Short Films: 'The Grinch: Strikes Back!'

Recently, as a high school student, I joined my school's A/V Tech and Film (a.k.a Broadcast) class. When I say recently, I mean as of last school year. Being in film is something I enjoy thoroughly, and I can even see it in my future as a career. I realize that I am making this sound more like a blog than a "story" or article, however, personality in the first of hopefully many stories may be essential. In today's story, let us explore the creation of this sloppily done, yet "creative" creation of a short film. This film was done by three high school students and edited by two of them. I am included in these three; in fact, that is me laying down on the thumbnail of the video. The video itself was uploaded to my friend's YouTube channel, who is also the creator and writer of this short film.

The Grinch: Strikes Back! is based on Dr. Seuss's How The Grinch Stole Christmas... roughly. If you have already watched the film (or just did) you'll notice no other references to Grinch themes or settings are made other than the antagonist's name: "The Grinch," or just "Grinch." The story of this film is as follows; the Grinch decides that since he has not had a decent Christmas season, ever, no one else should. He preys on two victims to ruin their Christmas: Aaron and Marie. A sequence of events including a capture, a betrayal, and a climatic fight scene occur, eventually leading to the Grinch's death... or does it? The reason for the vague synopsis is because, well, I would certainly like you to watch the unbelievably cringy film.

The creation of this short film took longer than expected for the total three and a half minutes it runs. Quite truthfully, the script was composed in half an hour or less, and the project was initially created due to boredom of us high school students in our A/V class. No, the class itself is not boring, but we had our work done and nothing to do. Naturally our immediate thought is to do a fantastic, yet poorly acted film. We filmed the movie linearly, meaning the sequence of shots seen in the movie is the order they were shot in. This contradicts many big name films, as some scenes that come later in the story are shot even before the first scene in the script. It made it easier to edit in post production. The actual filming of this movie took several weeks, as we could only film during class periods or available seminars (class roughly lasting about forty-five minutes and seminars 30 minutes).

Editing software and equipment was readily available because our high school's A/V department has quite the funding, believe it or not. Only the editing software was used for this movie, as an iPhone was used to film this movie and its sequel (spoilers!). The editing software used was Final Cut Pro X (a.k.a FCPX). The editing process of this film took several days, mostly for the same reason why the filming took so long, and other assignments in that class obviously presented itself. It is still school. The music was simply ripped off YouTube and the clips that were spliced together were done poorly, but, keep in mind, we were still amateurs.

Nevertheless, Aaron, Marie and myself had brilliant fun and enjoyment creating this film for our amusement and satisfaction. We gained a lot of experience in film making, not to mention realizing how difficult it can be to make even the shortest of films. Despite this film not being top notch, we are very proud of our work and are unashamed to show it to anyone willing to watch! Not to mention this film even got an honorable mention at ASPA (Arkansas Scholastic Press Association), a big time film competition my school goes to. If you, the reader, were able to read every bit of this, I hope you at least can say you do not regret taking the time to scan your eyes over each word of this, and that you learned something or enjoyed the story.

Enjoy at your own risk! Better with headphones

Headphones recommended