Hardcore Hall Monitor was my final attempt at the Ten Day Film Challenge of my high school career. We planned pre-production extensively for this project, and I wrote the script almost alone. Felix’s concept was about a high school hall monitor who took his job way too seriously, with Wes Anderson-like camerawork. The 3-4 minute time restriction was the hardest part of this film, as the script I wrote would have been much better suited for a 10 minute feature. In production we had to cut several scenes that would have been able to tie the story together more smoothly. We also decided to use Mr. Herman as the school principal, which was allowed as long as his role was minimal enough not to be credited. The edited film was one of the best looking movies I’ve ever worked on, but the abruptness of the film and Mr. Hermans large role caused us not to qualify for the competition. In my opinion, this was the best movie I had ever submitted to the challenge, and with more time and less rules, having gone to nationals I think that it could have beat most films there. I was disappointed that we didn’t make it in, but ultimately satisfied with what we accomplished in such a short amount of time.

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Actors: Joaquin Thomas, Cassandra Hand, Douglas Herman, Tito Mazzucchi

Director: Felix Shafroth Doty

Writer: Zoe Andersson

Producers:  Cacy Thomas, Daouda Njie, Wes Midgett, Siani Davis

Director of Photography: Mark Kreigh

Sound Designer: Juliana Concepcion

Editors: Mark Kreigh and Juliana Concepcion

Anatomy of a Scene in Breakfast at Tiffany’s was another project that was not a Dig-Vid assignment. The anatomy of a scene project was given to us by Mrs. Giknis in our Reel Reading class, where we watch, write about, and analyze films. This project involved choosing a movie, taking extensive notes on it, and picking a scene to contextualize and analyze the deeper meaning behind, and it’s relationship to the film as a whole. Cacy and I chose the 1961 classic Breakfast at Tiffany’s and analyzed the scene where Holly Golightly meets her neighbor Paul Varjak for the first time. Writing my own dissection of the film helped me understand the characters better, and the finished result looked polished and professional. This video essay is another example of my progress in editing and I’m very proud of how it turned out.

Writers: Cacy Thomas and Zoe Andersson

Editor: Zoe Andersson

Tiles was a fun relief from the arduous process of Dear Diary. Isabella, Indee, Hanna and I set about making a short horror movie that involved a person in one room. We had many different concepts at first, then once we decided we wanted it to be set in a bathroom, our plan came together. The film is about a girl struggling with her mental health and goes to the bathroom for relief, only to be haunted by mysterious figure, or her paranoia. We wanted her monster to be ambiguous and never seen, but implied; Indee played this role convincingly. I think that we ended up accomplishing our goals in the span of a short movie that evokes a sense of uneasiness in its viewers.

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Actor: Indee Phillpotts

Directors: Hanna Dunakin, Isabella D’Angelo, Indee Phillpotts, Zoe Andersson

Writer: Zoe Andersson

Camera Operators: Hanna Dunakin, Isabella D’Angelo

Editor: Zoe Andersson

The production for the continuation of Dear Diary was hastily completed. After my group’s disappointment with not meeting the February deadline for our film, we were all less than thrilled to keep working on this film into second half of the month. We completed the rest of our scenes in two stressful Saturdays at my house and some time over the week in school, through which some scenes turned out better than others. The Disney flair was pushed to the side to concentrate on our new deadline which required editing between shoots and a fair amount of rescheduling and planning. The finished film is about 14 minutes, making it both the longest film we’ve ever made and the longest production time. Though my acting is less than perfect in this film, I think back to sophomore year and how afraid I was to act in movies and I now see how much more confident I’ve become in my own abilities. My friends reassured me throughout the film and we finished with a film that we can all laugh at together. Despite its many (many) flaws, Dear Diary: The Movie was a senior year memory that I’ll always remember.

Actors: Zoe Andersson, Cassandra Hand, Isabella D’Angelo, Indee Phillpotts, Xavier Carroll, Lyle Seitz, Cacy Thomas

Director: Zoe Andersson

Writers: Zoe Andersson, Cassandra Hand, Isabella D’Angelo, Indee Phillpotts

Producers: Xavier Carroll, Juliana Concepcion, Cacy Thomas

​The making of the trailer for my longest film to date was racked with complications. Mr. Herman gave us our longest project yet, with pre-production designed to be completed over winter break and editing finished by the beginning of February. My group had the idea of a parody of a Disney Channel Original, a film that followed all of the conventions of a High School Musical- type movie only about my life. I was cast as the lead actor by my friends and I reluctantly agreed. Pre-production was slow and by the time winter break rolled around, we had very little planning completed, with many of our scenes visualized, but nothing concrete. When we came back, we began filming in late January with only some idea of the direction we wanted to go. This made it difficult for us to film, and the days we did work, we were only to complete one or two scenes in the span of an 8 hour day. As the deadline approached, we realized that we only had enough footage for a trailer, and the the full-length film would have to be put out later that month. Though it is short, I think this intro to the movie includes the best composed scenes in the film, despite our setbacks.

