With the Film Focus class getting ready to wrap up the in first semester, students are making last-minute cuts and edits to their final projects.

The video production course teaches students how to tell stories through images, audio, and characterization. The class returned this year after a three-year absence.

Students have been working on their final projects for this semester, which are called adapted short stories.

On Dec. 15 the short films will be open to the public and shown in the Little Theater at 2 p.m. Each of the films will be roughly five minutes in length.

“It’s amazing how such a short film take hours of footage and days and weeks of planning to do a high level production,” class teacher Peter Parish said.

“We woke up at six and filmed for about seven hours for our movie,” sophomore Michael Gonzales said about working with his group on their film.

Each student was put into a group and assigned a short story. Students were assigned specific jobs, such as like directing, sound engineering, or special effects.

Kate Caganek, junior, is an actress and assistant director for two films for the class, Sisyphus and American Dreams.

Sisyphus takes a modern view on the Greek mythology story of a man in continuous conflict with Hades, which results into him pushing a boulder up a hill for eternity.

American Dreams describes the story about two girls who escape into a post-apocalyptic world.

Caganek is plays the role of Riley, the older sister who convinces her younger sister to escape from the quarantine zone in American Dreams, and an assistant director in Sisyphus.

In the spring semester, students in the Film Focus class will be doing a similar project to the adapted short stories, writing their own original short pieces to work on the writing aspect of filmmaking.