Just weeks before the premiere of their feature film “Gilded Lily” at the Warwick Theater on July 6, recent MHS class of 2026 graduates and co-directors Matias Watts Cruz and Cam Gibson sat in a couch in the back of Mookie’s Cafe to reflect on their years-long journey that brought them to the big screen.
Their 90-minute film began as an ambitious idea during their sophomore year of high school. After countless script revisions, months of filming during the summer before their senior year, and nearly a year of post-production editing, the team is putting the finishing touches on the movie and preparing to show it to the Marblehead community- a community that has nurtured their creativity for the past few years. After three years of hard work, the finish line was in sight, and their excitement was palpable. But Gibson and Watts Cruz agree that the final stretch has been the most demanding.
“The emotion I feel the most right now is stress. This is the final lap, and I want everything to be as perfect as it can be,” said Watts Cruz. “So I’m spending every day perfecting it and spending a lot of time and energy getting it done.”
Right now, the team is focusing on completing the three biggest elements of “Gilded Lily’s” post-production: audio, music and color grading. They have spent countless hours in head editor Lucas Rosen’s studio, streamlining the audio to limit background noise and enhance the dialogue. Nick Flores, another recent MHS graduate, is working on the music score, while Rosen and Quinn Schieb are refining the film’s color grading.
The idea for “Gilded Lily” was born back in the filmmakers’ sophomore year of high school, after Watts Cruz and a few other students participated in then-MHS junior Wyatt Foley’s short film, “Currently a Paperboy” during the summer.
“For a long long time I was really into stories, but I never really had a medium until I acted in “Currently a Paperboy,” and got excited about moviemaking,” said Watts Cruz. One day after filming, Watts Cruz and fellow sophomore Quinn Scheib had the idea to make their own movie, and got to work on a script. “That’s where ‘Gilded Lily’ started,” he said.
Gibson says he always loved film, but since he spent most of his youth playing football, he never really got a chance to fully explore it.
“I never really had an outlet for it,” said Gibson. But after having to hang up his cleats during his sophomore year due to a recurring injury, he got involved with writing the early renditions of the script. Over sophomore and junior year, they continued working on the script, and the team grew.
“We just had more and more people working on the project, coming in, looking at the script, analyzing the ideas behind the story, and bringing their ideas to the table,” said Watts Cruz. “The vision was definitely made richer and deeper by all the people who came in to help.”
It took all of their sophomore and junior year to develop a full 98-page movie script, and over time, the story found its shape. The film depicts a group of young filmmakers, much like the ones who wrote it, who attempt to film a movie set in 19th-century Marblehead. However, it doesn’t go quite as smoothly as the real project did, as ambition and pride derails the filmmakers’ plans and complicates their relationships.
“We went through a lot of renditions, a lot of after-school meetings,” Gibson said. “It was an in-depth process, but it was also a realistic one. We spent a lot of time really trying to put the pieces together.”
As the script grew, so did the team. When they started filming in June 2025, there were 20 members of the cast and crew, all current or former Marblehead High School students. Watts Cruz and Gibson co-directed the film, Rosen worked as main editor, Quinn Scheib worked as the director of photography, and Brady Weed, Max Kane, Izzy Scotland and Anya Kane were the main actors.
The team spent all of last summer filming over 90 scenes around the north shore, which they described as a grueling, but rewarding, process. They often started filming at the crack of dawn, and didn’t head home until midnight. The co-directors agreed that the intensity was a challenge, but also that it provided an incredible learning experience.
“It was something that was hard,” Gibson added, “but you enjoy it because we were all just so passionate about it.”
Both Matias and Cam plan to continue studying film production in college, taking with them not only technical skills, but also lessons in collaboration and memories from their first feature film.
“It’s taught us so much, not just about film, but about working with people,” Gibson said. “Matias and Quinn are two friends that I’m going to have for the rest of my life. It’s been great to work with people that I really enjoy working with.”
Now, after years of work, the filmmakers are ready to share “Gilded Lily” with the community that watched them grow as artists. Tickets for the premiere on July 6 are reserved for cast, crew and family, while the tickets for July 13 will be sold to the public on Warwick’s website (warwickcinemas.com/).
