As you unlock your phones, music blasts through your airpods and videos of the Homecoming rally appear on your screen. While watching you notice a clip of you and your friends enjoying and cheering during the performances, and you’re reminded of the games and performances at the rally. Or maybe, when you open Instagram, you see a skit featuring ASB members and it reminds you that you need to complete your athletic forms by tomorrow. 

Behind the 45 second videos, ASB Publicity dedicates time and effort to create aesthetically pleasing, informative reels. The Northwood Instagram account has been utilizing popular songs and funny trends to reflect on major school events and deliver important messages that are essential for students to know about. 

“You can have a wide variety of pictures and videos in reels,” ASB publicist junior Katerina Tolkachev said. “I also think the music aspect is a lot of fun, just choosing the right song can make a video so much better and hype.” 

Creating the reels takes the effort of not just the publicity team, consisting of Tolkachev and junior Joy Bae, but also other ASB members, who collaborate by proposing reel ideas, capturing clips of events and planning the details for scripted videos.

“Some ASB members came up with their own ideas and ran it through the publicity team, and we posted them,” Bae said. “For the recap videos, it was publicity who shot videos throughout the event and combined it into one video.” 

With the support of the rest of ASB, the publicity team pushes out reels with unique concepts or recaps on a regular basis. However, filming enough usable clips in the midst of all the activity in school events remains a challenge.  

“There’s only so many pictures and videos you can take and sometimes you run out,” Tolkachev said. “For instance, the reel for the Homecoming game; I ran out of clips because the music demanded so many clips in such a small amount of time.”

Despite the challenges, the reels have gained a lot of attention amongst students, which have helped the Instagram account gain over 200 followers since the start of the school year. 

“I enjoy watching them because of how interesting they are, and it helps me stay up to date about current school events,” sophomore Ines Khodja said. 

One reel about athletic clearances has reached 15,000 views, coming from students and admin, while the most recent Homecoming game recap received around 12,000 likes, motivating ASB publicity to continue entertaining and educating Northwood through reels. 

“It hypes up the school a lot more,” Tolkachev said. “We see a lot more likes and views than regular posts when we do reels. It’s more entertaining for the student body to see and it hopefully makes them want to get more involved because they have the chance to be part of it.”