Dharm Makwana

Six months of planning, almost 1,000 volunteers and four takes amounted to one viral video that has attracted more than 400,000 views since being posted on YouTube Friday.

University of B.C. students Andrew Cohen and Bijan Ahmadian masterminded the lip-dub video where a roving camera follows the lead of singing and dancing students through a massive air-band performance to songs by Marianas Trench and Pink around the Vancouver campus.

The performance follows the University of Victoria’s video set to Michael Buble’s Haven’t Met You Yet that has drawn more than 219,000 views since its September release.

“Just saying UVic had 900 people come out definitely helped us with our numbers,” Cohen explained Monday. “It’s definitely a friendly rivalry … well, not a rivalry necessarily, but definitely, a little brotherly competition never hurt anybody.”

Students at Simon Fraser University are eager to join in the fray. Since the release of UBC’s online lip dub more than 2,600 people have joined a Facebook page designed to recruit volunteers.

Cohen suggested his SFU counterparts take their time planning and have tremendous faith in the creative team.

“I really trusted them,” he said. “One of my colleagues came back and said, ‘I might be able to get you a helicopter and some horses,’ and amazingly she did.”

SFU’s producer Alfonso Chin, however, has his own ambitions in covering all five of his school's campuses in one continuous shot.

“I thought UBC really raised the bar,” he said. “But there’s a lot of room for improvement. You know, that rivalry has always been in there.”