For my senior Capstone project, Adrian Marrero and I wrote a small comedy tv series. Over the summer we came up with the idea to mock our own community through filmmaking in a way that brings joy to the viewer. At the time, we didn’t have the proper equipment to do so but as soon as school started we both agreed that it would be a good idea for our capstone. With me being in the digital video program and Adrian being interested in it as well, it was very easy for us to bring our ideas into light. We began writing the first and second episodes in October and finished around December and started filming the pilot episode in February. Our cast was our friend group and we wanted them to have some creative freedom as well so they gave us feedback on our scripts, improving them along the way. While I directed the first episode with my three years of knowledge, Adrian researched acting methods to teach our cast. Our original goal was to write and film 5 episodes with an overlapping plot. We didn’t realize how ambitious we were until beginning the first episode. We quickly redirected our goals to have a polished first episode that we could submit to Rocket Fest. In doing so we won first place in Narrative Films with over 50 people watching it. The first episode is based on a combination of true stories that we experienced in our life. It follows a group of not so bright young men in their twenties who are from south philly. They go to their good friend Xav’s house to celebrate his twenty-first birthday. Things get rocky from there…

(The Real South Philly, Episode 1, Pilot, 2026) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Elz0sN9NMDbSdHRWdYVa03HvypvvUX7t/view?usp=drive_link (The Real South Philly Script) https://docs.google.com/document/d/19X6GO2y43stCPBs0SRennpTV0AtxEJc_MEXUbpXi8XA/edit?usp=sharing (Bibliography) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PSyYGs-0whSOusH-v6X6uVqs11KL6xC8OZrd3xx8p_0/edit?tab=t.0

For my senior capstone, I co-led RocketFest, which is a legacy capstone at SLA. It’s a student-run, city-wide film, photography, and (newly this year) graphic design festival celebrating the creative work of Philadelphia high school students. Working alongside my teammates Henry Blakelock and Desmond Maggione, our advisors, Ms. Ro and Mr. Rivera, and our mentor from WHYY, our guiding question was: how could we expand RocketFest’s annual tradition to uplift and recognize district students’ voices through media as much as possible? Our process began in September, when we started building our social media presence, researching venues, and coordinating community outreach. As head of Communications on our team, I managed all external relationships from reaching out to schools and participants, to partnering with a nonprofit for printed programs, to presenting to Braskem, and speaking at a CTE fair at Temple University! Our biggest obstacle was securing a venue within our limited budget, which kept us without a confirmed location for months. Ultimately, hosting at SLA’s auditorium turned out to be the right call, and on May 15th, we welcomed over 200 people to celebrate student artistry! The most important thing I learned is that a closed mouth truly never gets fed. Every connection, venue, and opportunity that made RocketFest successful came from someone being willing to ask. I grew enormously as a communicator and advocate, and I’m proud to have carried on a legacy that gives young artists, especially those in an underfunded district, a real public platform for their work. 🚀🎥

RocketFest 2026 Photobook

My capstone is RocketFest, a student-run Film and Photo Festival for public high school students of the Philadelphia School District. It’s taken a ton of work to get RocketFest to the point where it is now. Starting with brainstorming, from notes apps to google docs we spent hours thinking of ideas and thinking of how to achieve them. Then came outreach, emailing venues, schools, individual artists, potential volunteers, and professionals. We even got a booth at a CTE event. Between Braskem and other funding resources we spent a lot of time perfecting and practicing our pitches to try to get as much funding as possible to make RocketFest 2026 special. This meant creating slideshow presentations, and writing speeches. A film festival can’t happen without getting the word out there, so I spent a lot of time making graphics and posters. Our work was rounded out with logistical tasks; creating the submission form, organizing volunteers, planning day-of logistics, spending our funding money, and nailing down a venue. RocketFest has been a great learning process for me, and I plan on keeping a lot of the lessons I learned this year in mind during my coming years. The biggest lesson being that you can never be too ahead. At the start of the year we were so ahead of the curve, but as the year went on we began to slowly fall more and more down because of the “we’re ahead” mentality. So going forward I know not to get too cocky.