Sunset Elementary School films music video for national class challenge

Local filmmakers jumped on the chance to produce Sunset Elementary Schools’ music video for CBC.

Several classes, grades one, two, five and six, were teeming with excitement as they filmed their music video earlier this month for a submission to a national music class challenge.

The teachers and students chose to cover the song, “Big Yellow Taxi” by Canadian musician Joni Mitchell.

“What made it really come together was the filmmakers,” music teacher Kevin Ogren said. He mentioned the school has already submitted their video to CBC but now waits on whether the school has won the challenge after the video was uploaded online.

Sunset Elementary School photo Students were ready to play instruments, ukuleles, kajons, and contrabasses, during the filming.

The two filmmakers, Dillon and Genevieve Von Petzinger came to elementary classes and spoke about video lighting, editing and how to shoot film. The couple’s son is in the grade one and two class.

“It was an interesting couple,” Ogren said. “Genevieve worked for national geographic and specializes and studies on Neanderthals.” Genevieve travels the world for research and filming.

Dillon visited classes after the filming to show the students how to do basic video editing. “A couple kids here are kind of shy, one girl was really into it. I was quite impressed,” Ogren said.

“The video quality is so good. He (Dillon) showed kids the start of what it takes to make a music video.” During the whole process, the two filmmakers brought in high-end cameras, set up their angles during the film shoot, and finished with extensive editing on footage.

Sunset Elementary School photo Dillon Von Petzinger sets up the camera for the music video.

The children, teachers and filmmakers spent hours in the school gym doing finishing touches on the project.

“What was really fun or the culmination was a movie premiere,” Ogren added. Teachers, trustees, parents and students came to watch the finished music video on Nov. 28.

“It became this whole community event. It was a lot of fun. I’m glad these filmmakers had the time.” During the opening of the premiere, the school had played their theme song, “Sunset Rocks”.

Ogren also thanked MusiCounts Canada, who provided musical instruments to the school previously. The organization provides what is called the MusiCounts Passion Prize, which will mean $5,000 worth of instruments given to Sunset if they win the challenge.

The video is available on YouTube to watch, which is titled “‘Big Yellow Taxi’ - Sunset Elementary School.”