Blogstar Memoirs

So today we filmed Australia’s first lip dub…

… and it went amazingly awesome! A huuuge shout-out to all the Year 12s at Baulkham Hills High School – an absolutely amazing grade!

We wanted to jot down some of the lessons we learnt from directing and filming today’s lip dub. Hopefully this will be useful for other budding lip dub organiser and directors!

Know every word – every syllable – every beat of your song(s)…

You can’t know your song(s) too well. Rehearsal time is tight, and when directing individual parts, you’ll need to be able to rattle off the words off your cuff. Knowing every single word to “Good Girls Go Bad” was disturbingly  effective and life saving today. If the Director is not the camera person, the camera person should know every word, syllable and beat too.

Rehersals are by far the toughest…

We had 200 students at the Baulko dub today. Individual part rehersals were compressed to 75 mins – a lot of detail to get through to a lot of people. Bring an energy drink. You’ll need it. No matter how fit you are – you will fatigue. No matter how in control you think you are – you will get stressed.

Have a trusted team around you…

From a Director’s point of view, today wouldn’t have been possible without the awesome Creative Consultants Anna and Michael. All the little things make the big difference. Let your trusted assistants take care of minor detail, so you can focus on directing.

Some will surprise, others will disappoint…

Some of your lip dub participants will amaze you with their efforts, enthusiasm and amazing ability to help you out. They’ll really make your day. Unfortunately there will also be others who won’t listen, are half-asleep, and waste your time. Don’t let the bastards weigh you down. Be direct and upfront with them. Don’t let them waste your time.

Break down the file…

This one probably saved us 2 hours. 2 hours we didn’t have. Break down your song into individual parts, and break down your mp3 into mini clips matching the parts – complete with orderly named ID3 tags. During rehearsals, you’ll need to be able to quickly, accurately and repeatedly restart the song from various points. It’s far easier to ipod playback exactly from the right ID location, than try to fast forward + rewind awkwardly to the approximate spot.

Lifesaving equipment is lifesaving…

Portable megaphone. Portable ipod dock. iPad was amazing useful too – first time we found a legit use for it actually.

Dress up, or don’t do it…

Today would have been terrible if no one dressed up. Half the battle is won when you arrive at the shoot with everyone in amazing costume, ready to party. It’s a great feeling for a director to have

Steadicam…

Try to borrow or buy one. The lip dubs that work really well are generally filmed with a steadicam. You don’t want to give the viewer a headache right? We used the Glidecam HD-2000 with body pod. You need the body pod, or you’ll die. I work out at the gym regularly, and it’s tough to hold the Glidecam steady for longer than 15 seconds. Your clip goes for 5 minutes right?

Order of events…

We started off with a big group meeting with everyone in the same location. This was following by 75 mins of individual part rehearsals. A dry practice run with the “camera off” then took place, where we could get a feel of everything gelled together for the first time. We then had one last big group meeting, following by the live filming. We took two takes. By the second take, everyone wanted to go home (and study so they can get a 99.95 ATAR, get into Med @ UNSW, become a doctor and fulfill their Asian parents’ dream… it’s ok I’m Asian, I can make these jokes… I didn’t get 99.95 either, so perhaps I’m just bitter…). The moment we knew the lip dub would be awesome, was immediately after the dry practice run. We got to the end like clockwork, with all participants SCREAMING like crazy. We smiled. It would only get easier from here. This was the best moment of today

OK I think I’m starting to ramble now.

We’re working on fine tuning the video over the next week or so. We’ll post the video + making of + photos up soon. If you’re in Baulko Class of 2010, and can’t wait that long, apparently you can get us to work a little faster by convincing the Class of 2011 (as in the Year 11′s) to get their yearbooks + video + jewellery with Rockstar Memoirs and Trellum