News
March 27, 2019Schenectady ARC Launches Lip Sync Video Challenge on March 27th to Six Local ARC’s Highlighting Services and Support
Schenectady ARC http://www.arcschenectady.org hopes to raise its profile, along with other local ARC’s around the Capital Region by launching a lip sync video challenge to the song “Get the Party Started” by Pink. The music lip sync video will premiere on Wednesday, March 27th at 12 p.m. on its social media channels Facebook https://www.facebook.com/SchenectadyARC/, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM9evcmynQ3cfn-xHSf_3lw/videos,
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/schdyarc/ and Twitter https://twitter.com/SchenectadyARC.
Each week, another local ARC chapter will launch their own version of the lip sync music video using the same song, and then challenge another agency to follow suit.
“Our lip sync video challenge concept really came from conversations on how to spotlight various ARC chapters and improve awareness throughout our communities about who we are and what we do,” said Michele Dombroski, associate executive director for development at Schenectady ARC. “We thought it would be a great way to challenge each other and have a lot of fun along the way.”
The seven participating ARCs include: Schenectady ARC, Rensselaer ARC, Schoharie ARC, Saratoga Bridges, Lexington, Liberty, Warren/Washington/Albany ARC and Mountain Lake Services. “Each chapter has their own identity within their own communities, but they all share the common goal of providing the best services to the people they support and striving to be a great place for people to work,” added Dombroski.
Kelly Milkins, director of human resources at Schenectady ARC said that when she first started talking about the concept of a lip sync video challenge with staff from the agency’s recruitment and retention committee, it was met with a lot of excitement and enthusiasm.
“I knew we needed to pick an energetic song that everyone could have fun dancing and singing to,” said Milkins. “It was initially our idea to /start/ the challenge for fellow ARC agencies to create a lip sync video, so the title of this song just stood out to me as being the one we needed to use. Schenectady ARC is definitely ‘getting the party started’ with this.I also happen to really love Pink so it all worked out perfectly.”
Milkins had previously discovered that two of Schenectady ARC’s Direct Support Professionals (DSP’s), Jim Papaliosis and Mike Miller, had some background in videography. She asked them both along with each of their supervisors, Molly Felso and Melissa Chichester, to join her to form the five-person video production team. “They all jumped on board immediately and we starting working on ideas for the video,” said Milkins.
As a production team, Milkins said they knew from the beginning that it was important to include as many people from the Schenectady ARC community as possible and give them an opportunity to be in the video.
That meant going out to a number of the agency’s program locations to film the video
“We recorded at seven different agency locations within Schenectady County and each location was a unique experience. We also had a special recording shoot outside of Proctor’s Theater, which was absolutely amazing and we can’t thank them enough for their support,” said Milkins.
The production team knew what the general idea of the overall theme would be for the video, and had identified some very specific things that they wanted to capture on camera. Essentially, the messaging they sent out to the programs in advance of the video shoots was just for everyone to be prepared to have a lot of fun.
“At our very first video shoot location, I was greeted at the door by one of the participant’s and he asked me if I was the ‘video lady’ because he was really excited to be a part of it and had been waiting all day for this to happen. Since that first day, I have had numerous individuals stop me to ask about the video and most times they start out with ‘hey, you’re the video lady’ or call me ‘lip sync lady’. It’s very encouraging to know how many people love this project as much as I do,” said Milkins.
For more information please visit: http://www.arcschenectady.org/.
