Article By: Ashley Maceli

Being an innovative expression of creativity, Lip Dub has been vastly popular in European counties and Canada. Now it has come to Suffolk University. Lip Dub is essentially just a bunch of kids with a camera and a song, who decide to lip-sync to it and videotape their lip-syncing abilities. The process takes a lot of patience and an incredible amount of preparation.

The idea of bringing Lip-Dub to Suffolk came from the office of University Communications, who decided to introduce the idea because no other American university had performed this before. Kayla Hopkins, a Junior Public Relations Major and one of the students involved in Lip-Dub said, “They thought it would be a great opportunity for Suffolk to do something fun and also showcase the great buildings that we have.”

After the idea was brought to Kristin Baker, Director of the Performing Arts Office, she asked Hopkins if she wanted to take on this new project. “I then began to research the European and Canadian lip dubs and thought it was an awesome concept,” says Hopkins, adding, “From there I was hooked.”

The event, which was held on Veteran’s Day, began in the empty lobby of the Sawyer building. With eager students dressed in silly neon wigs,shinny tight pants and gaudy leather jackets, they were ready to start their production of a Queen mash-up including the songs “Don’t Stop Me Now” and “Under Pressure.” Although there were a good amount of people ready to get started on the production, there were significantly less people than the team had hoped for.

“The hardest part about creating the video was making sure we got enough people to show up on the day of filming,” Hopkins said. “We really only had three weeks to get the word out. Most of the advertising for it was through word of mouth and Facebook.”

Luckily for them, the group of students who dedicated their day off to the Lip Dub did whatever it took to get the video to be the best it could. After spending some time on deliberating what to do about the small amount of students they had, they came to the conclusion of having students run from one scene to the other. The path they followed began at the Sawyer building, moved on to Miller Hall, One Beacon, The Sawyer Library and finally ending at 73 Tremont.

Even with the amount of pressure of getting students to rotate to each spot in time, there was still the fact that there was not a lot of time for takes. “The best part about production was the adrenaline of knowing that we had to do everything right in the three takes of one single shot. There was no editing that could be done.” Hopkins said, “There was no room for error. And if there were any errors, they had to be funny.”

After the video went up though, it was clear that all the preparation was worth it. The video truly portrayed the hard work that the production team and the students went through in terms of choreography and overall enthusiasm. Suffolk University now has the first ever American Lip Dub, and it is truly shows just how friendly and involved out students are.