People behind a virtual collaboration video involving 250 Jam School music students are hoping their efforts catch the ear of Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin, and perhaps even earn his endorsement.
On Aug. 13, the school uploaded a cover of students, between the ages of five and 65, performing Coldplay's song Viva La Vida onto YouTube. Since publishing the video, the cover has received over 4,200 views and growing.
Now, Dan Drysdale, manager at Jam School, is attempting to reach Martin in hopes of getting his reaction for the students.
"That's something I hope happens," said Drysdale, "it felt like more of a pipe dream when I got contacted by a friend of mine who works with him.
"But at the same time, these people are so busy, it's hard to contact them."
Drysdale said the student video was inspired by a previous collaboration in 2020 done between the Jam School teachers.
"It was the same idea except it was just teachers," said Drysdale about that video, "This time around, Tyler and I knew it was going to be a much larger undertaking because of the numbers of people, because we don't have 250 teachers at the school."
The project has been more than eight months in the making as students started practicing in January and submitted their individual videos in early April. The video was then edited by Drysdale and assistant manager of the Jam School, Tyler Bridge, between May and early August.
“We basically took the concept of everyone recording their part and blew it up to the size of the school instead of an individual band,” said Bridge, “and it was a little bit scary when we realized we had 250 videos we had to figure out how to put together.”
With so many students involved, Drysdale adds the challenge was giving everyone screen time within a four-minute video. Another challenge he mentions was finding the right song.
"We were trying to pick a song that highlights all the different skill sets of the school," said Drysdale, mentioning there are lots of guitarists, singers, drummers, violinists and other instruments he and Bridge had to write parts for.
"The arrangement itself, if you compare it with the original song, the original song is pretty sparse. ... There's not really a full drum set in there, there's no feature guitar. It's just strings and voices and a kick drum in there, so we took some liberties with the arrangements."
“It was a lot of experimenting, it was a lot of long hours, especially from Dan with the video editing, and a lot of ideas as we went, trying to keep it something visually engaging as well as sounding really good," said Bridge.
Now that the video is published, Bridge said it has been great to see the positive responses from students, parents and the community.
“For Dan and I, it’s a bit of a relief because we spent so much time in the middle of it, it didn’t quite give us the same emotional reaction until it went live and we saw how much other people liked it, ” he said about the responses.
“Everyone was really happy to be a part of it.”
"Visually, I think it's pretty fun to watch, but also it sounds pretty good too," said Drysdale.
Now that the project is finished, Drysdale mentions the school is preparing health and safety regulations to welcome back students in the fall.
"We're hoping, COVID permitting, that we can get back to the in-person classes, hopefully in September."
The video can be seen below:
