A lip dub is a type of video that combines lip synching and audio dubbing to make a music video. It is made by filming individuals or a group of people lip synching while listening to a song or any recorded audio then dubbing over it in post editing with the original audio of the song. There is often some form of mobile audio device used such as an MP3 player. Often they look like simple music videos, although many involve a lot of preparation and production. Lip dubs can be done in a single unedited shot that often travels through different rooms and situations within a building. They have become popular with the advent of mass participatory video content sites like YouTube.
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Jake Lodwick, the co-founder of Vimeo, coined the term "lip dubbing" on December 14, 2006, in a video entitled Lip Dubbing: Endless Dream. In the video's description, he wrote, "I walked around with a song playing in my headphones, and recorded myself singing. When I got home I opened it in iMovie and added an MP3 of the actual song, and synchronized it with my video. Is there a name for this? If not, I suggest 'lip dubbing'."[1] Lodwick also directed the "Flagpole Sitta" "office lip dub" in April 2007 which The Washington Post covered.[2]
Students in the Digital Media department at Hochschule Furtwangen produced the first university lip dub.[3][4]
Since then, dozens of lip dubs have been coordinated around the world predominantly by university students. After L'Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and the crew of Today Show produced a lip dub to The Black Eyed Peas' "I Gotta Feeling" in 2009, the viral video phenomenon gained international acclaim.[5] Universities in Thailand, Japan, Spain, and Brazil made UQAM inspired lip dubs to the same song in the following year.[6]
Tom Johnson, a technical writer who blogs about Web 2.0's effect on communication, describes a good lip dub as having the characteristics, or at least the appearance, of spontaneity, authenticity, group participation and fun.[7]
In September 2010, the season premiere of The Office ("Nepotism") begins with the workers doing a lip dub of The Human Beinz's "Nobody but Me" through the office.
The record of most people participating at a lip dub is 5,771, on October 24, 2010 in the town of Vic to the rhythm of La Flama by the Valencian band Obrint Pas and is called Lipdub per la Independència de Catalunya "Lipdub for the Independence of Catalonia"[8] The record is not recognised by Guinness.[9]
On May 22, 2011, Rob Bliss made a video called Grand Rapids Lip Dub in response to a Newsweek article that listed Grand Rapids, Michigan #10 on a list of "America's Dying Cities."[10] The video is labeled by Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times as "The greatest music video ever made." The nearly nine-minute video used 5,000 citizens of the city lip-synching to Don McLean's "American Pie".[11]