Leadership held the second school lip dub on Jan. 26, with this year’s theme being “One person; one family; one love.” This lip dub, like many other school events was planned by Campus Connections Commission which is part of leadership’s Renaissance class.
“We as a leadership class brainstormed different themes and we came down to the final theme of ‘One person; one family; one love,’” said sophomore leadership student Ellen Batsuuri. “Each of the songs represent the different parts to the theme. After we knew the types of songs we needed we asked the student body which songs they believe show this and then narrowed it down and had them vote again through live announcements.”
The lip dub is an activity that involves the whole school and centers around a lip sync to various songs, but also includes dances and small performances choreographed by students. The songs chosen this year were based on the theme and included “We’re All In This Together,” “Say Hey,” and “Born This Way.”
In addition to organizing the theme, leadership students are also in charge of fundraising to carry out school events.
“When planning an event, leadership students first brainstorms ideas about what it should include and when it’s going to occur. After finalizing the idea about the event with Perino, we start to purchase the needed things for the event,” said sophomore leadership student Cindy Chao.
Lip dub planning is not only limited to those in Campus Connections, but is an activity that includes all members of the leadership class.
“We [leadership students] are appointed to each club as their leadership point person and we communicate with each clubs point person any information regarding lip dub. We also help decorate and clean up on the lip dub day,” Batsuuri said.
Many teachers also helped with the technicalities of organizing the lip dub.
“My role for the last two lip dubs has been to take care of the technology component,” said Digital Photography teacher Nick Carrillo. “[I helped out] anywhere from the filming to the logistics like cameras, the new technology we wanted to try out, getting those contacts from people who actually had that equipment, and running all those pieces of equipment. I was all production, technical production.”
“We wanted each individual and unique club to be recognized for being apart of this school and our environment”
Courtesy of GoPro, new technology was used for filming the lip dub and included a new camera and two drones.
“We were very excited to do a partnership with a student’s parent that works at GoPro,” said Carillo. “[Senior Taylin Nguyen’s] dad was very welcoming and open to using GoPro technology in the lip dub. The camera we had on the group was the GoPro Hero 5, attached to a gimbal [camera stabilizer], to keep a smooth-as-butter shot. The gimbal is meant to compensate for any quick adjustments, and it compensated so well it looked completely smooth. The two drones in the air were also provided by GoPro, but they were flown by Mr. Nguyen and a colleague.”
With this being the second time the lip dub has been held, there were some changes to its implementation. This year, the lip dub became a mandatory event for all clubs, sport teams and students.
“We wanted each individual and unique club to be recognized for being apart of this school and our environment,” Batsuuri said.
However, the lip dub was also an hour-and-a-half-long event that took time away from classes.
“For someone like me, and a lot of people in my friend group, the lip dub is somewhat of a waste of time,” said sophomore Kevin Yang. “Although it is a fun all school event, standing around for a few hours is the extent of most people’s participation, and I think that’s just due to the nature of the lip dub. There are too many people to keep track of.”
To Yang, the lack of active student participation was a problem.
“I think [the lip dub] has potential to be a tradition, but maybe making schoolwide polls, having people film small parts of the thing themselves. [Something like that] would make it more inclusive to fit [this year’s] theme of unity.”
Nonetheless, the lip dub, like many other school events, has been implemented as a tradition for the entire Aragon community.
“The lip dub was brought back this year because it will be a tradition that occurs every two years,” Chao said.
The final version of the lip dub is set to be shown on Feb. 9 during the winter rally.
