Say what you will about the Canby School District, but their YouTube game is straight fire. Faculty at Canby High School proved that again this week, with a spirited lip-sync of Whitesnake’s immortal rock ballad “Here I Go Again” to ring in the new academic year.
Check it out below, if you really think you can handle this much awesomeness:
“We had this idea when we were getting ready for students to come back to school,” said Canby High Leadership Advisor J.D. Bellum. “We wanted to create something that would get students excited to come back to school and see their teachers, even if they couldn’t do so in person.”
Participation wasn’t mandatory, nor was it an official project of the school or faculty, just something for the teachers to do in their free time. Still, nearly 40 teachers and staff volunteered to lend their talents to the project, which including lip-syncing, air guitar, some serious head-banging and even fireworks.
Several also performed with their kids, while one (Athletic Director Ben Winegar) was rocking out in what appeared to be a child’s play enclosure.
“We had an awesome time putting it together as a staff,” Bellum said, and from watching the video, that much is obvious.
He told each staff member to “be creative” and assigned them 30-second segments of the song, but come on — who can sing just 30 seconds of “Here I Go Again”? Bellum ended up with almost a half-hour of footage — which he needed to edit down to five or six minutes.
He spent about 15 hours editing together the footage into a music video, which included intro segments and a slideshow at the end (for the credits).
Though Bellum had teased students for several days with GIFs he created from clips of the video (to “create some hype,” he explained) teachers waited until last week — the first full week back at school — before they shared it out to the student body.
“We got a lot of great feedback from the students,” Bellum said. “They loved seeing the staff having a great time and being carefree. They also gave me song suggestions for our next video, which will definitely be coming in the future.”
The video featured (in order of appearance) Jennifer Czerkies, language arts; Brooks Gingerich, music/vocal; Jennifer Houghton, special education; James Pipkins, achievement center; Associate Principal Kimie Carroll; Emily Hill, science; Joel Eckdahl and Ryan Lillie, both language arts; Holly Adams, ELL; and Kelsey Tew, special ed.
It also included Jeremy Ensrud, science; Jan Woodworth, library; Jennifer Dorsey, art; Jimmy Joyce, achievement center; Craig Evans, CTE/business; Gretchen Benner and Troy Soles, language arts; Anna Noel, graphic design; Chris Bangs, social studies; Jennifer Chaffee, special ed; Kelly McMichael, language arts; Trevor Lockwood, counseling; and Jamie Netter, achievement center.
Sue Harvey, math; Anne Bangs, science tutor; Tonya Boustead, CTE/accounting; J.J Stolsig, physical education; Kris Troha, science; Candace Jacobson, school psych; J.D. Bellum, leadership; Noah Megowan, German; Ahtletic Director Ben Winegar; Jennifer Peterson, P.E./health; James Wilks, language arts; and Principal Greg Dinse rounded out the cast.
