Marquette has made a few good attempts at achieving YouTube fame.
Alumnus Greg Shutters’ MUTV commercial “My Little Baby” has over 230,000 views, the Raynor Rave videos all have views in the thousands, and the “Class of 2009 ‘SHOUTS’ Goodbye!” video is flirting with 10,000 views. Three’s a crowd, right?
Not for Mikey Barreras, a sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences.
“Around the time of the Raynor Rave, I saw ‘I Gotta Feeling,’” said Barreras, referring to the YouTube-famous lip dub video created by the students of L’Université du Québec à Montréal, in Canada.
A lip dub is a music video created through lip synching and audio dubbing. In the “I Gotta Feeling” video, the students portrayed lip synch to the song of the same name, by The Black-Eyed Peas.
The most successful videos are completed in a single unedited shot while a camera travels through different rooms. It may look simplistic, but these videos often take boatloads of preparatory work.
“If we pulled off the rave, why can’t we do this? (The rave) got me in the spirit,” Barreras said.
So Barreras created a Facebook fan page for a “Marquette Lip Dub” and quickly accumulated support from more than 500 fans. He surveyed fans in an effort to boil down song choices.
Nick Herff, a sophomore in the College of Communication, suggested “You Get What You Give” by the New Radicals, and the decision was made.
“I am a big fan of the music video,” Herff said. “I think that’s what gave me the idea of a lot of people being able to be a part of it.”
Barreras’ next step is to choose the perfect route around Marquette’s campus for the video, which must be filmed in a single take. Barreras has not yet determined possible routes, but he has a plan.
“I’m going to put videos of possible routes on YouTube and people can rate them,” said Barreras. “The one with the most stars will be the one we’ll walk through for the video.”
For Barreras, the toughest part is going to be choreographing the lip dubbing and route with the music, seeing as the video must be done in one take.
“My idea is to have big mass meetings every Saturday for a month where we go through the entire thing,” said Barreras. “I don’t see this as being something easy to pull off.”
Chris Szalkowski, a junior in the College of Health Sciences and lip dub fan, is excited for the project to take off.
“It’s a really cool idea and its something that doesn’t typically happen at Marquette,” Szalkowski said. “I think four Saturdays a month for something this fun is not burdening.”
Once Barreras and his crew shoot the video and finish editing it, he wants to premiere it to the Marquette community first before putting it on YouTube during finals week.
“I want to get everyone together to have an after party,” said Barreras. “We’re going to be YouTube-famous the rest of our lives.”
Barreras has not yet chosen the 200 participants needed for the video, but he will allow any Marquette student to participate. MUTV was contacted to help film and edit the final product.
Until then, the lip dub is all magic in the making and could be the video that finally and officially makes Marquette YouTube-famous.