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Entrepreneurship Festival Returns to Pepperdine

Bestselling author and screenwriter Skip Press will headline Pepperdine University's Hero's Journey Renaissance: The Second Annual Entrepreneurship Festival, Saturday, Mar. 8, from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. All activities are free and open to the public and take place in the Drescher Auditorium on Pepperdine's Malibu campus. Press, who is also a noted script consultant, has taught screenwriting on over 1,000 campuses. He will discuss his latest book, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Screenwriting, beginning at 1 p.m.

Five panels are planned throughout the day including one titled Leonardo Da Vinci and the New Frontiers of Robotic Technologies at 2 p.m. The Italian Cultural Institute and Mentorography are proud to present the Da Vinci panel with Mark Rosheim, an American robotics expert. Following the lecture, panelists and attendees will gather in the adjacent cafeteria and patio for a Hero's Journey Networking session to meet like-minded entrepreneurs and renaissance enthusiasts.

Festival participants will gather again at 4 p.m. for an interview between Brooks Ferguson, producer of films such as Titanic and Little Women, and Craig Titley, writer of Cheaper by the Dozen and Scooby Doo. The discussion will focus on how a screenwriter utilizes the "trickster spirit" in contributing to the creative process "to bring meaningful, impactful motion pictures to the world culture."

Finally, at 5 p.m., participants will join Flint Dille and John Zuur of the award-winning Chronicles of Riddick and Transformers video games as they discuss their new book, The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing & Design, and the future of the industry. Not only are Dille and Zuur defining the merging of film and video games, they are also well-known throughout Hollywood for mentoring upcoming talent.

Elliot McGucken, visiting assistant professor of business at Seaver College will moderate the Dille and Zuur discussion. McGucken created the Hero's Journey Entrepreneurship Festival to raise appreciation for the role that classical literature and the arts play among future generations of entrepreneurs.

For more information, please visit the Hero's Journey Entrepreneurship Festival Web site.