The opening of the remake of Fame came and went without much attention a few weeks back but to promote the release of the film, LG sponsored a Fame-themed video contest. They encouraged dancers, singers and musicians to film themselves covering the remade Fame theme song in whatever way they wanted. So a dancer could dance to it or a singer could sing it or a musician could play it. I’m sure you get the picture. There was only won prize and it was a whopper: $50,000. Here’s the winning video. I can’t embed it so click on the image to watch it.

Warning: Video contains mimes

Whoever shot that thing is really smart. Most of the other entries consist of a people who set their camera up in their bedroom or in their ballet studio and danced in front of it alone. The makers of the winning video went all out and made a super slick music video. I can see why it won but….I don’t know, it seems a little TOO slick if you ask me. This is one of those times when you have to wonder if maybe the sponsor hired a ringer to create a great entry. Except that doesn’t make much sense in this case. Normally I’d suspect a ringer if a company plans on using the wining video in their advertising campaigns. But the ad campaign for Fame is over. The contest itself was part of that campaign and the movie has already kind of been forgotten about. So everything is probably on the up and up. I’m going to guess that a lot of the kids who jumped around in front of their web cams and thought they’d have a chance at winning 50 grand will be upset that a pro-made video went on to be named the winner in this one. Again, the winning video was really well made but picking it sort of goes against the original “film yourself” spirit of the contest, I think.