The weeks before Christmas are a great time to stop, collaborate, and listen. And at Ecole Alberni Elementary the teachers and support staff team up for a festive foray into filmmaking.
“It’s just something we do to lighten the mood before Christmas,” says teacher Luke McIvor.
Three years ago teacher Brittney Bordal wanted a little more involvement from the teachers in the school’s annual Christmas Concerts but not all staff were comfortable with a song and dance routine in front of the kids.
“We decided we’d just put together a little music video,” says Bordal.
Bordal and her husband Jeff, also a teacher, along with McIvor spearheaded an effort to produce a music video set to the tune of RUN DMC’s Christmas in Hollis, posted to the school’s Alberni Elementary School French Fries Facebook page and to YouTube.
Watch the report below:
Jeff says staff were leary about appearing in the first video, but with the production level and reaction each video gets, the comfort level has come around.
“This year especially,” he says. “People were on board with it. They were excited for it, they were asking us about it.”
This year’s musical selection was slightly more vanilla. “Ice Ice Baby,” says Brittney. “My husband Jeff said you have to do Ice Ice Baby so we had to come up with a concept that was was Naughty or Nice Nice Baby and that worked really well with the song.”
Despite the Vanilla Ice track topping the charts nearly 25 years before his students were born, it’s signature beat still strikes a chord, much like it did back then.
“If you grew up in the 90s it was the song. It was everywhere,” says Jeff. The video has made its rounds, with 10,000 views overnight.
Production is slick and was done primarily outside of school hours. “We just had a drone in the gym and let it fly around and just kind of let loose,” says Brittney.
Why spend hundreds of hours on production and wrangle an entire school community in order to put out a three minute video? To McIvor the answer is elementary. “The kids get to see their teacher in a different light, because quite often school can get a bit serious. It’s fun to let loose and see the teachers in a different way.”
Watch the full music video below:
