At it's simplest form, a LipDub is a cousin to lip-synching. But rather than a single person or handful of people mouthing the words to a song, you usually have dozens and dozens of people involved in bringing it to life. Rarely is a single person featured throughout; instead the singing is handed off from person to person, usually with a constantly moving camera, to feature as many different people (in both the foreground and background) as possible.
Why do I care? I wish I knew. But there's just something...fun... about the LipDub. From the usually upbeat song selection, to the different ways that the performers think to try to include everyone, to the mass cheering at the end of (almost) every Lipdub, to the six or seven people that somehow seem more memorable than the others in any given video. Plus, the fact there are often several different styles of LipDub.
Which is what I'll be covering this week...an attempted taxonomy of LipDub styles. And while this doesn't fall squarely in the center of the topic of "pop culture," it's definitely within the borders.
Type #5: The "College Music Video" LipDub
So here is what I think of as the LipDub at it's simplest or most common form: a large group of college students recreating a song...nothing more, nothing less. A common variation on this is the "High School Music Video." In both, you'll see the students, the occasional faculty member, and get a tour of the campus. And usually bathrooms.
Submitted for inclusion here are two examples, perhaps at two extremes of the spectrum:
- A basic, straightforward LipDub from Calvin College (go West Michigan!), dubbing Rocket Summer's song "So Much Love"
- A more dramatic, acting-intensive (long set-up) LipDub from the University of Montreal, dubbing Offspring's "Pretty Fly" (here you also have the sub-variant of the "Foreign LipDub," wherein a non-English speaking school LipDubs to an American song)
No comments:
Post a Comment