A thousand people responded with long, resounding applause to Illustra’s new film, Metamorphosis, at its California premiere on Saturday. The auditorium was filled and the audience was thrilled, especially at the very end when the stars of the show made a surprise appearance.

The classic Plummer Auditorium in Fullerton was the venue for the premiere. Every family who RSVP’d ahead of time got a free DVD of the film.
As people arrived, Mark Edward Lewis at the piano played a suite of themes from the Illustra soundtracks he has composed (see interview).
Following the credits and some thank-you’s to several in the audience who had worked on the film, Dr. Paul Nelson appeared on stage with Lad Allen to discuss the message of intelligent design in Metamorphosis. The new companion e-book was also introduced. Then a sneak preview of the next film project was shown in a six-minute trailer, garnering another solid round of applause. It was a perfect Southern California day and everything ran flawlessly.
Built in 1930, the Plummer Auditorium is an outstanding example of Spanish Colonial Revival architecture with Italian Renaissance design elements. It was the venue for another Illustra premiere, The Privileged Planet, a few years ago. Additional premiere showings of Metamorphosis will be held in coming weeks — including at the University of Oklahoma and Southern Methodist University, respectively on Monday and Tuesday! See MetamorphosisTheFilm.com for the schedule.
Producer Lad Allen had one more surprise for a grand finale: an appearance of the stars of the show in person. The audience went out onto the lawn, and to the delight of everyone, Lad let children take turns releasing live Monarch butterflies into the air, where they sailed upward into the clear blue sky.