May 8 musical: “High School Musical Jr.”

This year the Upper School Fine Arts department decided to do something different for their annual school musical. In order to be safe and to still keep the arts moving forward, the artistic staff under the leadership of theater teacher Katie Arjona, decided to film their musical.

This year they will be presenting “High School Musical Jr.” virtually. For the past nine weeks, the students have been filming around campus and off-campus. With permission from Music Theater International, the students were able to film in classrooms, in lab spaces, outdoors, on Robertson Field, in the gymnasium, and other places since the auditorium this year is being used as a classroom.

Students had the opportunity to learn something new by performing in front of the camera. They also learned how to work in a recording studio. In order to make everything safe for our performers, students went into our recording studio in the Warren Science & Technology building in small numbers to record the songs. Vocal director Samantha Walker coached all of the students one or two days before their recording sessions. Todd Motter, the Head of our Concert Band Program and Fine Arts Department Chair, took all of their soundtracks and combined them into the final edit. That track was then used on set for students to lip-sync to in larger numbers. After 23 days of filming Richard Gibson, the film and video instructor in the Upper School, took all of the footage and edited it into the 60-minute production of “High School Musical Jr.”