A variety of videos on the Internet showcase people of all ages lip syncing the words to well-known songs. The lip dub became widely popular as college fraternities, high schools, professional football teams, celebrities and organizations of all kinds decided to put together a lip dub of their own.

A lip dub is a music video that includes individuals lip syncing to a song, while later in the editing process the audio of the song is dubbed over the video of the lip syncing.

This year Puyallup High School will be taking on the challenge of producing its third lip dub. Filming of the lip dub will occur March 13 during a one-hour advisory after second period.

The task of creating a lip dub requires strategic planning and a great deal of effort from its planning committee. Teacher and leadership adviser Jamie Mooring discusses the hard work her students have put into planning this year’s lip dub.

“We have been planning since we got back from winter break and it is massive to prepare. There is a group of six students who are in the actual lip dub planning committee [who include]  Bailey Plumb, Ally Crouch, Aaron Strobl, Riley Kudabeck, Mary Dimond and Cammie Wolter,” Mooring said.

Mooring continues to further explain the duties and obligations of the planning team.

“Within that group they are responsible for organizing the route and choosing the route, picking the songs, dubbing the songs so that they go together, organizing over a hundred different groups of students and that does not even count all the separate advisories. So really, they are managing about two hundred different groups and are trying to tell them where to be, how to be, when to be. It is massive. It has been every day for eight weeks of after school time and before school time. It is pretty massive,” Mooring said.

The large event would not have gone underway if the school supervisors had not supported it. A member of the lip dub planning committee, senior Aaron Strobl speaks about getting staff’s approval for the lip dub this year.

“I do not know if everyone knows but this is actually the third [lip dub] we have done. The first one during my sophomore year did not go well. We did not release it. We had it recorded and the leadership class alone watched it probably twice and then we deleted it. Last year it was actually a little more difficult to get administration on board considering how our first one went. But after last year’s [lip dub], they loved it. Bailey Plumb and I spoke at a teacher’s meeting and they were all on board,” Strobl said.

For the committee, a big part of planning the lip dub for this year was to focus on ways to enhance and make the lip dub slightly different from last year’s. Mooring explains how this year’s event will differ from last year’s.

“The route is a little shorter. We have worked really hard to try to get more kids connected. Like last year, we made over 80 different signs so that every club, activity, group and sport is represented. This year we are buying spirit props through our ASB that we can give to people so that we can engage them in the parade route as well. The songs of course are different, the ending will be different and the features are different,” Mooring said.

Although the planning team is essentially responsible for the construction of the lip dub, the participants in the video itself are also largely involved. Senior Lakymbria Jones is one of the featured students lip syncing to the first song in the video, “Respect,” by Aretha Franklin. Jones has also made preparations for her role.

“I have listened to the song multiple times to get into the [spirit] of Aretha [Franklin] and also prepared to bring in my own personality to the song,” Jones said.

The songs chosen for the lip dub are unique to each video and play an important role in engaging students while the cameras pass by. Strobl explains the importance of the tracks used in the lip dub and the selection process.

“It kind of is a big deal. We listen to so much music in [leadership class]. When we start taking suggestions, everyone shouts out songs the second they hear that we are trying to figure it out. It almost becomes a shouting match. We usually start by trying to figure out how we want to organize the people so this year we tried to have one boy and one girl do each song. So we tried to go from there and choose songs and we condensed that list down. It took about a week and a half to pick the list of songs and even after that we edited the list,” Strobl said.

Despite all the hard work required to produce a lip dub, it proves to be significant in the way it affects the student body. Jones considers the impact it has on the school.

“It really brings us together as a school, promotes school spirit and it shows off what we have at PHS. I think PHS has a lot to show off,” Jones said. “We are a really diverse school. We have a lot of clubs. I think people like to see how we show our school spirit and how we bond as a school.”