Thursday was anything but ordinary at LaGrange High School.
Students from across the spectrum of the student body filled the hallways and corridors of the three academic buildings and two gymnasiums as they filmed what they called a “lip-dub” video, complete with dancing, lip-synced singing and costumes.
It wasn’t just a way to play hookie, though. Rather, the video, which began as a marketing class assignment, was aimed at raising anti-bullying awareness and bringing students together under the theme “own it,” explained Dana Davis, a marketing teacher at LHS.
“It was a project to teach about promotions,” she said. “But really, ultimately, it was about pulling every group in the school together against bullying — to say, ‘we are all one, we’re united.’”
‘It just snowballed’
Davis and her class spent three weeks planning the route around the school, which wove through nearly every hall in the school, into the courtyard, through one gymnasium and culminated in a school-wide pep rally in the campus’s older gymnasium.
“Trying to choreograph all the parts, that was the most harrowing part, but we did it,” Davis said after the pep rally. “Choreographing everybody’s parts was hard, too. At first, it was the apathy, trying to get buy in. Once the students got into it and everybody got excited, it just snowballed from there.”
Different after-school clubs, including the drama, black history, and Future Farmers of America clubs, along with the marching band’s drummers and a step team, all placed themselves along the route and waited for the camera to make its way to them.
‘It was challenging’
Maddie Patton, a 10th grader in Davis’ marketing class, volunteered to shoot the video with one of the school’s cameras.
“We were all picking jobs in Mrs. Davis’s marketing class, and I volunteered to film it,” Patton said. “I’ve never done anything like this before, it was my first time — I think this is all of our first time.
“It was challenging,” she continued. “We’ve been busy for three weeks now trying to put it all together, so it was a lot of work. I hope we do it again, I think it’ll better to see it through the years, to see all the people come together.”
Davis said there are no plans to film another video this year, but she’s open to the idea of doing it again in 2016.
“If they want to do it again next year, we’ll know how much more time it’ll take,” she said. “Now that we’ve done it, we’ll go back to the editing room and put it all together and edit it.”
‘It was still everyone together’
Although the video was put together quickly, Davis said she’s proud of how it turned out and is excited to see the finished product, which she expects to be completed in a week or so. After that, the school will post it on the video-hosting website YouTube.
“I think it went really well,” she said. “We had a few little hiccups for our first time, but we worked through that and everybody jumped in. The spontaneity was awesome, the spirit was awesome, everybody got caught up in it. I think for our first time, it was fantastic.”
If the students and faculty of LHS do decide to film another video next year, graduating senior Andrea Heflin won’t be around to see it — that’s why she’s glad she was able to be a part of this filming, she said.
“It’s going to be really memorable,” she said. “It’s something that we’ll cherish when we go off to college and look back at and say, ‘hey, we did that.’ I thought it was a really cool idea, especially being a senior.”
Not only was the video fun, Heflin said, she’s proud of the message behind it.
“I think the anti-bullying message is exactly why we should do things like this — not just to do it, but to have a message being sent, just so people are aware,” she said. “It brought the whole school together, even though it was individual clubs, it was still everyone together.”
Reach Tyler H. Jones at 706-884-7311, ext. 2155.