Photo taken on the set of her thesis, My Moon

​When someone thinks of the City of Angels, everyone believes that it has become a place where your dreams and aspirations become a reality. As the famous advice goes, “To live life as if you are the main character of your own movie”, Aria Haley took a big step to travel to the big city to chase her dream as a filmmaker.
  
Aria is currently a fourth year film student attending Woodbury University pursuing her career gearing towards the development process and assistant directing for future productions. For as long as I have known Aria, she has always been one to stand out to the class as someone who is always asking how you are, consistently giving valuable criticism and compliments on everyone’s work, and will be there to lend a hand to anyone who needs help. While balancing school, she has made a name for herself throughout the Woodbury community and in the film industry, while still being able to take time for herself and making time with those around her.

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Cast & Crew of My Moon when wrapped

Throughout her four years at Woodbury, she has been involved with giving campus tours to prospective students, balancing her schoolwork and social life, working at a job outside of campus and landed an internship position at HeyDay Films (the same production company who brought big pictures such as the Harry Potter collection, Paddington, and Marriage Story).
She says, “My best experience as film student would definitely have to be the semester of Fall 2021 where my colleagues and I went through our thesis production process, I got to learn so much more about what I really wanted to do in the film industry and understanding the ins-and-outs of how rigorous the filmmaking process really is.” ​

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“The only way to get a job in this industry is to really build those connections, so I have been personally messaging people on LinkedIn and trying to stay active as much as I can even if it is just catching up with a friend”. ​

Aria and the 2018 Woodbury Campus Tour Guides

For someone who has a great love for storytelling, Aria shares her own stories in the form of a script to bring them to life through storyboards and collaboration. But how does one balance such a busy lifestyle while still keeping the creativity alive? Since most of her time is spent pursuing her BFA in Filmmaking first, she says, “Think of doing schoolwork and homework as a 9 to 5 job, and once the clock strikes 5pm, continue to work on yourself”
At first, Aria had doubts in wanting to be in the film industry at a young age, she was rejecting herself because she believed that making movies are hard. While that can be the case, she challenged herself into pursuing it and obtained one of the biggest challenges and lessons going into this field: rejection.
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“When you’re constantly hustling to look for your next job or gig, it got difficult because when you apply for a position, you start to picture yourself as if you’ve already gotten it, so when you get rejected or don’t hear back from them at all, it’s disappointing. But it has become a learning experience ... ”

When moving to Los Angeles from Las Vegas, one of the biggest challenges she had to go through was experiencing the COVID and pandemic-era halfway through her college career. “Before [the pandemic], it felt very freeing and new for me, working on projects away from my parents’ house. But when the pandemic was announced, I was staying in the dorms that whole year - it felt very suffocating and alone”. As time passed, Aria still continues to be the one of the most hardworking and most friendly people I know. With her work ethic while still being able to balance her school, work, social, and personal life, she is bound to achieve all of her goals.