ARLINGTON — After scrambling to complete their entry before winter break, Arlington High School not only got to watch the fruits of its labors on April 24, but also got to see its team take first place in this year’s WESCO Lip-Dub competition, that was judged that evening at the Byrnes Performing Arts Center.
Allie Jones and Haley Duran were two of the senior AHS ASB/Leadership students who coordinated the production of their lip-dub entry, as well as the competition showing of all eight school teams’ entries on April 24, along with the AHS Video Productions students.
“When we were putting it together, we had less than half an hour to do two takes, just like the lip-dub that we did last year,” Duran said. “The first take went well, but we felt a lack of energy, so we tried to jack everyone up in the next take, and that went much better.”
The AHS lip-dub last year showcased nearly the entire student body, as well as more than a few members of the surrounding community, to lip-syncing and other action choreographed to Beyoncé’s “Crazy In Love,” but this year, AHS stepped up its game by fitting selected segments of an entire catalog of songs by Queen into the same four-minute running time.
“We had about 30 seconds each of six songs, and each one had its own visual theme and area within the school,” Duran said. “Each theme was designed to fit the song, so we had a ‘50s girl-fight for ‘Crazy Little Thing Called Love’ and a zombie apocalypse for ‘Another One Bites the Dust.’”
“We had four ‘singers’ for each song segment, and 100 yards of space for each of the six zones of the school,” Jones said. “So instead of everyone having to work together for the whole thing, each group of students was able to focus on their own parts, which also made it fun when we were able to watch the whole thing after it was done, and to see for the first time how everyone else envisioned their own sections. It made for some really cool surprises.”
As they did last year, the Arlington Police Department even put in an appearance in this year’s lip-dub, this time by “arresting” the school’s principal and vice principal.
Duran and Jones agreed that the other schools’ entries were more reflective of what AHS had done last year, when they received a “Viewer’s Choice” award.
“As soon as we saw the other entries we knew there was no way we weren’t going to win this year,” Duran said. “It was a challenge to tape the lip-dub the day before winter break, with only two-thirds of the student body available, but the students who were still there were really committed, so I think that made for a better video.”
Duran and Jones thanked the school’s staff and students as a whole, as well as the surrounding community, for their support in making possible what the two Leadership seniors hope will become an annual tradition for AHS.
