The moment you’ve been waiting for is now here! On the day of the supposed “end of the world”, we present SFU LipDub: End of the World. Go ahead and check out the video at http://youtu.be/YILvub8evmo

Thank you so very much for your patience and continued support. We greatly appreciate the support of everyone who has helped us along the way. Your contributions have been greatly appreciated.

On behalf of everyone at SFU LipDub, we hope you have a wonderful holiday season!

Cheers and thank you,
SFU Student LipDub Society

Thank you so much for coming out to SFU LipDub. It was awesome seeing so many of you show up in costumes, in your clubs’ t-shirts, with your own props, banners, balloons and decorations. I can still vividly remember the wild cheers, screams, and LOUD singing from you guys from the shoots. I’ve been an SFU student for more than four years now and I’ve never been so proud to be one amongst all of you brave, hardworking, and enthusiastic people. Your energy reminded me of the Canadian hockey team winning the olympics here in Vancouver; it was unbelievable.

I would also like to thank all of the crew for helping all day and sticking out till the end. Despite all sorts of overwhelming challenges, we have survived. It was not only the craziest and most ambitious project I’ve ever attempted, but also the one with the most complications. But we did it. We gave it our best and there will be no regrets. Also, big thanks to all who stayed behind to help clean up the school.

For those of you who’ve walked the whole SFU LipDub route with us, you would have seen the extent of the decorations and lighting modifications we did to the school. Big props to the art and cinematography team, as well as the school facilities management for doing such an amazing job making it look like a real apocalypse. To me, the two decorated AQ hallways are symbolic to the scope of the project. We were really ambitious.

I know there are a lot of students and participants here who have never been to a film set (professional or student-film), so I apologize for not giving enough warnings about how much waiting and delays could happen at a film set. As mentioned, it is a really ambitious shoot, and a single continuous shot made a lot more complicated. We also had a lot of technical difficulties with camera equipment despite several prior tests, so we had to work on the fly to set up the camera in different ways to make the shots work. We lose around half an hour every time it happens.

As some of you saw, the camera rig is huge with several pieces of small machinery and electronics. It’s crazy.  Every time someone gets too close and bumps into the camera, the balance changes and the shot goes shaky for the rest of the way. By the way, the camera rig weighs at least 30lbs. That doesn’t sound like a lot, till you think about the shot; it’s like running while balancing a 30lb water jar on top of your head for 7 minutes without stopping.

Keep in mind the scale of the project, and then think again about how many of us there were, spread over all that distance (from Saywell Hall to Convo Mall). Our walkies could not even cover that distance. The comparatively small crew worked doubly, triply hard to make the whole project come alive, and they’ve started working on it since 9 or 10 in the morning (some have been working on it continuously for days prior), and we had many people cleaning up till 4am, with a few still packing up the day after (Thursday).

All of you; participants, performers, and crew, are heroes. This is an event to remember. As filmmakers and event organizers, we’ve learnt a lot. All the other lip dubs have our admiration. We would also like to thank our sponsors; all the departments from SFU who have donated money towards this project; all our food sponsors; SFU and SFU Facilities Management; Galactic Entertainment and Celebration Fireworks. Look out for a full list of sponsors we have to thank on the website! We would also like to thank the SFU administrators, especially Darren Francis and Paul Gibbs, for believing in us and helping us out all the way on top of their usual busy schedules.

This is a long essay, but I hope it helps answer some questions and concerns. All of you have our gratitude and thanks. I hope everyone got home safe; I hope everyone has been getting some good rest. On behalf of the whole team, we wish you the best of luck on your work and studies. Watch out for the release in April!

Cheers,
Cedric Yu
Producer and Director
SFU Student LipDub Society

——

Dear All:

Please raise your hand and pat yourself on the back. Y’know what? Give yourself some credit and congratulate yourself.

To the participants:

Thank you so much for coming out to SFU LipDub. Thank you so much for your voracity, your enthusiasm and most of all, for your awesomeness. It was long hours, lengthy wait times, cold and wet. I apologize for not being able to meet all of you personally and for those I did, I apologize for not being able to speak with you. I wish I’d been able to shake each and every one of your hand for coming out to this project. If you see me around, please take me aside so I can let you know how much myself and all of the producers and all of the crew love you.

