For my capstone, I led Rocketfest 2025 along with Noah Callender and Mira Khurana. We separated ourselves into three departments: Communications, Marketing, and Presentation. Rocketfest is a student-led film festival that accepts films and photographs from inside the Philadelphia school district. This year, we introduced the concept of an award ceremony to highlight the winners and really make all of the artists included feel special. Our main goal throughout this capstone was to make students feel seen through their work and inspire creativity by giving them a ground to be recognized for their art. Leading Rocketfest highlighted the importance of recognition to me, and how a little can go a long way. Attached below are two photographs from the festival, along with the annotated bibliography that helped me bring Rocketfest to life.

I decided to produce a short film for my capstone because I’m in the Digital Video CTE elective. My film follows a girl who has a gaming addiction as a metaphor for other types of addiction that people go through. I chose to do this because I wanted to create a project combining all of the knowledge I learned throughout the DigVid program, from pre-production in scriptwriting, storyboarding, filming, and editing. My capstone encompasses the core values of SLA: inquiry, from wondering what my film should be about; research, from digging through tons of inspirational experimental and narrative short films; collaboration, from working closely with my mentor and actor to get the best final product; presentation, from editing and posting about it. Throughout this process, I learned that I have to push myself to do what I must do. Nobody else is going to make me to do my requirements. If I did my capstone all over again, I would probably get started earlier and not procrastinate as much, I would have had more time to shoot my scenes, get them as perfect as possible, and reshoot scenes that needed to be done again.

https://myalbum.com/album/dvfzohZdtKUY8i/?invite=ae88118a-9f00-4caf-929b-dab1f57b3149

For my capstone project, I focused on improving my photography and editing skills by doing a pre-wedding photoshoot for my cousin. I worked closely with her to understand her vision. She shared what kind of vibe she wanted, her favorite poses, and her preferences for editing. I did a lot of research on how to adjust my camera settings and used tutorials for editing software like Lightroom and After Effects to get better at editing photos. The photoshoot had four different parts: formal outfits, two cultural outfits, and a morning shoot with bridesmaids. I took around 1,800 raw photos and picked the best 430 to edit. Editing was a long and detailed process, removing unwanted objects, smoothing skin, fixing lighting, and making everything look natural. I watched online tutorials to learn how to do these things efficiently, especially to make skin look clearer and remove distractions. Throughout this project, I learned a lot not just about editing, but also about managing my time, communicating with others, being patient, and paying attention to small details. It was challenging at times, especially when I felt tired or unmotivated, but I stayed focused because I wanted to create something my cousin would love. In the end, I’m really proud of the photos and how much I’ve improved. My cousin loved the final results, and I got positive feedback, which made all the hard work worth it. This experience taught me a lot about photography, editing, and perseverance, and I’m glad I took on this project.

My capstone project aimed to connect the engineering and digital media CTE programs at Science Leadership Academy by developing a fully functional 3D-printed 2-axis gimbal system for my Canon R100 camera and creating a 3D Blender product showreel to advertise it. However, it turned into something greater - a lesson that I can take with me outside of school. I created an experimental documentation process of what this journey looked like.

Link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17tW0ST2gsUWR6ZL7ecmlnvNTTUE0VVKf?usp=sharing

For my Senior Capstone, I collaborated with my classmate Twyla to create a digital map of public bathrooms in Philadelphia. Our project was inspired by a simple but frustrating urban experience: not knowing where to find a clean, accessible public bathroom when you need one. Twyla handled most of the coding for the website, while I contributed to data collection, created a gallery of bathroom-related media and articles, wrote an introduction for the website’s homepage, and designed all of the graphic elements. Together, we visited bathrooms around Center City, rated them on criteria like cleanliness and accessibility, and used that data to populate our interactive map.

https://where2wizz.vercel.app/