Update, 10/18/13: And the winner is...Lakewood High School. Katy Perry picked the school this morning and is coming to perform next Friday.
It was fate -- sort of. Lakewood High School's lip-dub to Katy Perry's "Roar" was in fact a submission to Good Morning America's call for such entries, but it wasn't the first time the Colorado school had gone viral with its own Perry rendition. In 2011, the school did a take on "Firework," but hadn't produced another video of it's kind until now.
See also: A list of Colorado flood relief benefit concerts
"The past two years people have been asking when we were going to do another lip-dub," says Lakewood High School video teacher and guy in charge of the Perry project, Adam Ronscavage. "But the songs weren't right.'Call Me Maybe'? We weren't going to do a lip-dub for that. It doesn't mean anything."
"We got word that Katy Perry was going to be on Good Morning America and she might show our previous lip synch," says Ronscavage. That didn't happen, but the "ROAR with Katy Perry" contest was announced, and it was the perfect opportunity for the school to work its video-making magic again.
"The principal's wife was watching TV, and as soon as they announced the contest, our principal got on the intercom, literally right then, and said, "Alright you guys. You have two weeks," recalls Adam Ronscavage. "From that minute, we started working on it."
While remaining hush about most of the logistical details of the one-shot performance, Ronscavage says it came down to the students making the most out of three twenty-minute homeroom periods for practice and trusting that it could be done. He put a call out via Google forms, asking student groups to sign up if they wished to participate.
"If it wasn't for the student buy-in in this school -- the students here believe in this place -- even the kids that don't like school still bought into this project and that's the bottom line," says the teacher. "That's what made it work."
Over the course of a handful of meetings, verses were chosen and groups -- like the football team, the diversity club and band -- were placed throughout the school accordingly. What the students did during their segment was up to them, but there was very little time to practice, so it had to be simple.
Continue on for Lakewood High School's Katy Perry lip dub video
With a half-day last Friday due to homecoming activities, the students had just one more dress rehearsal before they decided to go for it. "We did one last run-through and then I looked at my camera guy and my director [both students] and said, do we go now, or do we do one more practice?," Ronscavage relates. "They said, let's go now -- so we just did it in one take. Courtney [Coddington, director and producer,] did a lot of the logistics stuff with me -- her leadership and the way students listened and the way she carried herself was what made it a success."
Ronscavage acknowledges there are no guarantees, as the video contest is in the hands of the Good Morning America judges, but the teacher and students hope that if they do win, there is a way to do some good with the result. The prize is a live appearance by Katy Perry at the school whose video takes the prize, and Ronscavage and Lakewood High School would love to see it become a fundraiser for the victims of the recent flooding in Colorado.
With more than 50,000 views on YouTube in one week, Lakewood High School's version of "Roar" is getting some much deserved attention.
Follow @Westword_Music
