Marisol Ávila shot her first short on a borrowed camera in a parking lot off Mount Vernon Avenue. Two years later, the fourteen minutes she cut in the Valley post lab screened for a room of working television editors.
The path was not a straight line. It ran through night shifts, a full course load, and a crew of eleven classmates who agreed to give up four consecutive nights for a film with no budget.
Four nights, eleven people
“Last Bus North” was scheduled around everyone's jobs. Call time was 9 p.m. Wrap was whenever the light came back. The production used college equipment exclusively, which meant the schedule bent around checkout windows as much as around the sun.
“Nobody was waiting for permission. We had the gear for four nights, so we shot for four nights.”
Marisol Ávila
The short took Best Student Short at the Inland Empire Film Festival in 2026. What happened next mattered more: an alum who cuts episodic television in Burbank saw the edit and asked who assembled it.
What comes next
Ávila is developing a second short and mentoring first-year camera students. The festival run continues into the spring.
