Lip Dub Time: An overview of this year’s lip dub

After the required advisory time of seminar on Thursday, April 21, the students and staff of East will participate in a school lip dub video throughout the halls, representing a majority of the school’s activities with featured “singers.”

The week before spring break, the six Pep Execs — seniors Brian Heneger, Celia Condon, Charlotte Hawes, Kyler Haughton, Maeve McGrath and Spencer Newton — and Student Council officers — seniors Sydney Beck and Sophie Henschel — started meeting to organize this year’s all-school lip dub.

The tradition started in 2013 and has been carried out every four years with the intention that every East student gets the opportunity to be a part of it at least once.

The Pep Execs and StuCo officers hosted an informational meeting and practice in the auditorium during seminar on today, April 19, for soloists and activity leaders that have been previously contacted. The idea behind Tuesday’s meeting is that all of the activity leaders and soloists can report back to their activities with their individualized plans.

For filming day, everyone will meet in the auditorium where they will be told their designated spots along the route. There will be one practice shot, and one official shot without changes for redoes.

After receiving approval from administration, they sent out a Google Form to all club sponsors and coaches to see who wanted to be a part of the video, then made a group chat with all of the participating activity leaders asking them to choose two soloists — preferably from a variety of grades.

While many students are involved in multiple activities, the organizers ask that students pick one to be with in the video as after their part — they’ll have to make their way to the auditorium for the traditional final scene of East’s “baño” chant and the school song.

Students not involved in any participating sports or clubs will be informed of where to fill in on Thursday in the auditorium.

One of the difficulties that the seniors organizers have faced this year is no longer having former Associate Principal Britton Haney who formally did almost all of the lip dub organizing along with previous pep club executives.

“Admin’s been like, ‘Let us know if we can help,’ but we are basically in charge of it,” Hawes said. “There’s no higher leader right now, which I think is a little difficult because usually for pep assemblies we’ve had that extra help from our sponsors, but they don’t really know [how it runs].”

Because of this, the lip dub organizers set up a FaceTime with Haney to learn what needed to be done and received tips from previous years. 

The leaders hired Scott Jolly Production to record the video — the same videographer used for the past two lip dubs. 

Day of, the organizers will be in the video, behind the camera and directing students where to go throughout the route.

Right now, the organizers have been walking through the route with the music blocking out where each song will start and end and who will be singing what.

“It’s just hard to know what to expect basically, so I’m really excited for it and I hope it all goes well,” Hawes said. “I think we’ve done our due diligence in prep to where it should go well, but it’s honestly reliant on student buy-in too. Kids just sticking to their part and not screwing us over. I’m nervous, but I’m excited.”