Behind the scenes.

Rise of Light is an action short film created in the spring of 2021 as my high school senior project. It is based on Star Wars and follows the character of Acacius as he battles inner conflict with the dark side. The film explores what truly motivates people’s actions, as well the price of following different lifestyles.

Since this was a part of my independent study, I created the entire film; my role in the project was writer, director, and editor. The pre-production process took a lot of planning. After rewrites, I made a shot list and a beat sheet to follow for production. I cast reliable friends to act and had my first experience officially directing. I loved the opportunity to work with actors, however, as the DP, I did not have as much time to focus on directing as I would have liked. I had a few friends help out as crew, but mostly took on production alone.

Post production took a huge amount of my production hours due to all of the VFX I included. I worked mostly in Adobe After Effects for all of my visual effects, and the final project ended up much larger than anticipated. Nearly every scene had either a lightsaber or a teleportation that needed editing, and I determinedly faced each scene’s challenges.

The film premiered in my high school’s theater on June 4th, a mere month after post production began, and that was when I knew that I wanted to go into filmmaking. Although I could have done a lot of things better, the experience was one hundred percent worth it, and I am proud of the work I did as a senior in high school.