about | mar an films

Maria is based in Los Angeles where she works as a video producer and animator.

She has professional experience in a variety of areas including directing, producing, animating, scriptwriting, editing, audio mixing, sound design, & various Sound Crew roles & Art Department production work. She has created a myriad of visual art for various clients since 2016. Her career goals include working in animation, writing and development for television, and film production.

Maria began working as a freelance journalist & photographer while attending high school. In junior college, she studied broadcast, radio, television & film production. She then transferred to Syracuse University, where she earned a B.F.A in Film & Transmedia, along with a minor in Women & Gender Studies. The College of Visual & Performing Arts film program focused on "total filmmaking" approach - including film history creative and technical aspects of production as well as writing, producing, and directing short films at least once per semester. Maria was also enrolled in VPA's Bologna Film Program where she further studied European cinema and cinematography in Bologna, Italy. Maria worked as a videographer, editor, social media coordinator, and transcriber for the Feminist Freedom Warriors while attending Syracuse. Maria has deep interests in animation, and had the privilege of studying a variety of animation mediums - including traditional & experimental stop-motion, drawn-on-film direct animation, and some computer animation under David Hicock, Gail Hoffman, and Kelly Gallagher before graduating in 2019.

Before the pandemic hit, she worked as a Production Assistant for Shed Media and Yale Entertainment in Central New York. In December 2020, she was hired to produce videos for Buzzfeed Unsolved Network in Los Angeles. She produced a new series called Forest Phenomenon, a web series that would cover cryptids, mysteries, and paranormal events taking place in the American Wilderness. She also produced episodes for Buzzfeed Unsolved Network's Haunting History web series, which centers on macabre historical events, ghost stories, supernatural entities, and mythology, and produced two episodes of Buzzfeed's unscripted web series I Survived, which involves survivors of tragic events and disasters telling their stories.

Maria collaborates with other artists, musicians, and creators regularly and has been commissioned to create a variety of stop-motion projects. Since 2022, she has worked a variety of roles, including freelance video producer, assistant editor and stop-motion animation production assistant. She particularly loves experimental animation, documentary, and writing comedic and dramatic half-hour scripts, sketches and short films.

She firmly believes that film is one of the most powerful mediums of art, and it's crucial to be honest about the subject, showing who and what they are, flaws and all.