Video. Film. Hundreds and hundreds of frames. Hundreds and hundreds of minutes of work, of dedication. All for this. All for those precious couple of moments. But it’s more than that, it’s for the satisfaction of completing another masterpiece.

Sophomore Remington Cook has made about 26 short films in total. This school project-turned hobby started in ninth grade.

“It started off because Mrs. Mitchell assigned us a project to make a trailer for the book we read, ‘Legend,’” Cook said. “My friend Chase and I made the trailer, and I really enjoyed filming it.”

The initial response was very positive. Along with earning Cook a good grade, the novel trailer was well received amongst classmates.

“They loved it,” Cook said. “Everyone was excited about them. Everyone laughed, thought they were funny and so I just kept on making them.”

Along with filming for school related projects, Cook also filmed for personal enjoyment. What started out as a simple grade gradually became a hobby. Remington would come to call this Remington Cook (RC) Productions.

“RC Productions was created over about a week. Friday, Sept. 2, 2016 was the day Chase Finn and I filmed the ‘Legend’ trailer,” Cook said. “Sept. 7 had to have been one of the best days of my life. It was superhero day, I was at school, in a Batman costume, when I presented the video, the first real RC Production in Mrs. Mitchell’s room. It was great. So yeah, RC Productions was created between Sept. 2-7.”

Out of all the videos, one in particular stands out amongst the others in the eyes of Cook. The film was well received amongst classmates and even though he wasn’t present for the big reveal, he still got word of its success.

“In October we made ‘Batman and Stephen Hawking vs. the Black Hole.’ It was an instant hit as well,” Cook said. “I actually was not at school when it was presented, but I was suddenly getting messages wanting the link to it. The next day everyone wanted to see it. It was awesome and it currently has 98 whopping views, which means people have spent about 8 and a half hours watching it.”

Cook believes that the success comes from the absurd nature of the film.

“I think it was because of just what it did,” Cook said. “Truth be told it was just five minutes of the stupidest crap you could imagine, compiled into a video. And I think that really it just broke a lot of what would’ve been previously considered ‘rules.’”

Along with the love of his classmates, Cook says that he personally enjoyed filming the project.

“My favorite to film though would have to have been ‘Batman and Stephen Hawking vs. the Black Hole,’” Cook said. “I sort of knew what I was doing. I was actually taken a little seriously after the ‘Legend’ trailer. I got to deck out my mom’s car with bat wings and turn it into a Batmobile, I got to cover it in wires and build a flux capacitor and I got to jump from a two-story treehouse onto a ladder leaning on a flimsy flagpole in a giant Bat[man] costume. What more could you ask for?”

The more films Cook produced, the better he got.

“As we made newer ones and our permanent crew grew, we learned how to make [the films] have a much better quality,” Cook said. “We learned what worked and entertained and what didn’t.”

As for the future of what Cook has come to call RC Productions, things are looking bright. Cook decided to make the next big move — he decided to make a full film for the first time.

“Logan [Revalee] and I have actually written a full length, two-hour, movie script, called ‘SPACE’ and are trying to find a way to film it,” Cook said. “However, lack of manpower and time has delayed our project from even beginning for now. We do hope to start filming soon though. We are also trying to find ways to film during lunch or enrichment like we did last year, just so we can start making stuff again. We just made a video called ‘Logan Revalee the Literary Terms Guy’ for English, and after we get to show it, I hope we can use it to kick-start lunch filming again.”

Cook has made numerous films and doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon. Cook’s filming career is far from over. More films, and thus, more success in his hobby, are to come.

“Filming is like an emergency exit from the real world,” Cook said. “In a movie you are not limited by the realities of life, but rather by your own imagination.”