Creative Lab Hawaiʻi

Mary Michelle Baghdady

Mary Michelle Baghdady is a designer and producer working in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. She is from Charleston, SC and graduated from Clemson University with a BFA in Visual Arts. She works at the Applied Research Laboratory at UH as a media specialist collaborating with engineers to conceptualize multi-media projects. She won the Hawaiʻi Filmmakers Collective 2018 pitch and completed her first short film, Turn On Your Own, which will screen at the 2019 Made in Hawaiʻi Film Festival. Like Maddah is a web series sitcom following Aimee cope with her meddling mother, rebellious daughter and intrusive Japanese family.

Stacy Fukuhara-Barclay

Stacy Fukuhara-Barclay is an attorney specializing in child-advocacy. She and her husband co-wrote HI Conflict, a drama about a child advocate that cannot stand children. They were 2017 Creative Lab Hawaiʻi Writers Immersive Fellows, and represented Hawaiʻi at the 2017 American Film Market, where they pitched HI Conflict to an audience of over 400 people.

Stacy’s present project is Like Maddah, a web series about a thirty-something-year-old child psychologist who moves back to Hawaii, despite her reservations about her meddling family, and ends up taking a job as a school counselor at her daughter Ella’s school, much to Ella’s horror.

Jeff Katts

Jeff Katts was born and raised in Honolulu, HI and has worked in TV/Film industry for over 22 years. He is currently employed as the studio/media manager at the 1013 Integrated production company and was the original founder of the ‘Ohina Short Film Showcase. LIFE OF A TELEPORTER: THE JACKIE CLAXTON CHRONICLES is a fantasy/action/adventure web series being developed by Mr. Katts that chronicles the adventures of a local girl named Jackie Claxton who has the power of teleportation and uses it in her everyday life to fight evil and save lives throughout the Hawaii Islands.

Kisha Milling

Kisha Milling is a SAG-AFTRA actor and screenwriter based in Kailua, HI. Past acting credits include: Master of None, Quantico, Four Bottles, The Resistance, and In the Name Of. She wrote, acted, and produced the gothic horror short M.E.R.C.Y. and dark comedy SRI LANKA, which can be seen on her YouTube channel Mahina Films.

On weekends you can catch her tossing glitter, paint, and happiness on people though her party entertainment company, Island Girl Face Art. The Entertainers is a dark-comedy webseries that follows the quirky, surrealistic, sometimes inappropriate and often, misunderstood secret lives of those you hire to “bring the party.”

Mitchel Viernes

Mitchel Viernes is an independent filmmaker currently based in Honolulu, Hawai’i. His passion for storytelling through film was fostered through his involvement with the media program at Moanalua High School. He continued his education at the University of Waikato in New Zealand, majoring in film studies. Obake (a current working title) is a dramatic horror web series that follows Kalena Arakawa, a young college student who learns more about her Hawaiian/Japanese heritage when she moves to Hawai’i to live with her uncle and cousin, and uncovers some interesting truths about her family legacy and their connection to the supernatural.