Overall, this project has been the biggest and longest project I have ever worked on. I can’t believe that after a year (or two for some) we’ve finally shot. It was a huge project to coordinate and required a lot of planning. Then, it was an arduous shoot with plenty of technical issues. For instance, our earthquake-proof, concrete school happened to like soaking up our communications signals and resulted in a lot more communications errors than we would have liked. Special thanks to our film crew for being there with us from as early as 9AM all the way til we finished wrapping at 4am. Many of our crew had never even been on a film set before yet excelled at their jobs. I am so proud of every single one of you. Because of the technical difficulty of the shot itself by being a long continuous take with particular cues for our special effects and actors, it took us a long time to set up and then even longer to finally be prepared to go for a take with all of our special effects. After all these months of planning, finally seeing those fires explode from the stage though was like seeing a baby born. All of us on the production team cannot wait for it to go through post-production and be able to “christen” it.

Once more, thank you.

Once more, thank you so much.

Once more, thank you so very much.

I love you. From all of the producers, we love you.

And to SFU, thank you so much for letting us pursue this crazy project. We love you and are so proud to be able to call this our university, our community.

Cheers,

Michelle

How does one make sure all 500+ people are listening to the same song at the same time with a moving camera and multiple locations? This is where our engineering students come in.

Instead of having a person running around carrying a boombox, the engineers have created the “speaker suit”. Alfonso Chin, the previous SFU LipDub director approached the engineering students last year and pitched the idea of having an extremely portable speaker that can follow the camera around. Since the SFU LipDub will be shot in one continuous shot, a speaker with the same calibre of mobility is needed: hence, the “speaker suit”.

Unlike what the name suggests, the “speaker suit” is not actually a suit. Eric Boyer, an SFU Engineering undergrad, and his brother constructed a 300 watt 8″ subwoofer (worn at the back), with two 80 watt speakers (one for each arm). The “speaker suit” took them around 200 hours for them to construct. According to the head of the SFU LipDub’s Engineering Director, Dropsy Kikabou, it is probably “the most powerful portable stereo system in the world” to date.

The “speaker suit” weighs around 30 pounds in total. Randy Yee, the “speaker suit” operator (as well as SFU LipDub’s Engineering Associate Director) regularly goes to the gym three times a week and he is more than prepared to be running alongside the camera on Wednesday, March 14th.

So, if you hear music blasting in your lecture halls, yes that is your cue to come out and join the SFU LipDub!

Our “End of the World” LipDub will be shooting tomorrow. Here are some important reminders for the big day:

Registration begins at 4pm outside the U-Pass machines. We strongly encourage you to pre-register to speed up the process at http://sfulipdub.com/join-the-dub/. The event itself will go until around 11pm, but this time can change depending on how quickly we can get our final take. That being said, if you have class tomorrow evening feel free to drop by afterwards! Our final take will likely happen at the very end.

Things to bring:
- SFU apparel (or bright clothing)
- flashlight
- food/snacks for the night
- water bottle

Don’t forget to dress warmly as it may get chilly tomorrow night!

Please forward this message on to all of your friends. We want to show the world how great this university is, and I’m looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow!

Hobson Lin, on behalf of:

David Semail
Human Resources Director
SFU LipDub

Meet Anna Tse, the Production Coordinator for SFU LipDub. You might be wondering what exactly that entails, like I did.  She’s the person that makes sure everything flows smoothly.  As her job title states, she co-ordinates anything from meetings to transportation; pretty much the logistic side of things. So far, one of her most important jobs is to ensure every member on the team stays informed with announcements and updates.  When a problem arises, she and teammates are the ones we refer to to find a possible solution.  What she treasures the most working within this project is meeting new people and experiencing a “diversity of working styles”.  On March 14th, expect her and her awesome teammates to be working hard and making sure everything is running as perfect as it can be!  She hopes that this special night will be “a fun, exciting night for everyone to remember in their SFU experience”.

“TSE you there!” – Anna