A countdown sounded, and suddenly a sea of white, black and Columbia blue flooded the football field; hundreds of students stampeded across the grass and shattered the air with cheers, yells and roars.

The entire display was orchestrated by the leadership class and shot by a student film team who intends to submit the video to Katy Perry’s ‘Roar’ film contest that she announced on Good Morning America Sept. 6. The contest calls for high school students to record themselves performing a lip-synced rendition of her hit single ‘Roar’ in the hopes of winning a live concert by Perry Oct. 25.

When the leadership class received an email from Moxie, a production company promoting the contest, they only had a week to make preparations, senior Elizabeth Meyer said.

“We’ve spent 24/7 the last seven days trying to make sure that nothing can go wrong with this video,” she said. “We are set on making this thing the best we can.”

To showcase school spirit, students came to class Sept. 27 decked out in Whitman gear. At the end of the day, the leadership class organized the students to spell ‘ROAR’ on the football field, which was then filmed aerially using an air drone that flew above students and captured high angle shots.

“My favorite part was having the entire student body flood the stadium and seeing everybody come together for this huge event,” senior Madison Walser said, who performed as the main lip-syncer in the video. “The amount of dedication and hard work that has gone into this video shows just how amazing of a school we are.”

In addition to a live concert by Perry, the show will be broadcasted on “Good Morning America.” So far, only a few schools have entered, but one in particular poses big competition due to creative filming and a large amount of student body participation, junior Sam Dodd said.

While most of the competition is doing the same concept over and over again, Whitman is showcasing aspects of the school that make us unique, such as our LLS fundraising, Best Buddies program and talented students, he said.

If Whitman were to win the competition, it will be a challenge to prepare for a concert in such a short amount of time, principal Alan Goodwin said.

“If we hosted the concert the night of the homecoming game, there is a problem because there is not a lot of time allocated by the officials for any kind of entertainment,” he said. “There is also the challenge of restricting the number of people coming into the stadium when we don’t even have enough seating for our entire student body.”

Since the planning for the video was so last minute, a lot had to be set up before leadership could shoot the video. Sports practices were rescheduled and the SGA made numerous announcements  via Whitnet, Facebook and Twitter. Nonetheless, the video was filmed without major flaws or hangups.

“This showed how much we love our school and what we stand for,” Meyer said.