Nick Going

A film and video production senior, Nick Going is showing off his chops in the “I Dream in Widescreen” thesis film showcase on May 12 at the Fox Tucson Theatre.

“I think the most rewarding part is the ending,” Going said in an interview with the Daily Wildcat in April. “I love creating an idea, then I hate everything until you’re back into editing. You see writer-producers or producer-directors. I’ve never heard of a writer-editor, but I totally would do that if it existed.”

Going’s work directing his own comedy “Half Amazed” and his post-production work on some of his classmates’ films are just some of the reasons Lisanne Skyler, assistant professor in the School of Theatre, Film and Television, thinks Going will make it in the industry. Skyler has been Going’s teacher for three years.

“He has such enthusiasm for the process, and grabbed on to the technical things really quickly,” she said to the Wildcat. “He’s really found an area that I think he’s going to shine in.”

Going is looking to move after graduation with to an industry job on one of the coasts.

— Reporting contributed by Kate Newton

Mariana Ivanovna

After a move that brought her from Moldova to Mexico, Mariana Ivanovna spent close to a decade on the Southern side of the border learning piano and attending school.

But when her father’s job took her to the U.S., she began writing. First poems, then letters, then songs. After a two-year foray into opera and a stint in show choir, Ivanovna realized her passion for music.

“But education, that’s been something that’s been hammered in,” Ivanovna, a marketing senior, said to the Daily Wildcat in April. “You have to have something to rely on. Marketing, I felt, was something I could use. Music is my passion. Marketing, it’s insurance if my passion doesn’t work out.”

A self-proclaimed “daughter of the world,” Ivanovna’s mixed heritage shines in her freshman album “Nada Keda D’ Mi,” a 10-track Spanish pop-rock album. After graduation, Ivanovna’s father and manager will go with her to Mexico City, where she hopes her album will gain traction with a Mexican market that she can use to launch an American career as well. She also hopes to eventually head her own independent label.

— Reporting contributed by Jazmine Woodberry