Forget True Detective and Daredevil. Scot Pankey's theater arts students at A. Maceo Smith High School in Dallas are learning to be masters of the long take.
The school went viral last year with an Uptown Funk video that reached 13 million views and counting, and this month they released their first followup: A video done to the tune of Andy Grammer's "Good Day to be Alive (Hallelujah)."
While the new performance hasn't gone viral yet (it has nearly 4,000 views at the time of this writing) it has all the qualities of one that might. It's uplifting, catchy, features normal people doing impressive things and has some great iPhone cinematography (props to student Micah Garden for walking backwards to pull that off, according to the video's description).
"I asked my kids at A. Maceo Smith New Tech High School to think outside the box and find a way to Uplift, Motivate and Encourage others," Pankey says on his YouTube account. "This is what they came up with. Enjoy!"
He told NBC5 he chose "Good To Be Alive" because it "uplifts you. it makes you feel good about yourself."
"They really wanted to put a message out to whoever saw it that you're special, that you are unique, you're smart, you're beautiful," he told NBC. "For high school kids to think that, and to want to put that out there, that says a lot about our student body."
Whether this video takes off like the last one did or not, it sounds like choreographing school-wide music videos is potentially becoming a tradition at A. Maceo Smith. If they can keep up this level of quality, then that's fine with us.