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Actors: Zoe Andersson, Cassandra Hand, Isabella D’Angelo, Indee Phillpotts, Xavier Carroll, Lyle Seitz, Cacy Thomas

Director: Zoe Andersson

Writers: Zoe Andersson, Cassandra Hand, Isabella D’Angelo, Indee Phillpotts

Producers: Xavier Carroll, Juliana Concepcion, Cacy Thomas

This was one of the few projects that I did not make for my Digital Video class. This documentary about the Violence Against Women Act examines its path to becoming a law and the circumstances through which it was passed. It was made as a project for my American Government class, but I think that it serves as an example of my advancement in editing in Premiere. I am really happy with how nice this documentary looks, as well as how informative it is.

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Writers and Voiceover: Cacy Thomas, Cassandra Hand, Zoe Andersson

Editor: Zoe Andersson

Broken Mirror is an experimental film playing with tones of lighting. This film felt like my first true project of Senior year, because the film invitational happened so early on. In the past I had only use lighting kits in large productions, but I wanted to use them more commonly in my films. My group decided that we would play with different colored gels and corresponding colds to create different emotional reactions. While the purple and green lit Cassie looks mischievous and playful, Cacy under the harsh green light looks sinister and insane. The editing and music pair up to create different emotional scenes that correspond to their lighting and actors. I think that this piece looks visually beautiful and accomplishes this goal.

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Actors: Cacy Thomas, Cassandra Hand, Indee Phillpotts, Zoe Andersson

Directors: Cacy Thomas, Cassandra Hand, Indee Phillpotts, Zoe Andersson

Camera Operator: Cacy Thomas, Cassandra Hand, Indee Phillpotts, Zoe Andersson

Editors: Zoe Andersson

Media Darling was one of the most difficult, but rewarding films I’ve made. In October of my senior year, our school’s production company, Rough Cut Productions, was invited to the All American High School Film Festival Invitational to compete with over 50 other schools in a three day filmmaking competition in New York City. Only twenty kids from our program (including myself) were able to attend and make a film in three days in New York City. The competition was hosted by AT&T and our films had to be about cyberbullying subsequently. For this project, my group put almost all of our efforts into pre-production so that we could film everything we needed to quickly once we got to New York. The train ride and sleepless nights left us exhausted, and of course, nothing about shooting went according to plan. From location debacles to group arguments, this movie made our group become rivals at times and closest friends at others. By the end, our team persevered and managed to make one of the best looking movies the program has ever produced in a very short amount of time. Media Darling made it into the top 8 and won $1000 for Rough Cut. The invitational was an experience I’ll never forget and I’m so happy to have shared it with my production team.

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Actors: Cacy Thomas, Declan Zisser, Nat Hilton

Director: Mark Kriegh

Assistant Director: Kate Kopf

Director of Photography: Felix Shafroth Doty

Producers: Felix Shafroth Doty, Zoe Andersson, Lyle Seitz

Writers: Cacy Thomas, Declan Zisser, Mark Kriegh, Nat Hilton, Lyle Seitz, Zoe Andersson

Sound Designer: Juliana Concepcion

Costuming, Makeup, Set Design: Wes Midgett

Good Habits was my final film of Junior year, and another production with big ideas. Our final film was instructed to be longer than most we had created. We began brainstorming and came up with our idea quickly but, as they usually are, proved too difficult for us to accomplish in such a short period of time. The experimental movie follows a girl alone at a party that goes on a drug-induced trip through the forest. The movie was shot over the course of two weekends, making it, at that time, the longest shoot we had ever done. The party scenes were shot in my basement with a smoke machine, and for the scenes in the woods we used a high tech motion-sensing monopod. Our inability with the device caused some of the shaking in those shots. After editing the forest scenes, we realized that more effects were needed to make it look dreamlike, and some that we chose ended up looking out of place in the end. Despite this, I am still happy with this movie and the memories I made while making it.

