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

An Old Marriage: For my capstone I decided that I would write a book. To be more specific I decided to write a book that covers different aspects of how people receive and show love. The process of making this book has been nothing short of hours and hours of reading and interviews, with various people, on the personal experiences they have had in their lives; while also simultaneously reading dissertations written by human behaviorist and how they studied the brain, observing how interactions drive our minds especially in areas of connecting with people. While I have digged in the nooks and crannies trying to figure out the true definition of human relationships and how we experience love: I’ve come to find myself in my writing. Not only has writing this book helped me understand the people around me it has taught me a major lesson, “no one is looking at you but yourself, and it takes surrounding yourself with people who love you, no matter the circumstance; for you to realize that you are enough.”

Best, Mila Rosario

Sports and Media have been the essence of my four-year journey here at SLA. Having been raised in an environment where sports have consistently been the thread that brings us together, I’ve always been captivated by the impact sports can have in forming a community. As a Digital Video student, it was important to me to make my Senior Capstone reflective of this, thus I set out to plan, organize, and host Media Days for our athletes here at SLA. There were certainly some unforeseen challenges that arose, such as real-life situations where we had scheduling conflicts, miscommunication, and even personal struggles with managing time. Despite not being able to document every sport that I had initially set out to, I would never give up. Overall, the goal of this project was to ensure that my peers felt recognized and honored for their efforts. This Capstone allowed me to gain invaluable experience in accountability and professionalism when it comes to planning and executing projects. This project has taught me the critical nature of holding yourself accountable, even if there will be some bumps along the way.

Annotated Bibliography: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d-mcaThLrYz84OcKzSaO6ItaEEuFUKl0EBfc1-Id9nI/edit?usp=sharing

Nearly every baseball player who plays the catcher position experiences some sort of knee pain before they even step foot on a high school diamond. Many are unable to even get to high school while playing the position full-time. Catchers are lucky to get through all four years without some sort of physical therapy, extensive time off, or, oftentimes, complete knee surgeries. I am a catcher who, like many others, has faced severe knee pain in both legs before the age of 18. The common short-term solution is to invest in a knee brace. However, knee braces are expensive and rarely work comfortably in an active setting. This is why I chose to take on the challenge of creating a personal brace that fits all of my needs in a cost-effective manner. This project took months of research to understand a multitude of extremely complex anatomical and mechanical systems. Because of this knowledge, the design phase of this project went fairly quickly, from initial sketches to digital drawings and finally to fabric stencils. However, the production element was less smooth. Things kept breaking, which meant I had to use alternative, less time-efficient methods. For instance, I was forced to sew the entire brace by hand. Through the setbacks, I am extremely happy with my final product. I achieved everything I wanted to achieve with the brace. I also filmed my entire process and produced it into a YouTube-style video for public enjoyment or anyone who feels hopeless, facing similar circumstances.

https://youtu.be/8qWvV7-Ew24

CTE Community Engagement: For my capstone, I provided digital media services to my community through photography and videography. I was the club photographer for SOCA (Student of Color Association), ran my own workshop for the April art show, filmed and edited staff interviews for incoming SLA students, and even helped my teacher on a music video gig for an upcoming rapper and much, much more. Considering I switched my capstone twice, I am proud of my work and all the activities I participated in this year, as it gave me the networking skills I need in order to thrive in whatever career path I take in the future.

I aided the following students’ capstones,

-Yun (Art show exhibition)

-Matthew Zematitis (Filmed and edited staff Interviews)

-Magda (Weekly SOCA photographer)

-Destiny Harris (Senior Signature film)

-Quincy (Filmed sports games)

-Reese (Documented & assisted classes)

-Abby (Assistant photographer for media day)

-Angel (Consulted Digvid equipment room additions)

Link to my Portfolio:

https://tinyurl.com/ys3pvh4h

As the year ends and my Capstone must come to a conclusion, I present a work that represents the ability that has been given to me by going to the SLA CTE Film Program. In Freshman year, everyone heard that as their final graduation requirement they would need to submit a major project, one that was built by your creativity and based on everything you learned from the school and honored your beliefs and the school’s well being. Immediately after hearing this, I immediately saw an opportunity to seize the moment and crystallize my idea of making one of my dreams start to come true. To make this project a horror film, and one true to me. This is not my Magnum Opus, but a beginning to the rest of my life and my carrier, I will seek more and more improvement as this was a great learning experience, please enjoy my spooky film!!

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17fVQolaxbeEQ5sO-XVTnpcKB9hJyiD1I?usp=sharing

Digital Video students at SLA work tirelessly to produce documentaries, narrative films, and experimental projects, yet once those films are turned in and presented, they largely disappear. They get buried in the cloud, forgotten, and never seen again. Digflix was created to change that.

Digflix is a student-built website designed to archive and celebrate the work of Dig Vid students by giving their films a permanent, accessible home. The site was built with a bright, intentional design to reflect the creativity of the students it showcases. Each film is accompanied by a written reflection from the filmmaker covering their creative process, the tools they used, what they are proud of, and what they want viewers to take away.

The project began with a Google Form sent to current and former Dig Vid students, collecting both their films and their reflections. From there, films were uploaded to YouTube as unlisted videos and embedded on the site, with reflections shaped into cohesive paragraphs. Building the site from scratch with no prior web development experience required significant independent research and problem solving at every stage.

Digflix matters because it fills a gap that is easy to overlook but hard to ignore once you see it. It extends the life of student work, provides future filmmakers with a reference for what is possible, and turns a pattern of loss into a lasting celebration of creativity and growth.

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.

For my Senior Capstone, I created The Nurse’s Truth, a YouTube channel featuring interviews with four nursing specialists; a nurse practitioner, neuro ICU nurse, a CRNA, and a nurse midwife. These interviews are to help students explore nursing as a profession and more importantly the different things you can do as a nurse. The project grew from my own journey of discovering that nurses, not doctors, provide the hands-on patient care that I always wanted to give. After my own curiosity, I wanted to make sure that these insights were available to others too. All interviews were conducted over Zoom, which solved the logistical challenge of one subject joining from Costa Rica. Filming spanned three weeks, coordinated around busy nursing schedules. Post-Production took roughly 20 hours, including editing, graphics, music, and designing the channel branding in Photoshop. I independently managed every aspect of this project; the proposal, outreach, scheduling, filming, and publishing. This project has become a significant milestone in my personal growth. My hope is that The Nurse’s Truth serves SLA students considering nursing, and inspires CTE peers to connect their programs with their passions.

YOUTUBE CHANNEL: https://youtube.com/@thenursestruth?si=JbRBjCIe3pUt9Hj6

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FsQNvOce1tF6cBUkJZTn7yDgP-JNs2Hlr3j0aY5Hfnk/edit?usp=drivesdk