We make videos for schools. Though designed to represent culture, they also create culture. Our project with the St. Bernard’s School of New York is a wonderful example of this.
On the day of our arrival, the boys of St. Bernard’s broke into whistle and song during their morning assembly. We quickly learned that this was a longstanding tradition at this charming school in the upper East side of Manhattan.
We set out to make a musical film for them, with the hopes that our song would join the ranks of their century-old numbers such that, many years from now, the boys of St. Bernard’s might be heard singing, “Oh, I love that I go to St. Bernard’s!”
The school’s founders hailed from Britain and imbued many of the foundations of the school with a distinctly British flavour, down to the pronunciation of the “Bernard’s” (Burr-nurds”). As is typical of the British, the school has an uncanny capacity to poke fun at itself. Just a few moments in their halls, and one notices that the whole place is alight with a distinct old-fashioned cheer.
The song we wrote was built around an old English folk melody, and the lyrics were carefully written with the hopes that the song would age timelessly.
We included many of the most essential facets of St. Bernard’s enduring culture, and layered them into the lyric with rhyme and flourish.
Before any of the students had seen our film, they could be heard whistling and singing our tune through the wainscoted halls of the school. It was surely an auspicious sign for the place our song would take in their culture.
Our films are designed to last, like cultural artefacts. We are often asked what the shelf-life is of our films, and our only response is: they last. Ten years, twenty, fifty, they will exist as timeless pieces of archived culture.
We’ll check in after a decade or two to see if our work at St. Bernard’s has indeed been etched into the culture.
