Canon U.S.A. Wants to Make You a Star

Three “Pop Star” finalists will meet singing star Leona Lewis, record her hit song on video and vie for the popular Web vote and a $5,000 grand prize.

A user contest for the Canon PowerShot digital camera is offering to help make one contestant’s dreams of singing stardom come true this year.

The “So You Want to Be Pop Star?” campaign from Canon U.S.A. is soliciting 30-second videos of original solo musical performances from folks with pop star aspirations from now until Nov. 30. Professional judges will select three finalists from the submitted videos, and those three will be flown to New York in December for a stylist makeover and a few hours of professional coaching in voice, music and dance. Each of the three finalists will also win a Canon PowerShot SD1100 IS digital ELPH camera.

They will also get tickets to the New York version of the nationwide “Jingle Ball” concerts, to be held in Madison Square Garden on Dec. 12. There the three finalists will meet with British pop and R&B singer Leona Lewis. All three will then record short videos of themselves performing Lewis’ hit song “Better in Time.” Those videos will be posted to the Canon Pop Star Web site and put to a popular vote between Dec. 15 and Dec. 30. The ultimate grand prize winner, named in early January, will get a $5,000 award to help fund their next step to stardom.   

While entrants’ videos can be filmed by a professional, the submissions reportedly cannot include lip-synched performances or post-production enhancements (although the sample videos on the Web site seem to contain both synching and enhancements.)