My First Short Amateur Film

I have always had an interest in dabbling in the various branches of the creative arts. Over the past five years, I’ve primarily focused on writing—fiction, poetry, reflective pieces, and the occasional odd experiment that didn’t fit neatly into any category. In July 2024, I stepped into the world of AI‑assisted music. I’ve had a modest amount of success there, especially with my songs Blackbird Fly and Superstar (The Legend Lives On). The former is currently enjoying moderate streaming in Japan, which still surprises me in the best possible way. My first album, Isabel, has reached around 20,000+ streams across various platforms, which is more than I ever expected when I first hit “upload.”

Now, I’m entering an entirely new field: creating short shorts. For anyone unfamiliar with the term, a short short is a film (yes, a movie) that runs ten minutes or less. I have zero experience in filmmaking, so this is all brand‑new territory for me. I do have some background from producing my talk show, Ten Questions with Rick Henry Christopher, which taught me how to work with a storyboard. But a short film is a very different creature from an interview show. Instead of asking questions, I’m now building a world, shaping characters, and writing an actual screenplay. In other words, I’ve traded “Tell me about yourself” for “Please don’t let this scene fall apart.”

My first short short is titled Rick and Isabel vs. the Billionaires. Aside from the script, the entire film is created using various AI tools. It is crude, raw, and proudly amateur. There are several discrepancies throughout the film, but I intentionally left most of them in place to give it a kitschy, slightly unhinged charm. My goal with this project is simple: laughs. Sarcastic laughs, satirical laughs, dark laughs, dry laughs—any laughs that don’t require a laugh track to convince you they happened.

In this film, I’ve created a dystopian society where the richest of the rich have eliminated most of the poor and middle‑class population of an entire country. This is far outside my usual comfort zone. In all my years of writing, I’ve never attempted anything dystopian. I never even had much interest in the genre. But for reasons I can’t fully explain, this idea arrived, it flowed, and it felt right. Sometimes creativity taps you on the shoulder and says, “We’re doing this now,” and you just go along with it.

The characters in the film—including myself and my mom, Isabel—are created using still photos, which I then animate using the Grok app. This process has been unexpectedly fun. It opens up a wide field of creativity, and it allows me to bring familiar faces into unfamiliar worlds.

Naturally, I had to include some of my own music. Several of my songs fit seamlessly into the tone of the film. I used a new track called “Run” to open the story. It’s mostly instrumental and was created specifically for this project. I closed the film with “Satellite” from my EDM album Orbit Radiate Pulse. For the sequel, I’ll be collaborating with my Canadian counterpart, Lisa Lachapelle, who will be providing a song that will most likely serve as the closing theme. I’m excited to blend our styles and see how it shapes the emotional tone of the next installment.

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Links to the song “Satellite:

YouTube

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One of my more ambitious long‑term goals is to create a short film based on my Adventures of Gloria Cupidon series, which is published on the Vocal Media platform. That project will require significantly more work, planning, and probably many bottles of water. But I think it would be incredibly fun to bring Gloria’s world to life visually. In the meantime, everyone can still enjoy the Gloria series on Vocal. I’ll be publishing a new episode on Wednesday, January 14th.

Rick and Isabel vs. The Billionaires

Until then, cheerio, my friends—and thank you sincerely for your support. It means more than you know.

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With Love, RHC