I started a new job in September with Lifetouch Photography, a company that does school portraits, as well as some studio stuff as well. But my job was doing school portraits. A LOT of early mornings, getting up at 4:30 or 5 to drive out to Duncan or Lake Cowichan or even Youbou. This may or may not come as a surprise to you, but it's possibly the most fun I've ever had at a job, (Okay, except for the Olympics, because not much can beat that haha). And since it's working with a photography company, and thousands of kids, I can't use any of the photos in my portfolio or anything, so I don't have much to show you. I can, however, get away with keeping this photo as my own personal memorabilia of my time with Lifetouch, since technically this student is relatively unidentifiable. (By the way, that board he's holding is our start/room board. I have to take a shot of it every 60 shots or so, and sometimes I like to get the kids to hold it for me.)
So, as much fun as I'm having, it's unfortunately a seasonal job, so in the next couple weeks, it'll goodbye Lifetouch. I'm already on the hunt for a new job, so hopefully I won't land myself in the poor house AGAIN this year.
So a few months ago, a University in Spain called UVIC, made a lipdub (a lipsyncing/audio dub video done in as few shots as possible) that mistakenly got attributed to the Uvic students of VICTORIA by none other than Perez Hilton.
When Slavin discovered this, he decided that Uvic (Victoria) should do their OWN lipdub sensation. He spent months organizing, had dozens of businesses donate their time, money, or product to the cause, and the proceeds of the event were to raise money for the Children's Hospital.
Incredible donations included Red Bull providing crates and crates of energy drinks for the students that were on site at 7 am, some of which stayed until 8pm that evening. Aclara Promotions volunteered their time and efforts and produced the whole video free of charge. Alibaba's and Hot House Pizza donated 5000 dollars worth of Pizza. And of course, BC Transit donated a bus. Okay, well the lent the bus.
Slavin and his cause appeared all over the news, in television, radio and print, did countless interviews, and even went to Vancouver to contact Michael Bublé's manager to get copyright permission for the song. I understand that Bublé was even supposed to make an appearance in the video, but with the life of a popular recording artist, I guess it didn't work out.
The Spain Lipdub consisted of 400 some-odd people, and Slavin was hoping to beat the Guinness world record by getting over 1500 people involved. (I think that's the number, I may be wrong.) In the end, he had almost 1000 studentsshow up that morning to participate.
The argument as to whether or not Victoria's Lip Dub was better than the Spain's Lip Dub, is a bit of a moot point. Because Shawn's goal was to bring the community together in a fun, once in a lifetime event, and I believe I speak for most of us, that it is astounding how much he accomplished. Most Lip Dubs are organized by media programs, or film schools, but this Chemisty-Psychology Double Major student decided to take the bull by the horns and coordinate his own.
I really want to congratulate Shawn. I'm sure he's heard it a thousand times, but I can't stress enough what an incredible person it takes to accomplish something of this grandeur. I'm impressed and inspired and know for a fact that this kid will go so far in life, and that this is only the beginning of his accomplishments.
I had to make it quite small to fit it here on my page, so watch it in full screen, or better yet, go to the Youtube page to watch it!
So please share this with as many people as you can, and help Shawn make this video go viral!!!!
