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04/15/2019 12:00 AMOn April 12, North Branford Police Department's (NBPD) viral lip sync challenge video from last summer went to the next level; when CBS cast it as one of 30 videos in the running to win a special, nationwide television program, "Lip Sync to the Rescue."
NBPD is the only Connecticut department to make it to the top 30. Now, votes are needed to get NBPD's video out of the pool of 30 competing police departments and into the top 10. The ten finalist videos will go on to compete for the win during a live TV voting period planned to air in the fall.
"Recently, our interim police chief, Jim Lovelace, was notified that our video was in the running to be part of a CBS special," said Judy Bannon, a volunteer who helped NBPD pull together the community-wide effort. "We were recently notified that we are one of the top thirty videos and the public will be voting to narrow it down to the top ten. We would love to get the word out to ask everyone to vote for the video to keep our police in the competition."
CBS opened its online voting period on Friday, April 12 and will collect votes every day through September 1, 2019. NBPD supporters can vote frequently here Supporters can also follow @LipSyncRescue on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
The lip sync challenge took over the summer of 2018 — and YouTube — with good natured throw-downs between police departments across the state and the country. Shortly after NBPD released the video on its Facebook page in August, it went viral with tens of thousands of views. Now, it has hundreds of thousands of views; check it out here The video, released on YouTube video by Inspiration in Motion, was also linked to the NBPD Facebook page.
From the opening seconds, when five of NBPD's finest lip-sync to Back Street Boys' "I Want it That Way," in a breezy sunflower field, the six-and- a-half minute montage of music and video features lip-syncing cops at some of North Branford's best summer locations and most-loved activities. The video also pulls in cops lip-syncing country, pop and old-school tunes. At various points, it heads through a grassy field filled with teens in pick-up trucks, finds little kids on cop's shoulders racing into firehose-generated showers, "tears it up" with a funny ticket-spoof sequence and brings in dance scenes with some impossible moves filmed at this year's North Branford Potato and Corn (PoCo) 'fest.
"We were trying to raise the bar," North Branford Acting Chief of Police James Lovelace told Zip06/The Sound, shortly after the official video release last August. "I think everyone in the department thoroughly enjoyed being involved with it, and especially being involved with the community. Our intent from the beginning was that we really wanted the community to be a huge part of the video."