Hanover County Public Schools Lip Dub
Hanover County Public Schools Lip Dub Producer
REO Speedwagon poses with Lip Dub producers who created continuous camera shot video to “Roll with the Changes” with 1,000 performers.
Many of you know that my background is in TV Production, and I wanted to share with you this fun Hanover County Public Schools Lip Dub I produced a while back!
I’ve spent much of my career behind a camera in one way or another. Now, I photograph fine art destination and Virginia weddings. But I graduated from college with a degree in Communications—Radio/Film/TV, and one of my first jobs was in Washington DC managing a press briefing room for Department of Transportation.
I technical directed press conferences for CNN and edited presentations for high-ranking government officials. So of course, for my next job in television, I obviously worked on-air as a TV Kids Show Host at a Fox affiliate in Richmond, VA. Then, I took a job as the Director of Promotions at a local ABC affiliate where it was my job to get viewers to trust and like our news team and to watch our TV programs. I loved working in television, but when I had kids, I found the hours just didn’t work for raising a family, so I took a job with a school system!
I managed an internship program where I taught high school and college students photography/videography and television production. It was one of the most fun jobs I ever had, and I loved working with students! I’m so proud that so many of my students now work in the film industry, as educators, and as creatives at ad agencies.
While I worked at WRIC TV8, I was nominated for several Emmy awards, won once, and won many other prestigious awards like the Promax Gold Medallion award, and the Virginia Association for Broadcasters award.
But the crazy lip dub video I made with a group of my student interns remains one of my proudest career accomplishments from my days working in television. Lip Dubs became very popular around 2010 and high school and college students began uploading their videos to YouTube. A Lip Dub is a choreographed video where the participants lip sync along with the words while the camera follows their dance movements along a predetermined route without any edits. That’s the tricky part—the camera must start at the beginning of the song, and capture all of the action in one continuous movement through to the end of the song.
The TV show The Office even got in on the fun and started an episode with a cold open featuring the entire cast performing a lip dub in character. (It’s pretty amazing—and you should watch it if you haven’t seen it already! Go ahead. I’ll be right here waiting for you to come back to reading.)
The Office Lip Dub Cold Open
While working in my role in education, our long-term and respected superintendent of schools retired. I was tasked with creating a video to show at Convocation (an event that kicks off the school year that is attended in person by all teachers and staff—like a giant motivational pep rally to kick off the school year.) I wanted to find a way to show the passing of the torch that would be fun and meaningful.
My camera operator, students, and I spent months coordinating the video. We reached out to the school district’s transportation department and each principal to ensure that all schools in the district would be represented and that they’d have a school bus that would pick them up from their school and bring them to the taping. School board members, the local sheriff’s office, and community business leaders also took part, and the teachers of the year from each school were given a special section of the video.
I love to see the fun different ways schools are represented in the video. Students wore band and cheerleader uniforms, two casts of Wizard of Oz made an appearance as well as a group of teachers dressed as Smurfs. Librarians rolled down the hall on library carts, and computer technology staff played keyboards on, well. . .keyboards!
The video grabbed the attention of REO Speedwagon, and they called me when they were touring nearby to arrange to stop by the school where we shot the video. They wanted to say thanks to as many participants as they could. The band was touched to see how the younger generation had embraced their music and found it to be impactful. They ultimately gave a private concert and a Q&A session with the students. I loved getting to meet the band, and they were gracious enough to invite my family and me to be their guests at their concert that evening.
Here’s the video—enjoy!