Image courtesy of GCSD

One final achievement was captured by the lone All-State qualifier from Greene County High School from this past Saturday’s Iowa High School Speech Association (IHSSA) Large Group All-State Festival.

According to IHSSA, the short film that was titled, “Very Stellar” earned the Critics Choice Award. This is a recognition by a professional in the designated category as the top performer in Iowa. Senior Nathan Ausberger was the director of the 90s parody sitcom where Steve, played by Jack Hansen, breaks his brother’s solar system diorama and then spends the rest of the time trying to fix it before racing his brother back home. Ausberger talks about a critical part of the film where Hansen’s character goes to the high school and asks for help from two science students, played by Bill Wright and Daniel Strawn.

“Basically their role (Wright and Strawn) is to sort of move the plot along because the entire time I just planned on having the chase scene, like in (the movie) ‘Ferris Bueller.’ So I kind of had to work around that, ‘Okay, so how does he (Steve) break it? How does he fix it? And then how does he get to the chase scene eventually?’ I thought, ‘Okay so we’ll have the characters who are really smart help him, because obviously I make him (Steve) look stupid, like with his dialogue and everything.’ So that just kind of helped move the plot along.”         

Another senior Gavin Vander Linden played the stereotypical nerdy character Bruce who made the solar system project. This was the second consecutive year that Greene County High School had a short film performing at the All-State Large Group Festival.