School makes a video, and the hits keep coming

Students of Gloucester Catholic High School prepared a video for the school’s Facebook page to promote their open house last month. It was so successful, generating 29,000 hits, that they are currently preparing a second video with a Christmas theme.

GLOUCESTER CITY — A video produced by the students at Gloucester Catholic High School was designed to showcase the spirit of the school and was used as a marketing tool for the school’s Nov. 4 open house.

The students are shown lip-synching to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’,” and dancing through the corridors of the school and in classrooms, never missing a beat as they go from one scene to another, thanks to the superb editing of Beth Quinn, who teaches psychology in the school. She’s familiar with editing and volunteered to do it at home.

“She did it with spirit and passion for the school,” said Ryan Murphy, assistant athletic director who did the camera work. “The kids even did their own choreography without any professional help. We put the framework out there and worked out the timing with them. We told everybody to be creative, especially the ones in the hallways. Everything was done in one single solid shot. The kids had a feel for what they were doing.”

So far there have been close to 29,000 hits.

Gloucester Catholic has its own Facebook page to showcase things going on in the school, and a link to the video was included on the page. Because of this, Murphy noted, the school has received e-mails and text messages from over the country and even old-fashioned letters.

The idea for the video was the brainchild of Murphy and guidance counselor George Bakey.

“We wanted the open house video to be used as a vehicle to show off school spirit for the incoming eighth-graders,” Murphy said. “The video project was also designed to emphasize the family atmosphere Gloucester Catholic is known for.”

Murphy said he knew the idea would take some time to work.

“We had the idea and principal John Colman was behind us all the way and the video couldn’t have happened without his support,” Murphy said. In fact the beginning of the video shows a committee of students around a conference table wondering how to handle the project when Colman walks in and tells them this was important and they had to get going.

Colman had gotten so involved with the project that at the end of the taping the school’s mascot, a Ram which was bouncing around in virtually every scene in the video, stopped long enough to remove the head of the costume to reveal the smiling face of principal John Colman.

“This was one of the things the students were told to do,” Murphy said. “Get creative and go with it and they immediately put the video on YouTube after the open house.”

Murphy said the students have gotten so good in the creative process of shooting videos that a second one is now being processed. It has a Christmas theme and will be put on the Facebook page on Dec. 21.

“Remember, Mr. Colman took a chance with that first video,” Murphy said. “If he didn’t give us permission and if he wasn’t 100 percent behind us, there would not have been a video. And probably not a second one. He must be commended for his decision,” Murphy added.