local TV stations now, so I'm very proud of the work that we've done here.

JOHN: I couldn't agree more. And you know, not only are they competing against professionals locally, but they're winning awards against professionals. So that speaks to the education that is being provided here at LU.

GORDON: It all goes back to those professors that instilled it in me and Dr. Nicki Michalski and her leadership in allowing us to have the space to be able to develop these students that are successful media professionals.

JOHN: Completely agree. So speaking of Dr Michalski, would you like to touch a little bit on the Department of Communication and Media? You know, specifically LUTV, the broadcast and film side of things, but maybe a broad overview of the department in your role there at LUTV, and just involved in the department as well, because I know you're also involved with student engagement, right?

GORDON: Yes. So, the Department of Communication and Media covers a vast range of disciplines: corporate, communication, film, advertising, public relations, television. It's important always feel that this degree was very well rounded. You know, when I was going here, there was a class, Organizational Communication taught by Dr. Mary Alice Baker. That has helped me in working in broadcast and film productions more than I ever thought it would at that time. No matter if you're on a more creative end or in the corporate end, you're going to have to take classes, yeah, on the opposite end, and it just makes you more well-rounded.

JOHN: Yeah, the skills overlap, right? Because that's how I feel. I went to school for PR, but I ended up writing for the University Press, and that honestly prepared me more for my career than some of the other things I was involved with. So, you make a really good point, and you never know what's going to spark that interest, or what experience you may have by trying something new.

GORDON: Sometimes you change what you want to do. Sometimes you're adding to what you want to do. That makes you more marketable.

JOHN: And both are perfectly fine. That's what college is all about, finding out what you're made of, what you want to be involved with, and all the good things. So, a couple of fun facts. You’ve had short film projects screen all across the country, from Austin to Seattle, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Washington, DC and many other locations. And even internationally, in Toronto, Montreal, Puerto Rico, England and Paris. Tell me this, with such a large footprint out there, what do you hope audiences take away from your films?

GORDON: I want to create content that's universal. I want people to feel something. I know a lot of people watch movies, cinema, television to escape at times, but I think being able to watch content, you're able to see different perspectives, possibly see people differently. You can also reevaluate who you are. It's the power of creativity.

JOHN: So kind of get them thinking a little more introspectively, or just in general, you know, take a look within? I like that a lot.

GORDON: Most definitely. I feel like we're all artists, even somebody that's an engineer, they're an artist. Most people don't think about it that way. On the creative side of things, I think we all have that ability to create, if it's just a positive feeling and somebody else, we overlook that at times.

JOHN: You bring up another really good point. You know, I had Holly Hearn, one of our alumni, on the podcast. She's actually been featured on the Food Network, on a show called Chopped, and she was an industrial engineer when she went to Lamar, but ended up becoming a private chef. So she talked about how those work together. And I think you're right, engineering and all of these different things have some form of creativity or storytelling, or, you know, there's always going to be some creative element to most jobs. So, you will be hosting the Houston Filmmaker Showcase coming up very soon at the River Oaks Theatre. Would you like to tell us a little bit more about that?

GORDON: I've been blessed recently to become a board member for Southwest Alternate Media Project, or SWAMP. They are a nonprofit media film organization out of Houston that are encouraging film production, media production, so actually working closely with them to have events here in Southeast Texas so we can professionalize and organize our media industry here. I've been able to host and curate the June Film Showcase. So that will be at the River Oaks Theatre, Wednesday, June 18, starting at 7 p.m. We have films that, some way, have a connection to Southeast Texas or °®Éñ´«Ã½. We are showing a Lamar student film. We will show The Example, which is a film about the 1943 Beaumont race riot that I had the opportunity to write and produce, along with other °®Éñ´«Ã½ alumni.

JOHN: A lot of Lamar ties here. I like it.

GORDON: We actually have a project from Houston that was actually shot at Spindletop Boomtown Museum.

JOHN: Okay, fantastic.

GORDON: Another project with Kate Robards, who is a graduate from here. That was shot in Houston. We're going to show it there at the River Oaks. There's a lot of talent in this area, and I'm hoping people will start to see and value that more.

JOHN: Speaking of these individuals, you just mentioned something about LUTV in particular. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like I see a lot of alumni participation. I know Kate came back recently. I don't know if she was on an episode or she just came and chatted with the students in a class setting, or she did both, but I feel like they're very engaged. So could you kind of speak to that? Have you noticed that throughout the years?

GORDON: Well, that's something that we've always tried to foster. Yeah, it's important for students to talk to people that have been exactly in the same space to know what is possible. And when people can say that they started in the very room where they're at, that's inspirational and that's motivational.

JOHN: Kind of hits a little different when you literally can point at the news desk and say, “I was behind that, five, 10, 15, 20, years ago, you know.

GORDON: With students, graduates working in local TV stations. Yeah, when I can point to social media or to a news story that one of our graduates have created, it lets them know that they're not that far away from being in that position.

JOHN: Yeah, especially if they had classes with those individuals, most definitely see their success firsthand. I'm thinking just at the top of my head of three or four that I know in the last five years have graduated and they are working at the local news stations. So, you're kind of creating this pipeline of future broadcast journalists, which is so needed. I mean, you and I both know media is maybe not quite as popular as it used to be thanks to social media, we still need those folks.

GORDON: Well, this is one of those things to where I try to explain to people that I know people may have questionable ideas about the media and stuff. But yes, when you need to relax, what do you do? You go watch TV. You pull out your cell phone. You're watching a video on YouTube. You go to your church service. You're watching some type of video, right? Or something projected on the screen. Hurricane season. You want to hear from your meteorologist. If something happens, you want to be informed. And actually, with the invention of a cell phone, if something happens in front of you, the first thing most people do is pull out their phone and start recording. So people need communication media more than they realize. There is no business that's successful without communication and media.

JOHN: And without content creation, correct? So, yes, you're preparing them well, absolutely. So, I’ve got a couple of quick questions to ask before we wrap up. I know we're limited to about 15 minutes, so let's go ahead and ask that. How can people keep up with LUTV? Or if a student is listening and they want to get involved, who would they reach out to? How would they go about doing that?

GORDON: They can find us on social media, see our content on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, X, Instagram. We're on those platforms. You can also go to the university website and inquire from the department page as well.

JOHN: Alright, fantastic! And then, last but not least, I do want to ask you this, if you could collaborate with any actor or filmmaker who would it be, and why?

GORDON: That's a difficult question. It's one of those things to where it would be great to work with a lot of people, but I like to be present in whatever project that I'm working on at that moment. I am grateful and excited to be working for whoever's around me, and most of the time they're a °®Éñ´«Ã½ students or graduate.

JOHN: Fantastic! There you go. You heard it here first. Gordon, thanks again for joining me on the LU Moment. Like I said, thank you for preparing that kind of that pipeline of future journalists here locally and beyond. Because, like we said, we've got alumni doing great things. So, thank you for your leadership.

GORDON: Greatly appreciate this opportunity.

JOHN: Alright folks, that's a wrap on another episode. As always, search LU Moment wherever you get your podcast to keep up with the events, activities, programs and people right here at °®Éñ´«Ã½. This is John Rollins, your host. Thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you next time.