Avery Van Harte

West Ranch senior Avery Van Harte developed her passion for film at a young age by making animations with American Girl dolls. The ability to combine components of music, writing and cinematography into a single film captivated Van Harte. Later on, she furthered her interest by joining Rancho Pico TV and West Ranch TV.

During her time at WRTV, Van Harte filmed and edited one of her favorite productions, the Space Jamthemed basketball game promotion video. “It was really fun to work with all the sports teams to make a really fun electric video that gets everyone hyped and excited. Also, editing was to watch like Greta Gerwig, Noah Baumbach and Chloe Zhao. [I love] seeing how talented the people [are] that I have worked with, their ideas, ability to create things and their motivation and determination to continue working in this field every single day,” she said.

As Van Harte is headed off to USC for Cinema and Media Studies at the School of Cinematic Arts, she is excited to learn about the “grander scope of the industry.” As someone who wants to work on productions promoting women and minorities, Van Harte hopes to work for a production that aligns with her values.

“Film, to me, I think it’s such a unique art form and that it can kind of capture a lot of things in one,” Van Harte concluded. “It has the ability to capture so many things about relationships or emotions or just the human condition that a lot of other things don’t have.”

Dante Frangipane

With both his brother and sister in the music industry, West Ranch senior Dante Frangipane hopes that he too can enter the music scene as a producing songwriter. Frangipane will not be pursuing music in college, but his lifelong passion for music has led him to harbor an interest in becoming a sound engineer: someone who helps prepare the audio tracks for hit songs played on the radio.

Frangipane’s inspiration to pursue music comes not only from his siblings, but also from the evolving boundaries of what it takes to create and count as music. “I think the diversity of music and how it’s up for interpretation is really what interests me because anything can be music, it’s really up to the person and what they think and what they like,” Frangipane explained.

Frangipane added that his favorite “genre[s] of music would be alternative rock or hip hop” because of how the genres are “always changing and flowing.” As he continues to be exposed to the ever-changing music industry and songs in his favorite genres, Frangipane hopes to delve deeper into “the different types of music [he] can create and what type of instruments [he] can learn.”

In terms of his future, Frangipane hopes that in five years, he will be “a big name producer or musician.”

Already, Frangipane attributes the success of the solo songs he’s worked on to the individuality of music and his own personal style, saying, “music is subjective, so do what you believe you want to do, [and] don’t conform to other people’s opinions of music.”