Clare Keady, Stephanie McClintic, and Tommy Cattalani, are all seniors at Skaneateles High School. Avid members of the High School Drama Club and the school's productions, they are all very well-rounded students. By using their many talents, they created a short film called “The Last Donut.” The short film stars two friends played by Skaneateles High School Seniors, Ryan Persampieri and Braden Gryzlo, going through a series of events and traveling back in time to fight for the “last donut”. Seniors Elsa Marshall and Caroline McSwain helped out with acting and costumes as well! Tommy described the process of how they came about this idea for the film, “After researching what we were interested in we came up with an idea for a movie over multiple styles and genres each of us enjoyed.” Between the three of them, they each wrote a portion of the script as well as co-directed. After 6 months of working together, they submitted the film to the All-American High School Film Festival and eventually, they found out their film was selected for the Festival in New York City! 

Fast forward to October of this year, Clare, Stephanie, and Tommy took the trip down to NYC with their families to attend the festival. Clare described the experience as, “a nice break from everything to take a moment and appreciate all our hard work.” During their trip, they were able to see their film, as well as other films submitted by students all around the world, screened at the AMC theater in Times Square. The next day, they headed into the awards ceremony at Kings Theater in Brooklyn. Although they didn’t win any of the awards given out, they won the Award of Distinction for the Cayuga Film Festival and should be extremely proud of themselves for everything they’ve accomplished! “For it being a few kids making a low-budget short film for fun, I was initially surprised we were chosen, but it really showed our hard work and dedication in the end”. Said Stephanie 

 However, Clare, Tommy, and Stephanie wanted to shine a light on the person they can not thank enough and whom “we have not been able to do without” they all agreed. Skaneateles High School teacher, Brian Franco. “Mr. Franco dedicated his time to help us create this film and was the reason this was able to become a reality. He was the one who suggested we do this. He supplied us with equipment, taught us how to use it, stayed late nights at the school to supervise, and came with us to NYC.” Just some of the examples that were used to express their gratitude towards his help in creating this film. 

Clare, Stephanie, and Tommy are all sure to continue to impress us all with their amazing talents. Keep an eye out for Clare and Stephanie's new upcoming film called “Deluded Love.”! If you are interested in watching “The Last Donut”, you can check it out on Clare’s Instagram account, “@clare_films!“