A Wonderful Short Film About a Grumpy School Photographer

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posted Monday, May 7, 2012 at 8:14 AM EST

Ever wonder how school photographers are able to get children to smile, shot after shot after shot? Well, here's a charming short video entitled "School Portrait" about the opposite dilemma: a grumpy school photographer trying to make kids frown by telling them about the horrible things going on in the world today.

According to Wired, which interviewed the film's director, Nick Scott, the kids are not professional actors but participants in a regular drama class at a London School. Scott used amateurs because he wanted their reactions to be more genuine. The school photographer is played by actor Johnathan Rhodes.

"To get those little moments, Scott cherry-picked the kids’ responses to events and conversations not in the film, and then spliced them into actor Jonathan Rhodes’ dialogue.

The best reaction, where the girl listens to Rhodes say 'there isn’t a pet heaven,' was actually just something that happened when Scott was talking to the girl and then suddenly turned around."

In the end though (spoiler alert), one girl's smile is enough to melt the photographer's heart.