Students watch the trailer for “The Don Rises” during the winter sports rally.
On Friday, Feb. 8, the latest rally video, “The Don Rises,” was released at the annual winter sports rally. The video was written, edited, performed and produced by seniors Ian Barrie, Keaton Moe, Jared Dilibero, Parvir Aujla, and junior Patrick Lin. Aragon’s varsity basketball team won 58-43 against Hillsdale shortly after the video was released. The game was completely sold out.
“The Don Rises” was based off of the trailer for “The Dark Knight Rises,” released on July 20, 2012. In the video, the Don, portrayed by Ian Barrie, is initially defeated by the Knight, portrayed by Jared Dilibero, and a series of clips of the defeat of Aragon sports teams follow. Then, the don rises to defeat the knight, and clips of Aragon teams’ victories are shown.
“The Don Rises” is the third Aragon rally video. Last year, the same group of leadership students made a music video, “Chillin’ with a Don,” a parody of the Lonely Island’s “I’m on a Boat.”
In 2011, “Donception” premiered at the winter sports rally as the first Aragon rally video. Barrie says, “Nobody had ever done anything like it before, and we chose to parody the trailer because it summarizes the plot in an appropriate time span.”
The first stage in the video making process is the brainstorm. “We normally spend about a day brainstorming ideas together,” says Barrie.
For “The Don Rises,” there were more sports scenes than previous rally videos. Moe says, “We use the sports scenes as a substitute for explosions in the trailer.”
Not only are there no explosions in the videos, but there are no swords or any type of weapons either. Aujla adds, “A lot of censoring goes into these videos. There are about four or five meetings with administration about censoring content.”
Adds Barrie, “[Administration] was more lenient with the censoring this time around. [It is] probably because they trust us more after the last two videos.”
Since Lin is the only video creator who will not graduate this year, the legacy of the rally videos could be in jeopardy. However, Moe says, “Patrick is very intent on keeping the videos around next year, and he’ll probably get others involved as well.”
