McClatchy-Tribune

Javier Caceres' "Shorewood Lip Dub" video went up on YouTube Dec. 17.

So Ashton Kutcher and Ben Stiller were tweeting the other day. You know. Down in Hollywood.

Ashton says to Ben: "Wish YouTube existed when I was in high school."

And Ben says, "We are all going to be working for Javier Caceres in five years."

Javier Caceres. You know. The filmmaker.

If you haven't heard of him, you will. He's the senior at Shorewood High School in Shoreline, Wash., who helped conceive, choreograph and shoot "Shorewood Lip Dub" -- a music video of Hall and Oates' "You Make My Dreams Come True" that was shot forward but is shown backward.

The 6 minute, 37 second, how'd-they-do-it video went up on YouTube Dec. 17. On Dec. 22, it was featured on "The Rachel Maddow Show" on MSNBC. On Dec. 23, it was the focus of a story in the Los Angeles Times.

And now Ashton and Ben are all atwitter, along with Nickelodeon powerhouse producer Dan Schneider, who The New York Times called "the Norman Lear of children's television."

"It's amazing, unbelievable," Caceres said the other day. "I just never thought it was going to be this huge. I've just been in a daze, taking it all in."

Even better for Caceres would be if the video was seen by Michel Gondry, the French director behind "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," and Caceres' idol.

"If he ever watched the video, I would lose my mind," said Caceres, 18. "He's the epitome of creativity."

The Shorewood lip-dub was a response to one made last month by rival Shorecrest High School to OutKast's "Hey Ya!"

Shorecrest's video-production class produced a continuous, one-take video involving hundreds of students dancing and singing through the halls. There's a banana in a wheelchair, the grim reaper and a topless Scot, and people lending sugar and shakin' it like a Polaroid picture. (You know what to do.)

The whole thing was captured by student cameraman Kollin O'Dannel.

Shorewood saw it, and the challenge was on.

There was talk of using the Beatles' cover of "Twist and Shout," but Caceres thought it was too slow.

So he and video production teacher Martin Ballew, 36, settled on the poppy Hall and Oates song, which was featured in the recent film "(500) Days of Summer."

They were inspired by director Spike Jonze's video for "Drop," by The Pharsyde -- also shot forward but played backward.

But doing that meant Caceres had to listen to the song hundreds of times, backward, to figure out the mouth movements for students to lip-sync. Played forward, it looks like they're singing the lyrics perfectly.

Caceres can speak the gibberish on demand.

Still, he shies from the credit and couldn't say enough about Ballew, or the others in his class who managed five different teams of students.

They shot during fifth period on Dec. 16, wading through some 600 students from 19 classes. They did five run-throughs in 100 minutes.

Ballew not only shepherded the whole project along, he followed Caceres through the school during the shoot, wearing a backpack/boombox that was blasting the song. (He makes a cameo in a knitted hat; Caceres does, too, wearing a crown of balloons).

And get this: Not one student did anything untoward or obscene.

"No one wanted to be the person who ruined it for everyone," Ballew said.

If anything, it made Shorewood a tighter community.

"There are teachers who have been here for more than 20 years, who said they had never seen the school so excited," Ballew said. "It really brought everyone together."

And while it may have put a little heat on the Shorewood- Shorecrest rivalry, well, it will never get that hot.

Ballew has been friends with Shorecrest video-production teacher Trent Mitchell since middle school, when they started making videos together. They were in the same program at Central Washington University and now team-teach a video-production class for students at both high schools.

"It's a thrill that we are where we are now," Ballew said. "And we all have tremendous respect for each other."

So do others.

On the Web:

Shorecrest's video on YouTube: tinyurl.com/ykzpnfe

Shorewood's video on YouTube: tinyurl.com/yarcmzo