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Actors: Hannah Bromley, Cacy Thomas, Cassandra Hand, Emma Deckop, Indee Phillpotts, Skylar Scafidi, Xavier Carroll

Director: Zoe Andersson

Camera Operator: Cassandra Hand, Zoe Andersson

Producers: Luke Watson Sharer, Cassandra Hand, Indee Phillpotts, Xavier Carroll

Editors: Indee Phillpotts, Zoe Andersson

Les Be Friends was my second endeavor in the Ten Day Film Challenge. Once again, our class participated in the Ten Day Film Challenge, a non profit competition for student filmmakers to script, create, and edit a film in ten days. Each year, the competition sends a list of categories to choose from along with a required character, required line, required object, and a required shot. This year, we chose the Romance category, and decided to make a film about a girl who is secretly in love with her best friend. The filming process happened very fast and because of the sloppy editing and unfitting music, none of us expected the film to get far. However, Indee and Anastasia’s acting made the film get far enough to win third place overall in the regional competition, and our film had the opportunity to be shown on the National awards stage. The Ten Day Film Challenge national awards ceremony was held at the Constitution Center, and though we didn’t win any awards nationally, we were still proud that we had made it so far.

Actors: Anastasia Petropoulos, Indee Phillpotts, Xavier Carroll

Director: Zoe Andersson

Camera Operator: Juliana Concepcion, Zoe Andersson

Producers: Cacy Thomas

Editors: Indee Phillpotts, Juliana Concepcion, Zoe Andersson

Orange Man is a reminder of how important it is to plan a film out before production. I included it on the list not because it helped me grow or because I like the final product, but because it serves as an example of what happens when production falls apart. At this point in our Dig-vid career, our class had come to the point where Mr. Herman didn’t really have project guidelines for our films, more like timeframes by which we had to complete them. The original concept for this movie is about a boy who buys an apple that speaks to him, convincing him to eat his classmates. I was involved mostly in the pre-production of this movie, as I had to leave for vacation before filming began. I saw the video when I got back and saw how far it had strayed from the original concept. The film that was made was poorly planned, and many plot points had to be reworked to deal with time restrictions. We earned a bad grade on this movie, and rightfully so, but I never forgot how crucial it is to stand by your concept and stick to a plan, even if timing is not in your favor.

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Actors: Cassandra Hand, Tomas Arango, Xavier Carroll

Directors: Indee Phillpotts, Xavier Carroll

Camera Operator: Indee Phillpotts, Juliana Concepcion

Producers: Cassandra hand, Zoe Andersson

Editors: Indee Phillpotts, Juliana Concepcion

Cacy Does Her Thing is a short documentary about people doing what they love. This assigned project was for our class to create documentaries on any topic of our choice. Inspired by Valentine’s Day, I chose to make a movie about what the day can mean to different people. We had originally wanted three people with different passions to talk about what they love to do, but the two other interviews we filmed were not nearly as good as Cacy’s, so we made it all about her. The short interview is a getting-to-know Cacy Thomas more than the meaning of V-day, but it’s editing allows it to get back on track in the end. It is not our most complex movie cinematically, but Cacy’s beautiful voice more than makes up for the dullness of the room.

Actor: Cacy Thomas

Directors: Indee Phillpotts, Xavier Carroll, Zoe Andersson

Camera Operator: Juliana Concepcion

Editors: Zoe Andersson

Blind Date was one of our largest and most complicated plans for a film at the time. The project was to reinvent an old tale or story, and our group chose the myth of Medusa to take on. This was a contested decision, and we didn’t have a firm plan for what we wanted for the film until the day before we shot. The film is about a lonely man who is stood up on a blind date at a museum, only to meet a mysterious woman at the museum who seduces him. We had high hopes for this film, and decided that we wanted to film the date scene at the Rodin museum because of the sculptures there. The end result was a overly dramatic, clunkily acted, unintentional vintage parody. Mr. Herman once said that it would be better with the actors on mute. I think that this movie is one of the funniest we’ve made, and the fun (and stressful) time we had shooting it is easy to see on camera.

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Actors: Emma Deckop, Lyle Seitz

Directors: Indee Phillpotts, Xavier Carroll, Zoe Andersson

Camera Operator: Juliana Concepcion

Editors: Zoe Andersson

Who is the City changed the way I approach filming. In Junior year I was in a new digital video class with many of my friends who I hadn’t made movies with before. Rifah left Dig-vid so I no longer had her as my teammate. The first Dig Vid project of Junior year was to choose a poem and make a spoken word film to go alongside it. Many people took literal interpretations of the poems they chose, but Indee and I wanted to take a more abstract approach to ours. Because our poem was about the definition of a city through its people, our goal was to walk around Philly and capture people and scenes that we thought embodied Philadelphia. We got four of our classmates to read the poem aloud, and the end result turned out better than we could've imagined. It is still one of my favorite pieces I’ve done, despite the pretentiously artsy poem. Watching it still puts me in rittenhouse walking around with Indee and Lyle and daring each other to talk to people.

