Students at Imlay City High School Digital Media Production celebrated the holidays this year with a Christmas rip dub that was attended by over 70 students.photo courtesy
Imlay City — Everyone welcomes the holiday season a little differently.
For Doug Sloan’s students at Imlay City High School, it’s time to ‘rip dub’.
This is the sixth year that Sloan students have performed and released a Christmas rip dub. Sloan said it was the largest effort to date. “I saw other schools doing something similar and got the idea to make a Christmas rip dub,” he said. “Usually other schools do school-wide rip dubs, but mostly in the spring to celebrate the end of the school year. There are plenty of examples of this on YouTube. I thought it would be fun to do.”
During its six-year history, Christmas Rip Dub “has grown really organically,” says Sloan, and now encompasses Sloan’s entire digital media production class. But it’s not only a fun holiday tradition, it’s also educational: “Digital Media Production is a year-long program in which students learn the ins and outs of creating video content, from the pre-production stage through to editing and delivering the final product.” course,” he said. “As the years went by, more and more of my students purchased improved equipment, used more advanced software, and chose to retake the course the following year to take a leadership role in their group. We got a little better each year by relying on some leading rip dub sections among other projects we complete each year.”
The Christmas rip dub is a holiday tradition, but it’s also a learning experience for Imlay City High School students, who are responsible for all production and performance duties throughout the process.
During the first few days of the new semester, Sloan showed freshmen in digital media production examples of Christmas lip dubs and other projects he planned to complete throughout the year, encouraging them to “get involved both in front of and behind the camera.” “Some of the students who have been taking this course for a few years are really looking forward to performing in Rip Dub, others love the holiday season, and some of them love being in front of an audience. Some students enjoy acting and performing (or behind the camera),” Sloan said. “For other students, it takes a little more time and effort to persuade them to take active roles.”
Imlay City High School teacher (and Christmas rip dub mastermind) Doug Sloan joins the action himself.
Sloan said he was “proud” to have all students across the two sections of the course participate this year. This is the first year and many students have taken this course. Usually only his one section of about 30-35 students. This year, he has two sections, so it was a challenge to coordinate the parts and the shooting schedule.
Once the rip dub is complete, Sloan sends the video to district officials. “This allows lower grade teachers to show their students a lip dub, which is essentially what we created for younger kids,” he said. has received many compliments over the years on how much people enjoy our work.” Additionally, we post on YouTube and Facebook for the entire community to enjoy. has become
With Imlay City High School’s digital media production courses growing in popularity, Sloan is already thinking about spring. He said his students are “playing around” with two ideas to close out the school year. “In the spring, my class will be making a feature-length dramatic film that will involve all students from both classes, which he will probably be producing for 30 to 45 minutes,” he said. I was. “The second idea is to have a group of students create a 10- to 15-minute short film of him and show it to us like a film festival.”