Tech crew enters contest to win new lightboard for McAfee Center

While many students spent their winter break skiing in Tahoe or vacationing in Europe, the McAfee Center was alive with stage techs filming a music video over the break.

This music video, a remixed version of “Party Rock Anthem” featuring all new lyrics, will be entered into a contest to win an expensive top-of-the-line light board for the McAfee Center.

The contest is presented by Electronic Theatre Controls, Inc, or ETC. The contest was to “show us your ETC,” meaning enthusiasm, talent and creativity.

“We wanted to portray what ETC stood for, so we came up with the idea for a music video,” junior Jason Seo said. “We wanted to represent ETC at its best, in a way that was fun for us.”

In the video, a bored light board operator tunes out the mediocre band practicing in the Cathie Thermond Drama Center for a Coffeehouse night, and instead imagines a concert being held in the McAfee Center.

The band performing in the McAfee included junior Stephen Jensen as a DJ, Seo on keyboard, junior DJ Traina on lead guitar and singing, junior Feargus MacFhionnlaoich on drums, Redwood Middle School seventh grade student Sarah Traina as a singer and freshmen Maddi Sloan and Natalie Miller as dancers. Sophomore Katie Burns plays the light board operator who imagines the performance, senior Natalie Berg plays a stage tech, junior Ethan Drohan filmed and edited the video and Ken Ochi provided technical support. In addition to appearing as part of the band, Jensen also wrote and directed the video.

The tech crew dedicated their winter break to this project, in addition to several hours after school during the first week back.

“We spent two weeks in the McAfee setting up all the lights and all the sound equipment. We also spent a week just writing the script, getting together with people to organize for the video,” Jensen said. “We spent our entire break working in the McAfee for this video.”

The tech crew had a great time making the video, and learned a lot about the difficulties of performing.

“It’s a lot different performing onstage and being energetic as opposed to just sitting and being a part of the crowd,” Seo said. “None of us have done it before, and since we’re all techs, we’re not used to performing.”

If Saratoga High wins the contest, it would mean new possibilities for the McAfee Center and future performances. Because 40 percent of the decision is popular vote, students wishing to help out should go to showusyouretc.com, go to Saratoga High’s video and click the “like” button on the lower right of the video.