Holidays are now officialy over. 2010 has now officialy started. The RTL House started of the new year with some music.
Lip dubs have increased in popularity. When searching for lipdubs on Youtube or on the web in general, several pages filled with results show up on the screen. Popular as they might be, what exactly is a lip dub?
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 iPod. Often, they look like simple music videos, although many involve a lot of preparation and are well produced. The most popular lip dubs are done in a single unedited shot that often travels through different rooms and situations in, say, an office building. They have become popular with the advent of mass participatory video content sites like YouTube. 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: “It appears as if someone thought up the idea on the spot, pulled out their personal video camera, and said hey everyone, let’s all lip sync this Flagpole Sitta song.”
- authenticity: The people, production and situation appear real.
- participation: “The video doesn’t consist of one person’s spectacular lip sync, but that of a group, all participating together in this one spontaneous effort, which seems to communicate the attitude and mood of the song.”
- fun: the people in the video are having a lot of fun.
The RTL House chose to produce a lipdub, starring the anouncers, animators, journalists and many other employees of the production house, to wish their viewers a happy 2010. It was aired December 31st, 2009 / January 1st, 2010 at midnight sharp. The video ended with a “Bonne année 2010″.
Filming this clip wasn’t exactly an easy task. It was recorded December 31st, 2009 in the afternoon. Unfortunately for them, they encountered quite some problems. Seeing as how it was all filmed in a single unedited shot, they had to start over everytime someone made a mistake. They were quite lucky it still got finished in time.
I had been looking forward to this video for a week, before I actually got to see it. I had seen ‘behind the scenes’ shots, I had seen some bloopers… Which means that by the time December 31st, 2009 came around I was pretty curious to see the finished result! And well, what can I say?
RTL House always has some pretty fun ways to send out their Christmas greetings and new year wishes. This wasn’t any different.
For those of you who want to know more about it, an entire website was created about the lip dub. You can visit it by clicking here.
Why a lip dub?
It’s a lot of planning, hard work and in their case it caused them quite some stress. So why do it? Easy, they did it for their image.
For those who actually view the channels of the RTL-House, you’ll know that they are often referred to as the ‘RTL-family’, especially during events. Making a lip dub, that includes everyone and not just the faces that you see on your television screen strengthens and confirms that image, which is obviously quite important to them.
It’s also not the first time that they all work together like this, to show that they are a family. They also recorded the song and a video for ‘Televie’ (= Levenslijn), which was shown (and for sale) during the entire campaign.
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For the channels with a younger audience, it proves that RTL is young and dynamic and sponteneous and fun.
So as I said before, a lip dub is not only fun for the audience to watch, it also improves the image!
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Publicis London
Publicis in London thought it would be fun to do a lip dub as well. However, when put on YouTube it didn’t exactly receive a warm welcome. The audience didn’t / doesn’t like it, they think it was a bad idea, … Only few of the reactions on the video on YouTube were positive.
Because for us the best work is the work that gets talked about and passed on.
They talked about the lip dub… But if it was exactly what they had in mind…?
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We ignite conversations that ignite businesses.
With ideas so contagious that people adopt them as their own and pass them on.
We seize opportunities. We spark action.
Because brands that ignite conversations grow four times faster than the category average.
We are a place where people are free to express themselves.
We want to be the place they do their best work.
We believe in liberty, equality and fraternity.
(We are a bit French, after all.)
Those words can be found on Publicis’ website, when looking for their mission. In a way, I suppose the lip dub video does match their mission; they ignited conversation (even though it wasn’t exactly positive or in their favor), the fact that they made the lip dub shows that they really do undertake action and that its a fun place to work.
However, for an agency that presents themselves as very professional, an agency that has their own education program (ADcademy)… It seems a bit… lame, for lack of a better word. They seek the best to work at Publicis and in comparison with that fact, I expected something … MORE. I don’t have another way to put it right now… Maybe later I’ll edit this post to clear it up, but don’t worry… I’ll let you know 
