Pennsylvania “Penny Pearce,” a perpetually-procrastinating student photographer, must pull the greatest all-nighter of her life to complete her entire thesis project—or she won’t graduate in the morning! Completing her thesis, a portrait series of her fellow artists on campus, will require Penny to overcome her conflicted feelings about graduating, but beyond her internal obstacles she confronts the student filmmaker writing her story, whose attempts to bolster his script’s narrative tension jeopardize her project. 

We Must Create Magnificence was Hank McNeil's undergraduate thesis film, completed through the University of Notre Dame's Department of Film, Television, and Theatre in the 2023 - 2024 school year.