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American High has worked out of an abandoned high school in Liverpool since 2017. The company completely reconstructed the space, which was most recently a church, to mimic an actual school, with the typical multi-colored floor tiling and lockers they bought from a yard sale.

The group films most of their sketches in room 217, just a few doors down from room 223A, where they hold all the props from previous productions. The third floor holds the “costume room,” with hundreds of articles of archived clothing.

It’s where Grace Reiter discovered the perfect outfit for JeanPaulJoan Black, the fictional son of Jack Black, who also attends Syracuse University. On Tuesday, she found inspiration for a potential future sketch, featuring a character who prefers diapers over tampons.

“I’ll write that down, we’ll think about it,” Reiter said to her castmate Julia DiCesare before typing in her Notes app.

Reiter, DiCesare and the rest of their crew have used the building as a full-time playground to create witty, quirky, sometimes vulgar, sketches for American High Shorts and College Life, two TikTok accounts with over 1 million combined followers. The skits focus on relatable humor, turning high school and college scenarios completely on top of it’s head. They started this past July, giving the company consistent content during the Hollywood strikes.

They didn’t go far from their Liverpool base to fill out the team either. DiCesare and Aidan Micho are students at SU. Ryan Micho and Luke Burke graduated from the university in 2022. Reiter, who has a following of over 2 million on her personal TikTok, is the only one with no connection to Syracuse.

Aidan said a lot of the comments on American High Shorts’ videos are about the space itself, asking questions like “Do they live at the school? Did they buy school?”

“Well, kind of,” DiCesare said.

In 2017, filmmaker Jeremy Garelick bought an abandoned high school to use as the home base for American High film studios. The third floor of the school holds the costume room, containing hundreds of articles of archived clothing. Cassandra Roshu | Photo Editor

In August 2017, filmmaker Jeremy Garelick bought the space for $1 million, naming it “Syracuse Studios.” With its past ownership, they had to change rooms like the “Pastor’s Lounge” into the “Office,” said Will Phelps, the head of production. (One wing of the school is still operational and owned by OCM Boces, an organization which provides career and technical education.)

The last six years have been extremely successful for the company, creating various projects like “Plan B,” “It’s A Wonderful Binge” and “Sid is Dead.” But in October 2022, Phelps realized their social media presence was lacking. Their Instagram had been used to showcase behind the scenes videos or photos from various productions, but it wasn’t helping their brand grow.

The only thing that Phelps felt would make people want to follow the account was sketches. So American High started finding a cast, using a “block system” to finalize the roster. They invited a handful of comedians from around the country every other month, spending four or five days each time filming sketches.

The Micho brothers came onto American High’s radar from their account Krab Videos. They helped DiCesare get involved. Burke had stayed in touch with Garelick since working alongside him during a “Writer’s Room” class at SU. And Phelps got word of Reiter from one of his talent agent friends in Los Angeles.

The starting five of the Micho brothers, DiCesare, Burke and Reiter worked because of their ability to be a “triple threat,” Phelps said. They can all write, act and edit.

“We identified these guys as our favorite because they had really good chemistry together,” Phelps said. “They all had their own style.”

Each cast member’s style is influenced by their experiences before joining the team. The Micho brothers and Reiter had a lot of knowledge creating characters on social media from their previous accounts, while DiCesare and Burke had more experience with stand-up.

DiCesare said their differing abilities have meshed together well. She’ll often catch herself doing “Lukeisms,” imitating Burke’s 1940s radio announcer voice.

“I’m just absorbing my castmates’ skills,” DiCesare said. “When I started, I was like ‘OK, I can do X, Y, Z,’ and then you find yourself being able to do so much more than you were able to do.”

Burke added that the platform itself is more freeing than longer projects. If he’s writing a film, he’ll try his hardest to force a joke into the finished product but end up cutting it because it doesn’t add to the plot. With the shorts, the entire video can be a bit.

“It doesn’t have to be a f*cking Christopher Nolan movie,” Burke said.

Every Monday, the cast of American High meet for a pitch meeting on the different sketches they will film each week. Ideas come from castmates experiences in high school and college.
Cassandra Roshu | Photo Editor

The production process mimics “Saturday Night Live.” Mondays are spent coming up with the ideas before a pitch meeting at around 3 p.m., where the cast presents their sketches for the week to Phelps and Axelle Azoulay, the Director for American High Digital. Tuesdays are spent writing the scripts and filming them if there’s time at the end of the day. On Wednesdays and Thursdays, the crew will film almost 10 sketches a day. Friday is spent finalizing more filming before editing.

Another similarity to the New York City sketch show is their addition of “guest stars” every week. They find popular TikTokers or influencers like Charles Brockman III (c.b.3), who was last week’s guest, and Jericho Mencke (jercho1), who will be their next one.

Phelps said they have the budget now to fly out the guest stars to the studio. Once American High starts filming movies again, they want those actors to also make cameos in the shorts.

At the end of the summer, Mondays were the most productive day for the bunch, with all of them sitting in a room and riffing ideas off each other. But after school started in August, DiCesare and Aidan only work part-time, forcing them to be more creative when they come up with their ideas.

DiCesare spent her Monday morning coming up with College Life pitches, like one about how difficult it is to get work done outside on the quad when you can’t see your laptop or desperately need an outlet, while doing her laundry at Goldstein.

Aidan routinely adds to a note on his Notes app “QUICK ONES,” recently adding a bullet point about someone trying to hit someone else with their car thinking it will get them free tuition.

now my paper is wet #americanhighshorts #teachers #teachersofinstagram #class#schooldays

A photo posted by cuseice

Sometimes, the pair will just hit record on voice memos and improv for 10 minutes to see what comes up. Or they take their ideas from other people.

“We like to steal them from people who have done it,” Aidan joked.

While it’s still impossible to accurately know if all shorts will go viral, Burke said they can sometimes tell beforehand. If people like the idea during the pitching process, after reading the initial script and while filming, they know it will work.

“If the filming takes a long time because you keep f*cking up then you know it’s going to be good,” Burke said.

Most of the time, the “breaking” happens when they’re not in the studio or other people are involved in filming. One example was a few weeks ago, when 9WSYR shadowed the group as they filmed a sketch with Reiter portraying a teacher aggressively licking their fingers as they flipped through students’ pages. In February, Reiter played a Chris-Farley-type mom talking about their “weird kid,” one of Burke’s favorites sketches.

“There’s so many times when we can’t keep it together,” DiCesare said.

There are still a handful of videos that haven’t been released yet, but Phelps and the American High Shorts cast have larger projects to pursue.

Phelps said they’re planning on adding another account about life right after graduating from college. The hope is to add to the cast and have members “graduate” to the next channel once they’re that age.

“Ideally, you’re in one of the accounts for a year and then you can follow people on their path,” Phelps said.

They also started a YouTube channel which already has over 400,000 subscribers. DiCesare and Aidan are excited about adding to the new platform, but they’re also looking forward to shooting in more locations. The first one that came to mind? A waterpark.

“Youtube content and indoor waterpark,” Aidan said. “That’s been our mantra from the start.”

Published on October 5, 2023 at 12:22 am

Contact Anish: asvasude@syr.edu | @anish_vasu