In high school, I was invited by my filmmaking teacher to participate in a five-person team for the annual 48-Hour High School Film-Off, one of the competitions organized by the National Film Festival for Talented Youth (NFFTY) in Seattle.  The challenge: in 48 hours, write, shoot, and edit a 3-minute short film that depicts two “arts” and uses the line “It’s not where you take things from, it’s where you take them to.”

Given that this was my school’s first-ever entry in the 48-Hour Film-Off, we were flying truly blind and resigned to the idea that we would simply have fun without any ambitions of placing.  The result: “Watermelon in a Cart,” a story about the local high school talent show and its participants.  In addition to playing the comically confident student self-assured in the “art” of his speedy abilities as a grocery bagger, I wrote the draft of the script we eventually shot and edited the final video.

In an unexpected turn of events, our short was picked for 1st place in the competition (alas, none of us had thought to attend the ceremony to accept the prize in person…).

In high school, I was invited by my filmmaking teacher to participate in a five-person team for the annual 48-Hour High School Film-Off, one of the competitions organized by the National Film Festival for Talented Youth (NFFTY) in Seattle.  The challenge: in 48 hours, write, shoot, and edit a 3-minute short film that depicts two “arts” and uses the line “It’s not where you take things from, it’s where you take them to.”

Given that this was my school’s first-ever entry in the 48-Hour Film-Off, we were flying truly blind and resigned to the idea that we would simply have fun without any ambitions of placing.  The result: “Watermelon in a Cart,” a story about the local high school talent show and its participants.  In addition to playing the comically confident student self-assured in the “art” of his speedy abilities as a grocery bagger, I wrote the draft of the script we eventually shot and edited the final video.

In an unexpected turn of events, our short was picked for 1st place in the competition (alas, none of us had thought to attend the ceremony to accept the prize in person…).

In my last semester of high school, I took a leap of faith and set out to produce a feature-length student film almost entirely on my own.  With a cast and (sometimes) crew of friends, I danced around school schedules and in between periods to shoot throughout the semester.

Constance follows Edwin, a high school student who finds himself in communication with his own doppelganger who claims to be “The Code Writer” – the detail-oriented but otherwise ambivalent creator of our universe(and many others…).  When Edwin’s fascination with his newfound friend starts to wear on his real-world friendships, however, he has to make a choice.

As with many of my early projects, I can’t help but overanalyze the many areas in which the story and film fell short in this first attempt, but artistic aspirations aside, writing, directing, shooting, performing, and editing my own film in high school was an incredible learning experience of artistic project management.

Above is a short reel highlighting some of my moments that highlight the editing and shooting style of the piece, which I am currently adapting into a new (hopefully much improved) screenplay.

For a film class in high school, I wrote and directed a short film about a kid who suddenly begins to see numbers everywhere – and they’re counting down.  Over the course of few days, he descends into paranoia about what might happen at 0…

For a filmmaking assignment in high school, we were tasked to make a “palindrome film” :a single sequence shot such that playing it one way and then the opposite way produces a single narrative.  For our film, my group chose to tell the story of an artist who, at the very moment of success, decides to undo her work.

In my first adventure with Pandemic Theatre, I devised a way to shoot a scene that my fellow students and I had to prepare remotely for an acting class on Greek tragedy that had unexpectedly gone virtual when we were all sent home in March 2020: the moment in Sophocles’ Ajax when Odysseus discovers Ajax on his killing spree and confers with the goddess Athena.

Seeking better quality than we would get on a Zoom recording, I worked with my scene partners to use our phone cameras as the primary recording devises while performing in real-time together over Zoom audio. The result, I think, is a much more dynamic, exciting piece that lands somewhere in between the world of theatre and film and, perhaps, the best we could have hoped for under pandemic conditions.

In high school, I was invited by my filmmaking teacher to participate in a five-person team for the annual 48-Hour High School Film-Off, one of the competitions organized by the National Film Festival for Talented Youth (NFFTY) in Seattle.  The challenge: in 48 hours, write, shoot, and edit a 3-minute short film that depicts two “arts” and uses the line “It’s not where you take things from, it’s where you take them to.”

Given that this was my school’s first-ever entry in the 48-Hour Film-Off, we were flying truly blind and resigned to the idea that we would simply have fun without any ambitions of placing.  The result: “Watermelon in a Cart,” a story about the local high school talent show and its participants.  In addition to playing the comically confident student self-assured in the “art” of his speedy abilities as a grocery bagger, I wrote the draft of the script we eventually shot and edited the final video.

In an unexpected turn of events, our short was picked for 1st place in the competition (alas, none of us had thought to attend the ceremony to accept the prize in person…).

In my last semester of high school, I took a leap of faith and set out to produce a feature-length student film almost entirely on my own.  With a cast and (sometimes) crew of friends, I danced around school schedules and in between periods to shoot throughout the semester.

Constance follows Edwin, a high school student who finds himself in communication with his own doppelganger who claims to be “The Code Writer” – the detail-oriented but otherwise ambivalent creator of our universe(and many others…).  When Edwin’s fascination with his newfound friend starts to wear on his real-world friendships, however, he has to make a choice.

As with many of my early projects, I can’t help but overanalyze the many areas in which the story and film fell short in this first attempt, but artistic aspirations aside, writing, directing, shooting, performing, and editing my own film in high school was an incredible learning experience of artistic project management.

Above is a short reel highlighting some of my moments that highlight the editing and shooting style of the piece, which I am currently adapting into a new (hopefully much improved) screenplay.

At Columbia, I served as the Treasurer for the Columbia Musical Theatre Society (CMTS) during my junior and senior years. Coincidentally, these were also the years when theatre had to move online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Traditionally, CMTS presents a Senior Showcase at the end of the Spring semester for graduating seniors to present a solo or duet of their choice to the theatre community.  When we could no longer host these events in person, though, plans had to change.

By Spring of 2021, most of our graduating seniors were living back on campus but under strict COVID protocols.  This meant that we could perform our senior showcase in person (albeit singing through masks) but would have to record it and present it digitally.  

I took the lead on the technical aspects of filming the visuals, recording & mixing the audio, and editing the final product. Utilizing the latest iPhones, we were able to use a two-camera setup on the solos to allow for a more dynamic presentation.

For a film class in high school, I wrote and directed a short film about a kid who suddenly begins to see numbers everywhere – and they’re counting down.  Over the course of few days, he descends into paranoia about what might happen at 0…

During the summer after my senior year of high school, a friend’s dad reached out asking if I would be interested in coming down to the fire station where he worked to film an anniversary video for a celebration event of one of the station’s emergency vehicles.  Naturally, I said yes.

In particular, they wanted to pay homage to the opening sequence of the 1970s show S.W.A.T. (can’t say I’d ever heard of it, but they clearly loved it).  My friend and I spent an afternoon and evening at the fire station and training center running around with a camera while trying to keep up with the fire crew as they excitedly had us shoot one idea after the next.

For my junior year Civics class in high school, we had to follow a bill in throughout current congressional session and create a petition to get that bill signed.  Given my love for athletics (particularly soccer), I chose a bill that sought to rethink physical education in Washington State to better address the problem of childhood obesity.

To promote my petition, I gathered my younger brother’s friends to make a short video.  By the time we shot the video, the bill had already been struck, but I was able to pivot and instead promote the bill’s reintroduction.

For yet another filmmaking assignment in high school, we had to reimagine a famous scene from an existing film.  As devout superhero fans, my group chose to do the hospital scene between the Joker and Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight.

My first-ever high school filmmaking assignment, On Parade is a visual exploration of a short poem of the same name by Katy Patz.