[Vision2020] MHS on You Tube

[Bill London]

Moscow-Pullman Daily News
MHS students show school pride with lip dub 
By Holly Bowen, Daily News staff writer | Posted: Friday, April 20, 2012 1:00 am 

Hundreds of Moscow High School students catapulted themselves to Internet stardom this month thanks to a lip dub video they created to showcase their school spirit.

During the video, nearly all of the school's approximately 600 students dance, lip-sync and otherwise strut their stuff through the hallways and classrooms they spend most of their time in each school day.

You must be logged in with the proper services to print this article. 
The video, which features students lip-syncing and dancing to the song "Pump It" by the Black Eyed Peas, has been watched more than 8,500 times since it was posted on YouTube on April 10.

"The lip dubbers tell me they'll be walking around town and be stopped by someone who says, 'Oh, you're from the video,' " said Brenda Chavez, one of the five students who coordinated the video.

Alaina Mullin said she got the idea for the lip dub from a similar video her sister was shown last summer.

"We never really thought it would happen," she said.

But when she and Caitlyn Faircloth were brainstorming activities for the school's annual Arts Fest, they decided to recruit some friends and start planning so they could make a pitch to Principal Bob Celebrezze.

"We didn't want to present the idea to Bob without knowing exactly what we were going to be doing," said Chavez, the group's public relations officer.

They had no problem getting Celebrezze on board.

"This was a very, very positive event for Moscow High School students," Celebrezze said, adding that he has received only positive feedback from parents, community members and others who have watched the video. He also said he's spoken with principals in other cities who said they are "jealous of the great school we have here."

The five students who organized and filmed the video - Mullin, Chavez, Faircloth, Skyler Martin and Sebastian Mortimer - tried to prominently feature students from each MHS club and sport, but they said the school has so many extracurricular activities that some groups are represented in background shots.

They said they picked the song "Pump It" because it plays at just about every school dance, so it's familiar to most students, and the lyrics aren't filled with potentially inappropriate innuendo.

"It's a fun song that has a lot of different parts in it," said Mortimer, the project's "creative mastermind."

The students decorated the school's hallways and practiced the lip dub on the weekend and after school, and on the official filming day, they only rehearsed one time before shooting the final version. Students were released from class early that day so they could all participate if they desired.

"We offered it as an optional piece to everyone in the school," Celebrezze said. "Only 10 students asked to not be involved. I think that says a lot about Moscow High School."

Mortimer said it was challenging to place students in their spots and direct them to walk at a certain, consistent speed during each practice run and the official take.

"We filmed most of the practices just so we knew what it would look like," said Martin, the group's videographer. The final video features a blooper reel after the lip dub performance and credits.

Although any project involving hundreds of people is bound to have its occasional hiccups, the students said they were happy with the result and that it felt good to prove naysayers wrong. Students of different backgrounds and ages worked together on the video, even though many of them didn't yet know each other.

"I feel like we kind of united the school for at least one day," Chavez said.

Faircloth said the students are thankful to their peers and the MHS staff for supporting them throughout the project.

"It honestly wouldn't have worked if people weren't excited," she said. "It made spring of senior year a lot better. Now I feel more sentimental toward the school."

The students said they hope future classes of MHS students will create their own lip dub videos as a new school tradition.

A Windows Media Video file of the MHS lip dub can be downloaded at this shortened link: http://goo.gl/fkpgn. A lower-resolution version of the video can also be viewed on YouTube by searching for "Moscow High Pride Lip Dub 2012."
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20120420/fc7cc4ba/attachment.html>