Tacoma students’ jingle Click!s

C.R. ROBERTS; c.r.roberts@thenewstribune.com
Last updated: July 24th, 2008 06:51 AM (PDT)

“OK, let’s do it again,” says the choreographer.

A few dozen people – all somehow connected with Tacoma School of the Arts – regroup. The director nods. The music begins again.

The shadows of a Friday afternoon lengthen as the dancers continue, as they’ve been doing in locations throughout downtown since early morning. They’ve volunteered to help to produce a music video that celebrates Click!’s 10th anniversary.

This minor extravaganza began late in 2006 when Mitch Robinson, marketing and business operations manager of the Click! Network, met for coffee with Jon Ketler, founder and co-director of SOTA.

Click! is the 25,000-household cable TV arm of Tacoma Public Utilities, and SOTA, established in 2001, is a Tacoma Public Schools project serving some 450 students who have been selected for admission and who attend classes on a campus that extends to nine downtown locations in classrooms, theaters and museums.

Robinson had a partnership in mind, a way to build local content for Click! while providing an outlet for the students’ creativity.

Ketler saw an opportunity to bring the real world into the classroom.

For the past several months, Click! has offered viewers a look at student-produced videos on its Video on Demand channel.

On the occasion of the anniversary, Robinson thought he could expand the relationship. First came a new logo, designed by a graphic arts student.

Then came a jingle.

Robinson approached the school in May, not long before the end of the school year.

“I thought I’d get a guy strumming a guitar,” he says. “They said, ‘We want to do the video, too.’”

And they did.

The jingle idea was presented to students in a songwriting class, and several composed entries. Two students – Sam Anderson, 18, and Harrison Allen, 17 – wrote the winning entry.

After it was selected, Robinson played the jingle for Cyndi Wikstrom, Click! general manager. He says she “misted up.”

Two teachers – Zach Varnell, who teaches audio recording and the music industry; and Paul Eliot, head of the performing arts department – produced the video, which was shot last Friday and which has its debut today on the Click! Network.

“We feel that the arts is a powerful way to teach high school,” says Varnell.

“We just teach differently,” says Eliot. “In almost all of these projects, there is no money. It’s ‘Here’s something you’re good at, here’s something we’re good at, let’s be friends.’”

This particular friendship blossomed after school was out for the summer. No matter.

“SOTA kids are like that,” says Varnell. “The kids are involved all year long.”

“When we delivered the song on July 2, then we started talking about a video. Now it’s become ‘the video that ate Tacoma’ in two minutes.”

Those two minutes (there is also a one-minute version) took all day to record, as volunteers gathered and walked to several locations downtown, shooting and re-shooting, dancing, clicking a Click! remote and lip-syncing the jingle as it played near the main camera.

The video essentially combines the story of the Pied Piper dancing to the ethos of a famous Dr Pepper commercial, as composers Anderson and Allen saunter Tacoma sidewalks handing out Click! remote controls, which the various players then point toward buildings – whereupon TV images appear.

And the music goes, “It’s been 10 years, look how far we’ve come.”

“It takes school out of the four walls,” says Ketler, school founder. He and his daughter were at Tollefson Plaza for the shoot.

“It makes things real,” he says. “When we do these kinds of things – with BCRA, Indochine, Metro Parks, the city, Click! – it’s about total inclusion. It’s about the kids giving back.”

“We do what we can to spread the word about SOTA and give these kids an outlet for the creative things they do,” says Robinson, Click! marketing director. “We’ve made a point of being local. We are local. You have to have unique local content.”

Robinson’s wife is an adjunct artist at SOTA, and through her, Robinson says, “I heard they were looking for ways to better market themselves. We’re trying to make it into a deeper partnership.”

He realizes some people might see this as exploitation – a business getting free content from innocent youths.

“I don’t want to go to the well too often,” he says. “There has to be a benefit for them.”

Anderson and Allen were up until 4 a.m. the day they turned in their entry, having recorded it in Anderson’s home studio.

“We wanted it catchy,” says Anderson. “Catchy but simple.”

“We thought about other commercials,” says Allen.

Anderson says he hopes this jingle and the video might lead to something else, out here in the real world. More jingles, perhaps.

The two met when they were much younger, when their families attended services at Puget Sound Christian Center.

They’re both excited about the video, although they’re not sure where they’ll see it broadcast.

Says Anderson, “We don’t watch TV.”

And Allen, “We have Comcast.”

C.R. Roberts: 253-597-8535

blogs.thenewstribune.com/business

What: A jingle for the Click! Network written by students from Tacoma’s School of the Arts, and a music video

Where: To view the video, Click! subscribers can tune to Channel 1 or visit the network’s Video on Demand service. Otherwise, visit www.clickcabletv.com and click on “10th Anniversary” at the top of the page.

Composers: Harrison Allen and Sam Anderson

Video choreographer: Kate Monthy, artistic director at MLK Ballet

Videographer: Matt Hickney of Choke Productions

Originally published: July 24th, 2008 01:25 AM (PDT)