What’s it take to put on a virtual graduation for 1,680 seniors? Green screens and lots of editing
Around this time last year, Tacoma Public School’s graduating class was preparing to walk across the stage at the Tacoma Dome — a venue that costs the district $46,000 to rent every year.
This year, the stage was a virtual one for Tacoma’s 1,680 graduates.
Despite the challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, principal Pat Erwin wanted to make sure he still did right by the seniors graduating from Lincoln High School.
“I don’t think any of us thought we’d be in a global health crisis of this sort,” he told The News Tribune.
Despite still reeling from the shock that schools would remain closed for the rest of the school year, high school staff got right to work when they were given the direction to move ahead with virtual graduations in late April, Erwin said.
All of Tacoma’s virtual graduations are recorded in advance, district spokesperson Dan Voelpel said, except for a sign language interpreter. Each video is about an hour long.
While each school is creating its own videos, staff and principals communicated with one another to create a similar format, starting off with remarks from the principals, a slideshow with photos of each graduate, and speeches from students, school district Board of Directors members and Superintendent Carla Santorno.
Santorno and board members recorded their speeches in May in front of green screens for each high school.
“When I went to my car, I thought to myself, ‘Whoa, you just did 10 graduations’,” Santorno said at a May 14 board meeting. “It’s not the same, and we’ll miss being with those students on that day.”
Lincoln’s career and technical education visual arts teacher, Reid Callan, spent about 40 hours working on the virtual graduation, in addition to getting help from student group Blue Media Group, which spent anywhere from five to eight hours on the project.
Speaking with other high school teachers, Callan said through email that they all spent about 45 hours of work on the videos.
“It’s such an important event in life. ... I just hope the seniors appreciate it,” Erwin said.
There are some bright sides to having a virtual graduation, at least for parents and long-distance family members, Erwin said.
“It’s going to be easier to see them and recognize them on video instead of walking in a cap and gown 75 yards away,” he said.
Some graduations had aired Wednesday, including School of the Arts (SOTA), Science and Math Institute (SAMi) and Industrial Design, Engineering and Art (iDEA) schools. Each had their own flair, such as musical performances.
SAMI students pointed out their odd legacy during the video.
“We had a pretty weird journey — and I feel like weird really is the best word for it,” Ryan Jimenez, Class of 2020 student-selected speaker, said during his speech.
Huyen-Tram Nguyen, Class of 2020 staff-selected speaker, recorded her speech in her car.
“Four months ago, I totally would have never guessed that I’d be giving a graduation speech to my class by sitting in my car, recording a video on my phone,” she said.
Other Tacoma high school graduations will air next week on Facebook live:
Lincoln: 4 p.m. Thursday, June 11
Stadium: 7 p.m. Thursday, June 11
Wilson: 1 p.m. Friday, June 12
Mount Tacoma:4 p.m. Friday, June 12
Foss: 7 p.m. Friday, June 12
Oakland: 4 p.m. Monday, June 15
This story was originally published June 4, 2020 at 5:05 AM.
