These kids came, danced and 'lip-dubbed.'
"Lip-dubbing is where you take a song with one single shot throughout the whole video, from start to finish and the camera has never cut, never turned off," explains Chism Cornelison, who his friends call 'Chaz..' "It makes things a lot cooler looking because it's completely just one shot."
It's a growing trend that has sparked 'fireworks' in the heart of pop star, Katy Perry--Literally. And for what reason? A simple contest.
"Hi I'm Katy Perry and I want to invite you to do something very spectacular! I want you to be a part of my 'firework' video contest," as Perry explains on her website.
"We wanted this to actually be like a story line, we've seen all of these videos but we wanted this to be really really different.," explains Chaz. "We got the story line from the song Firework because it's talking about letting your true self come out and accepting everyone as they are and we accept everyone here at Magnolia High School."
The way the video works, "We have a new student who comes into the school, he really is apprehensive about coming in because he is a new student. We open the front door and all at once he gets to meet all of the organizations as he goes through and everyone is all nice and accepting and welcoming him to Magnolia High School.'
Chaz is an aspiring director and says his journalism class at Magnolia High had a vision after hearing of the contest. After brainstorming all 23 students ran with it.
"Going into it I was really nervous because it was such a huge task," says Chaz. And before they knew it, more than 600 students and faculty members climbed on board. All taking part in what soon became the 'MHS Lip-Dub'
A continuous one-shot music video where students lip-sync to Perry's chart topping hit "Fireworks."
The music video, which lasts around five minutes was directed, produced, choreographed and edited by a bunch of high school journalism students. "Especially with film, you are your biggest critic and I didn't expect it to be as good as it turned out," explains Chaz.
It didn't take long for the video to go viral after being uploaded to Youtube. "We put it up on youtube for anybody in the world to see it and so the minute we put it up there we were expecting a few views but we definitely were not expecting what we currently have which is around what nearly 70,000 so far?" "Its taught me so far that you never know, once you put something online you never know where it's going to go."
The video even caught the eye of Katy Perry and her record label. In fact the video was posted to Perry's Myspace account and blog.
Student Nick Patton filmed the entire music video, capturing the magic, the moments and memories. "It took a lot of practice and patience it was really hard to match up the words and make it look good, but in the end it turned out great."
"Within a week we went from Magnolia High School who creates great videos to Magnolia High school, the creator of the infamous lip dub," explains Chaz.
From the hallways to the gym and to the rooftops at Magnolia High--These students proved there is no mountain high enough, or in their case, roof top high enough to let creativity take them to the top.
Katy Perry's Record label contacted the talented students at Magnolia High school and says Katy Perry herself plans to make a special visit to meet the students who put all of their hard work and effort into the music video next time she is in town.
Click the blue link to view the Magnolia High LIp-Dub video and click hereto view Katy Perry's website.
