When My Commons Life decided to film a campus-wide lip dub, they had two goals: bring together students across campus and create an enticing video for prospective students.
“This isn’t for all the clubs that have something to do with politics or for all the clubs who have something to do with athletics, this is all the groups on campus,” said lip dub producer Claire Barnett. “The vision is 10 years down the road, they do one of these every year and everybody wants to be on the front line of it.”
Set as a music video but with hundreds of people, lip dubs are commonly done in large high schools. However, the MCL crew believed that it was time to bring the concept to Vanderbilt. Its content serves as an opportunity to promote organizations on campus as well as to participate in a potentially viral video. However, Barnett emphasizes that the chance to participate in the lib dub is not limited to large organizations on campus.
“I want anyone and everyone to put on a Vandy t-shirt or some costume from some frat party they’ve been to and show up between noon and 3:30,” Barnett said.
To film the video component of the lib dub, one of the members of MCL plans to sit in a rolling chair holding a camera and roll backwards or forwards ,depending on which direction the person lip syncing is moving in. The first three lip syncers — Zeinab Ahmed, Fiona Bultonsheen and Mae Wimbiscus — have been selected from the a capella group Voce, while the fourth, Cortez Johnson is a member of the MCL team. For the audio component of the lib dub, the team has compiled the songs “All Star,” “Party in the USA” and “Can’t Stop the Feeling” and is in the process of selecting the fourth song for the lip dub.
The video will be filmed this Sunday, March 19 from 12-3 p.m. The current path for filming begins by the Martha Rivers Ingram statue, wraps around the residence halls and eventually comes down to right in front of Commons Center. Water and soda will be distributed during the shoot and attendees will receive a free sticker as they leave. According to Barnett, one of the biggest incentives to come to the lipdub is that they often become popular online — some lip dubs have hundreds of thousands or millions of views online.
“The biggest pitch is that this could very well go viral,” Barnett said. “Do you want to say in a month, ‘Shoot, I could have been in that?’”