Advisory is a lot more interesting this year thanks to the High Line, a new video series featuring student interviews, recent news, and current events at Lexington High School. Between the drone shots, co-anchors’ witty narration, and smooth editing, there’s rarely a dull moment in the episodes—and it’s all run by LHS’s film and video production club: High-Cut.

High Cut was founded in 2021 by Sujin Lee, who graduated in 2023, as a place for students to participate in all aspects of filmmaking—filming, editing, scriptwriting, and more—and create a variety of projects. 

“Our mission is to bring together different clubs and events throughout the school and give them a platform,” Vrish Soni, a senior and co-anchor of the High Line, said.

The club is also dedicated to teaching filmmaking. High Cut is both a classroom and a studio, and its projects act as hands-on learning experiences for newer members.

“We have been really focused on prioritizing [and] incorporating new members into the shoots … where they can actively contribute and actively participate in the production process,” Edmond Meng, a senior and co-leader of High Cut, said.

The key to meticulously producing each video is having an organized, step-by-step system. First, club members select topics of interest from the High Line submission form before leaders delegate responsibilities and roles. 

“We pull up a large document and just figure out what’s going on this month: what can we go get footage of? Who do we need to email in order to get free admission or make sure we have permission to go in and film whatever we need to film? And then […] we delegate who’s going to go and film, and who’s going to edit, and what the format of each video is going to look like,” Nina Chatterjee, a senior and co-leader of High Cut, said.

Although it may sound simple, pre-production requires good communication skills between videographers. 

“It’s a long process of communicating and scheduling with other people… [before] we can go film them…. After filming, [we] get all that footage… go into post-production, where we the editors will start putting stuff together,” Meng said.

High-quality editing takes a generous amount of time and effort. That’s why patience and collaboration are essential to the post-production process.

“Usually it’s one or two people … who [edit] different sections of the video. And then one person puts it all together with the music, the transitions, and everything. Overall it takes, I would say, throughout the month, definitely 30-ish hours,” Soni said.

Despite the heavy workload, High Cut maintains an environment that is both productive and collaborative, allowing aspiring filmmakers to gain experience in a supportive environment.

“It’s just a huge project with all of its moving parts. Everyone is individually filming their own designated events and groups, and then editors need enough time to conceptualize and put together what they’re working on. And everyone needs to be collaborating… throwing together pieces and making sure that they’re all fitting together in a way that makes the video flow smoothly,” Wang said.

The production process as a whole can be intense, chaotic, and exhausting. However, members of High Cut emphasized that no matter how hard it is or how long it takes, the process and the final product are worth it.

“Everyone’s really proud of what they see because they’ve all pulled their weight, they’ve all added to it, they see a little bit of themselves in their work in this thing that’s going out to the rest of the school… I hope when people watch High Line episodes, they get a better appreciation for how big and diverse this school is,” Wang said.