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Actors:  Indee Phillpotts, Lyle Seitz, Xavier Carroll, Many people on the streets of Philadelphia

Directors: Indee Phillpotts and Zoe Andersson

Editor: Zoe Andersson

My final film of sophomore year was my take on an art film. Looking back at this film, it seems like a culmination of all of my work in Dig-Vid my sophomore year. The film is about a boy who receives a bad grade on a test, causing him to go on a journey and reexamine his outlook on life. I remember finishing this movie right before the year was over and being unhappy with the final result, partially due to how rushed filming was. Seeing it again, I can see how much I progressed in my Sophomore year and cumulative this really movie was.

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Actors: Jaiye Omowamide, Ashlye Fitzmaurice, Xavier Carroll

Director: Rifah Islam, Zoe Andersson

Camera Operator: Tianna Mcnair, Rifah Islam

Editor: Zoe Andersson

This short movie was a fun change of genre. I honestly don't remember what the guidelines were for this, only that we became set on making a horror movie. Up until this film, I had never done anything like a horror or a thriller piece so I was excited to try. The film is about a woman on a jog who is followed and eventually chased by a mysterious figure in a black coat. I had originally wanted Xavier to play to role of the stalker, but with few options left, I was left to chase Ashley. This is also the movie where I realized most of my shots look better in black and white (a principal that I would disagree with now). This movie sparked a silent, black and white phase in my filmography, particularly with my more experimental films.

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Actors: Ashlye Fitzmaurice, Zoe Andersson

Director: Zoe Andersson

Camera Operator: Rifah Islam

Editor: Zoe Andersson

The Speech is a film that helped advance many of my skills in filmmaking. This was my first year making a movie for the 10 Day Film Challenge, a non profit competition for student filmmakers to script, create, and edit a film in 10 days. Each year, the competition sends a list of categories to choose from along with a required character, required line, required object, and a required shot. These requirements and the short time frame often make it difficult to produce a movie that stands out. Our movie is a mockumentary, written and directed by Eamon Kelly, is about a boy who wins an award for his essay and is forced to give a speech to the school. I acted as his friend who was reassuring, but unsure of his success. This was my first scripted acting role, after which i took a hiatus from until Dear Diary: The Movie. This was due to how bad I thought (and still think) I did acting in this film. Of all of the movies I’ve made, I actually feel like this is one that I had some of the least say in, because I was generally just acting. We ended up winning 3rd place overall in the region, and the awards show was a great experience even though we didn’t get to go to nationals.

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Actors: Eamon Kelly, Javier Peraza, Zoe Andersson

Director: Eamon Kelly

Writer: Eamon Kelly

Camera Operator: Rifah Islam

Editor: Eamon Kelly

The Super Bowl ad was another sophomore year project that I look back on fondly. The project involved picking an amount of time for an ad slot out of a hat, and creating an ad that would run during the Super Bowl. We chose an ad for Doritos and ran with it. Upon Mr. Herman’s suggestion, we made a mock western standoff over a Dorito using the theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. This movie was the first i made where I appeared on screen; I had no lines but it was still a stepping stone in my acting career at SLA. More importantly, this movie was one of the first that made me comfortable with editing using adobe Premiere. I still take pride in the Doritos logo at the end.

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Actors: Alicia Jones, Jaiye Omowamide, Zoe Andersson

Directors: Rifah Islam, Zoe Andersson

Camera Operator: Rifah Islam

Editor: Zoe Andersson

The Emotional Minute Project was one of the highlights of my sophomore year in Dig-Vid. The project was to make a one minute film that, given no description, could be watched and clearly displays one emotion. Rifah and I worked together again to try and make a film that encapsulated nervousness. The film is about a woman waiting nervously for her presumed date at a cafe in the cold, but they never show up. I had originally wanted to act in this piece, but chickened out due to my confidence being on camera. We shot on a freezing January day, and Rifah and I wanted an authentic cold breath for Tianna to blow out. The end result is an artsy movie that helped mold the tone of my many films to come. The stark difference between The Pitch and this film still shocks me; I was very proud of this movie after its completion.

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Actor: Tianna Mcnair

Directors: Rifah Islam, Zoe Andersson

Camera Operators: Rifah Islam, Zoe Andersson

Editor: Zoe Andersson

My first real movie in Dig-Vid, made in my sophomore year, is one of my most ambitious ideas to date. This five minute story about two competing movie pitches was made with help from my friend and sophomore year collaborator, Rifah Islam. I wrote the script and drew the pictures for Ben’s pitch, and Rifah filmed and directed. The WeVideo editing and awful cuts make this movie hard to watch now, but seeing it again also makes me remember how much fun this was to make and how much it serves as a reminder of one of the first times I felt at home at SLA.

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Actors: Otter Jung-Allen, Veronica Nocella, Benjamin Simon

Directors: Rifah Islam, Zoe Andersson

Writer: Zoe Andersson

Camera operator: Rifah Islam

Artist: Zoe Andersson