The Mepham community came together in a big way on May 23.
Students and faculty shot a 12-minute lip dub video throughout the school featuring various hit songs and a number of cameos, including Mepham Principal Michael Harrington at 1:05.
Melanie Sirof, an English teacher, and Kelly Schiulaz, an art teacher, oversaw preparation and production on the video from start to finish. The two teachers went to Harrington after finding a lip dub video from another school in Colorado online.
"He was totally gung-ho," Schiulaz said of the Mepham principal. "... [He] was super supportive from the moment we brought him our idea."
The teachers held an informational meeting on the idea back in February where they grabbed a core group of kids.
After doing a school-wide vote to choose the songs, the "core group" mapped out the route for the video shoot.
Schiulaz said that the day of the shoot, everyone involved was called down to the gym at 2:15 p.m. She said they did one run-through and one take, and that was it.
"It was a lot of planning and then really only about an hour worth of actually lip dubbing," Schiulaz said. "... It's been a long road, but it was amazing."
Schiulaz said it was a group effort, but there were a number students and staff members that were influential in getting the LipDub off the ground.
Dan Levy was the video's cameraman and Christine Gajda edited the final product.
Allison Rattoballi, Paige Laupheimer, Alex Perlin, Jimmy Fraser, Alexa Rinaudo, Zach Dean and Taylor Motley were the students involved from day one and helped map out the school prior to filming on May 23, Schiulaz said.
Josh Haimson and Travis Uzwy were, according to Schiulaz, "our go-to 'singers,' taking on large portions of the songs."
"Not only did the students and faculty have a great time filming the video, but the Mepham Lip Dub project is a true reflection of the spirit and pride of our school community," Harrington added. "Thank you to Ms. Sirof and Ms. Schiulaz for all their hard work and efforts to bring Lip Dub to Mepham!"
