What it takes to produce a great lip-dub wedding film

Imagine a concert waiting to happen on the day of your wedding, and YOU are the star. The cameras will follow wherever you go, and they would flash their lights to your every smile, every nod and every 'pranaam'. Later on, you can do nothing but hope that you gave your best angles to give a good show for the final video.

But let's not stop there, and stir things up a bit. What if you knew exactly what song will be used for the final film, you come in slightly prepared and break into an amazing choreographed sequence or lip-sync a song for the cameras to make a video that will be remembered for years to come.

Introducing you folks to the new era of lip-dub weddings; the lyrics in the song play more weightage over other aspects in the film. Our own journey in the wedding space began with shooting a lip-dub wedding video to the song 'Sugar' by Maroon 5. You can watch our video here. 

Here's a list of all the essential bits we learnt from own experiences in producing these films for couples on their wedding day.

Whether you are a couple or a videographer or neither, this list will certainly help you make the most out of the lip-dub video - even as a participant.

1. Learn about the couple: On the first interaction with the couple, ask questions to understand the dynamics between them, including their back-story, their favourite movies, songs— all the way to their favourite color :)
2. Pick a song: This is (obviously) the most critical part which will define the backbone of the video. The song you pick should answer "why did we pick this song in the first place?" and should be in tune to the dynamics of the couple, and have enough room to showcase the wedding as well. Keeping in mind that this is meant for family as well, try ensuring the lyrics have no 'inappropriate' words.
3. Do you think you can dance? If the song we pick is an up-beat one, envision a bunch of your own friends owning some parts of the song with their dance moves. If you can’t dance, that’s absolutely fine- we have a dance choreographer who will assist you in getting your feet right on the wedding day itself!
4. Plan the sequences: We take the lyrics of your song to the storyboard, and we think of all the possibilities that will help make this song better than the original cover! This is where we (the videographer, editor and choreographer) sit together and talk about how to execute the ideas within the space and time we have on the wedding dates.
5. Let’s DO this: The day of the wedding is finally here, and we bring in our A-team to create the magic! We interact with your family/friends just so they know who we are, and what we intend to capture. Making everyone feel comfortable and not feel intimidated by our cameras is VERY important to make the film seem natural. 
6. Turn your magic on! We assume the couple to be extremely busy with the wedding rituals, so we focus on capturing the friends and family first. Our videographers will also cover parts of the wedding ceremonies - including the main pheras at the mandap. 
7. Just for the Couples: As the newly weds can now spare time with our dedicated team, we will capture the most important sequences of the film, getting the couples to lip-sync / dance as we had envisioned during the storyboard process. Again, we will keep reminding you that your smiling faces are golden to our cameras.
8. That’s a wrap! The hardest part is finally done! We take this to our editing room, review all the footage and from all the permutations, narrow in on the making the best edit ever! This usually takes a lot of time - usually 4-6 weeks - until the first draft is screened for our newly wed couple!

And ... voila!! Upload your final video and watch your fan-base build with all those views streaming in. It seems like only yesterday when you imagined yourself to star in your favourite song, that too on the most important day of your life!

Do check out some of our best lip-dub wedding videos here.

​Nikhil Mehta
NJM Productions (tm)
You Narrate. We Create.