Renting out Samo

Ever recognize an area of the Samo campus in a music video or TV show? For students, school is a place where they come to learn each day, but every Sunday Samo is rented out for many film and music industry shoots and well as a variety of other activities. Barnum Hall is often rented out for various occasions, but classrooms are also used quite often for filming.The Science Building, which currently sits empty, serves as the perfect spot for filming TV shows that utilize the classroom setting. With current plans to tear down the building to build new classrooms for students, this could contribute to a potential decrease in the amount of filming that occurs since Samo will no longer have an abundance of empty classrooms.Perhaps one of the most recent accomplishments and well known events among students that took place would be Selena Gomez filming her latest music video for “Wolves” in Drake Pool. The news quickly spread across school that Selena Gomez was in the Drake Pool which surprised many students.“I didn't really know what was going on, and Coach Flanders said a celebrity was coming to film. After a while, some of the students had tried to get into the pool. The security guards said it was Selena Gomez. I knew it was a music video because why would you need an entire pool and locker room,” water polo player Aaron Akhavan (’20) said.Another recent filming that took place would be the filming of popular TV show “Modern Family” which took place in early November. But Samo is rented out for many more activities besides filming such as having Barnum Hall rented out for the California Orchestra Directors Association (CODA) concert, or having photo shoots for the clothing brand H&M.The money Samo makes from renting out the campus goes right back in to supporting campus facilities. There have been smaller updates made to Samo, such as the scoreboard, lights in the humanities center, and the blue lunch tables behind the history building. But over the past few years Samo has made some updates that took quite a while to save enough money for such as the new marquis and updating the waitroom.The Samo campus has had many updates recently, but most student do not know this wouldn’t be possible without renting Samo out on the weekends for filming and other activities.