Current Projects
Ashten is currently teaching at the Austin School of Film, where she leads both youth and adult courses in Music Video Production and Digital Filmmaking. Over the past year, she has helped students create original music videos and short films, guiding them through the entire creative process from concept to post-production. This summer, she will continue teaching youth in a Music Video Production Camp and will also be instructing a Music Video Production course for adults.
She also continues her work with Christian Youth Theater Austin, where she recently taught an Introduction to Shakespeare course and is currently wrapping up the academic year with a Musical Theater Scene Study class. She’ll be teaching two theater camps with CYT this summer.
In spring 2025, Ashten was honored to serve as a Guest Artist for the University of Texas at Austin’s Cohen New Works Festival, where she experienced a wide range of original student works and provided creative feedback and mentorship.
She recently shot and edited a dance music video for local Austinite Molly Frazier, which can be viewed here.
Alongside her teaching and freelance production work, Ashten is in pre-production for several new film and theater projects and is excited to bring them to life in the coming months.
Click here for more fun Behind the scenes footage and project updates
‘Not Yet’ A Music Video
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Clair de Lune
Not Yet is an impressionist vignette capturing the wistful and longing nature of Claude Debussy’s famous Clair de Lune. Not Yet combines elements of narrative film, music video, and lyrical dance to tell the story of a young woman whose life is at a tipping point. She has not yet been able to manifest any of her dreams and must choose between submitting to “the real world” or to continue striving against forces of nature that feel insurmountable.
The young woman has been tossed around by life, represented by her full submersion in the water with waves and ripples thrashing around her.
The special arrangement of Clair de Lune by Austin composer Ben Tibbetts haunts the listener as much as soothes. Hope lingers between the melodic lines and anchors the listener amidst the storm and flurry of arpeggios. The music is in itself a living character within this piece. She must find the music, so that she may find herself.
In the end, she chooses to rise above the surface and dance in a victorious expression of her inherent creativity.
‘Jolene’
A Music Video
I had the privilege of working with Andrea Daniela, a local Austin singer-songwriter, during my Middle School Music Video Production Camp at Austin School of Film. The Middle Schoolers came up with the idea for the music video, created the set and storyboarded the entire video! I am very excited to share the music video once we are finished editing.