Students film video for Lip Dub contest

Northwood students filmed a music video for “Hall of Fame” by the Script for the FOX 50 Lip Dub Project during the Plus 1 period Wednesday and Thursday of last week. The contest is for local high schools to shoot a Lip Dub music video that can win $10,000 if they get enough votes from their community and schools. DeLisa Cohen, Northwood’s career development coordinator, planned the video. Her work in producing a video for the CTE program’s “final celebration” inspired her to make one for the FOX 50 Lip Dub.

“I went online and looked it up and saw that the deadline was right around the corner, and if we were going to do something, we had to do it quick,” Cohen said.

Per contest regulations, the video had to be shot in a continuous take with minimal editing. The project was due at 6:00 p.m. Thursday night.

“My goal was [that] we would be able to do it in one day, but it didn’t quite look right, and the way we had the camera held and things like that, it just wasn’t good enough for a video,” Cohen said.

Cohen said the production was “definitely stressful”: especially dubbing the music over the video, previewing it to make sure the video was appropriate and submitting the project to FOX 50. She shared her plans to make the project even more successful in the future.

“Next year we need to plan it out early, and put it as a task to complete,” Cohen said. “We have enough students and enough student organizations, clubs and teams that we could really do something fantastic. I think next year it’s going to be fabulous. This year it was just figuring it out.”

Cohen’s main goal for Northwood’s video submission was to “incorporate as many students as possible” and win the prize money for the school. However, she thought the project could have been better publicized.

“Last night I went and looked at other videos online,” Cohen said. “One of the videos that I saw was fabulous: and you can tell that multiple people were involved in organizing it and getting it structured and getting it planned. And I didn’t really have that; it was me.”

Sophomore Zoe Kaegi chose to do homework during the Plus 1 period when the video was filmed.

“I didn’t really know it was happening,” Kaegi said. “I just kept hearing the music and I thought it might have been for cheerleaders or something, so I didn’t know if I was supposed to go or not. I just opted to stay in the classroom.”

Sophomore Evan Jones participated in the event.

“I didn’t know the words, so I just mouthed random things,” Jones said. “I had a blast.”

Cohen said she was not yet sure how she was going to spend the $10,000 prize money if Northwood won the Lip Dub project contest. She said she would ask others how to spend the money and make sure the prize went “directly back to the students” in some way.

According to the FOX website, the online voting for the videos will start Monday at 7:00 a.m.

– By Adrianne Cleven