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Marching 110 Virtual Video Goes Viral: The Story Behind It
By: Thomas Garverick
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ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) — Instead of playing at events like a bowl game or MAC basketball tournament, students of the Marching 110 are back at home bringing an unprecedented challenge.
“From there just seeing how we can operate and get somethings accomplished with everyone being gone,” Marching 110 Band Director Dr. Richard Suk said.
And then Assistant Director of the 110 Emily Talley came up with an idea. It was inspired by an app she’s been using while being at home called “Acapella”.
“When Mrs. Talley and Dr. Suk sent out an email saying that we can do a virtual version playing it was really awesome because it finally felt like there was some normalcy back in all of our lives,” Senior Marching 110 member Sophia Medvid said. “And even though we weren’t playing with them, to play alongside with all of the band members.”
Then Ricky Reinzan, an Ohio University integrated media major, took the idea and pieced the production together. Literally. Reinzan got 45 different students to send him videos playing their part in the song. It was the first time he had ever done something like this, so it took quite some time.
“I think I was working 3-4 days pretty much full time each day. Some days it was 8 hours on, some days it was 12, so it took a lot of time,” Reinzan said.
The video was so good that places like TMZ were tweeting about it — most notably, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, who went on to end one of his daily COVID-19 press conferences sharing the entire video.
“Yeah, I think most of us had no idea that he was going to use it at the end of his speech,” Assistant 110 Director Emily Talley said. “We were supposed to go to Japan in May and someone with the program texted me and said, “oh my gosh I’m watching you guys on TV from the virtual ensemble performance.” So it was really cool to see that happen.”
The 110 plans to do something similar in the near future because it keeps the band connected during this tough time.
“This was just a really unique and powerful way to bring everyone back together again and Ricky did a great job with it and all of my friends in the band felt connected for the first time in weeks and it was just a really powerful experience,” Medvid said.