Compass Academy student body creates elaborate video

The Compass Academy in Idaho Falls created an elaborate video in an effort to win a nationwide contest.

A few students at the Compass Academy spent three weeks planning to shoot a video for the Macy’s Lip Dub Challenge. Eli Radford, Cayden Pincock and Braeden Ricks rolled out the project to the rest of the student body last wednesday.

“It has to be on your campus with your students, so we decided to participate in it and first prize is $25,000,” said the academy’s director Matt Bertasso.

The student body practiced the 5-minute video Thursday and after five takes, it had the perfect cut Friday.

“We had to time every little thing, like the part of the song, where we entered the room, how long we were in the room and when we left,” said Pincock.

English teacher Arik Durfee was asked to shoot the video.

“For the requirements of this video, it had to be one take,” said Durfee. “You can’t cut the whole time, so everything has to be perfect.”

Students have watched the overwhelming response to the video on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

“A lot of parents and people have approached us and said it was cool, but what’s really cool to me is when there’s students from other schools coming and saying, ‘You guys did a really nice job on that video,'” said Ricks. “That was awesome.”

The video highlights the academy’s unique school spirit, blending in Skyline and Idaho Falls High School, because the magnet school doesn’t have athletics.

“We attend Compass, and we are Compass, but we still associate with the other schools and we still have good relationships with the other schools,” said Ricks. “We get to play sports with our friends from other schools and things like that.”

Durfee said students learned how to work together and brainstorm during the massive project.

“Not only that, but now we have 500-something students who are passionate about being at this school,” said Durfee. “I just think that if we have to spend three days to get that, to get to ‘I can’t wait for the rest of this year,’ then that was worth the time that we spent.”

“It was great that it was all student-driven,” said Bertasso. “That was probably the best part.”

If you’d like to watch the full video, click here.