MEET THE SDCFF JURORS

KAREN COVELL has had extensive experience producing TV specials, documentaries and children’s programming; such as coordinating producer for the PAX special Changed Lives:  Miracles of the Passion, as associate producer for Headliners & Legends with Matt Lauer, and as co-producer for the television special  America’s Throwaway Children, starring Dennis Franz and Danny Glover.  She also produced a documentary DVD for HPN entitled The Hollywood TribeThe Incurables.   She created and produced the rock gospel music show pilot Good News Rock, and was associate producer with Shari Lewis Home Video including One Minute Bedtime Stories and One Minute Bible Stories.  Ms. Covell was the post-production producer for the animation company TMS Entertainment, Inc. 

Ms. Covell was also the producing director of the 8th Annual Women in Film Festival in Los Angeles.  Prior to that event she was one of the founders of Kino Women International (KIWI), an international women’s film federation at the Moscow Film Festival and in Georgia, Soviet Union.  She also served as the interim Theatre Manager for the Mark Taper Forum. and she has most recently written episodes of the new TV Series.

As the Director of the Hollywood Prayer Network, Ms. Covell also speaks and teaches around the country on how people of faith can stop hating Hollywood and boycotting its products, but instead pray for the people in the entertainment industry.  She is also a published co-author of two books with her husband Jim and their writing partner Victorya Rogers.  They are entitled, How to Talk about Jesus without Freaking Out and The Day I Met God, both available through Random House Publishers and at Amazon.com.  She is a member of the Producers Guild of America, a founding member of PREMISE, and a board member of the Biola University Entertainment Task Force.  She is a graduate of USC with a BA in Producing.

DR. ALAN HUETH  has been teaching TV/film production and scriptwriting for the past 27 years, and now directs the film and TV program at Point Loma Nazarene University.  He has also written/produced/directed/ edited dozens of television and film programs, including short films, corporate media programs and documentaries, sports programming, news, interview/talk shows, and others. 

He has won numerous Tellys, Broadcast Education Association (BEA) faculty production, and cable TV awards over the years.  He is on the board of the San Diego Visual Arts Foundation, is an advisory board member for the San Diego Film Festival, and has served on numerous judging panels for professional and student film/TV festivals, including: the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the International Television Association (ITVA), the Gabriel Awards, and BestFest America. 

He was a 2008 Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Fellow.  His students have won 24 awards in over 20 festivals in the past five years, and work at Dreamworks, Disney, in broadcast and cable news and production, sports broadcasting, corporate media, Christian broadcasting, and independent film production.  Dr. Hueth is consulting on a screenplay based on the life of Millard Fuller (founder of Habitat for Humanity), is writing a scriptwriting textbook, and is also creating the judges evaluation form for SDCFF. 

DALLAS JENKINS produced the feature film Hometown Legends at the age of 25, ultimately guiding it to Warner Brothers for distribution. Dallas made his directing debut with the short film Cliché which "FilmThreat.com" called "Fast and funny...ingenious," and his next short film, Midnight Clear, starring Stephen Baldwin, won a Crystal Heart Award from the Heartland Film Festival and was the opening night selection of the San Diego Film Festival.

In 2006, he was the Co-Executive Producer of the Hallmark Channel original film Though None Go With Me. His feature directing debut, also called Midnight Clear, was based on his short film and was featured in over a dozen film festivals, winning the Cinequest Film Festival award for "Best First Feature" and the "Audience Choice" award at the Kansas Int'l Film Festival. It's currently available on DVD from Lionsgate.

In 2009, Dallas directed his 2nd feature film, What If... starring Kevin Sorbo, Kristy Swanson, John Ratzenberger, and Debby Ryan. The film releases the fall of 2010.

SUSAN WALES, a born storyteller, author and producer, grew up in the South in Alabama and Georgia. Wales is a popular speaker throughout the United States. A partner in Gaga Animation with Jeff Holder, former V.P. of Animation at SONY, she has also spoken internationally on storytelling in production in India and France. She is the Executive Producer of the Annual MOVIEGUIDE® Awards, known as the Christian “Oscars”. A producer for various TV interview show segments, Susan was the assistant to the Executive Producer, her husband Ken Wales, of the critically acclaimed CBS series based on Catherine Marshall’s book, Christy.

Wales co-authored Faith in God and Generals and The Amazing Grace of Freedom, companion books for the films, Gods and Generals produced and directed by Ron Maxwell and Amazing Grace, produced by her husband, Ken Wales. 

Best known for her Match Made in Heaven series, also a Guideposts book, Susan co-wrote an etiquette book, Social Graces, an entertaining book, The Pleasure of Your Company, a Christmas gift book, A Christmas to Remember and Keepsake for a Mother’s Heart  (JCountryman) and Grandmother, Another Name for Love (Simon and Schuster). With over two-dozen other books published, Wales co-wrote the popular political thriller series, The Chase, The Replacement and The Candidate (Baker Books). Her next novel, co-written with Kathy Macias, Valeria’s Cross, will be released in 2010, is a historical novel based on Prisca and Valeria, the Christian wife and daughter of the Roman Emperor Diocletian, the greatest persecutor of Christians in the world’s history.