Preachers, teachers and bankers, black and white and gay and straight, and lots of lots of students were on the right track Saturday, filming an anti-bullying video that is already drawing praise on YouTube.
The video was the brainchild of Michael Armendariz, a Christiansted mortgage banker, who found himself upset by a spate of stories over the last year or so of teens and young adults who had taken their own lives after being bullied over their sexual orientation.
"It hit me hard," he said. "I don’t have children, but I have friends who have children and I can just imagine."
He knew he wanted to do something upbeat, something inspirational. Something that, just maybe, could make a difference.
"Then along comes this song by Lady Gaga that has very empowering lyrics," Armendariz said. "I got the idea of doing a lipdub video to address this issue on St. Croix. This is an issue down here as well. I just thought how great would it be to have a bunch of kids in the community getting involved in something positive."
Mike Nissman of AquaMedia in Christiansted agreed to handle the technical aspects. Then Armendariz got out the word through Facebook and the USVI Moving Center website: A video would be shot in which local volunteers would be lip syncing to the song. Then he waited to see if there would be a response.
There was, and it was stunning.
About 40 people contacted him to be part of the video and joined him at Country Day School last Thursday to plot out the video. Another 35 or so joined them Saturday for the filming.
The participants were from all over the spectrum. There were teachers and school administrators, a drag queen, musicians, a preacher, an attorney. They were gay and straight, black and white, and Hispanic.
"It was a beautiful mix of people from our island," he said.
A teenaged boy showed up to take part who had been on island less than a month. A woman dropped off her teenaged daughter who was visiting her from the states and didn’t know anyone here, but loves Lady Gaga and wanted to take part.
"Everyone was so enthusiastic," Armendariz said. "We had an 8:30 a.m. call and didn’t finish shooting until about 1 o’clock. And they were still singing and dancing as energetically as they had been at the start."
Part of the reason the shooting took so long is because Armendariz wanted to shoot the whole video in one long, continuous shot. He wasn’t quite able to do so, he said, because the Country Day campus was just too big, they couldn’t get to the places they wanted to shoot in one take. Still the 4 minute, 49 second video cuts only once, at about the 2:40 mark. So they did manage to hold the video to two long takes, which is pretty amazing considering that the camera moves across campus with people jumping in and out of frame on cue.
The video was completed and posted to YouTube Saturday night. In the first day it had been viewed about 300 times. Since then it has taken off. As of Tuesday evening it had been viewed 1,164 times. And the comments posted on the video-sharing website have been uniformly positive.
They include:
• "As a former CDS student who was definitely bullied in high school for being gay, this makes me so proud and grateful. Keep up the good work! Sending love from NYC."
• "Wow this gave me the chills and reminded me how beautiful the people [are] on our island."
• "OMG brilliant!’
• "More, more! This video is awesome!!!"
• "Wow! Great job. This is such a great message, delivered beautifully. Looks like fun too!"
Armendariz said he has received congratulations from New Jersey, where the video is being shown in a summer school class, and from a Californian who is planning to move to the island in September and is happy to see the view being expressed.
"It’s just something very positive," Armendariz said.
He added that some of the kids who took part told him they have been bombarded by the anti-bullying message, with school assemblies and speakers and lessons. This was the first time it was something fun they could do, they told him.
