goingviral

=The Art of "Going Viral"=

"Going viral" is kind of a catch phrase nowadays. Every year, there are new videos that become pop culture phenomenons that get viewed and passed around like wildfire. While some viral videos are just random occurrences that get caught on tape, many are heavily scripted and choreographed. It does take a great idea, some technical skill, some technical savvy, and a lot of luck to go viral and achieve the million hit threshold!

There are some really neat artistic ideas that teachers can infuse into their lessons in class. Concepts can be reinforced by having students view and create online video. Using a definite focal point or central idea, it is possible to create a video that uses contrast, character, props, backgrounds, colour filtering, and other visual techniques to create a powerful video to reinforce that central concept.

//**Variety**//

//Variety is a principle that artists use when they want to add interest to works of art, designs, advertisements, etc. It is important to point out that an art work does not have to have variety to be interesting. Some works are interesting in their simplicity. Variety is simply one thing an artist can think about when planning and creating. Some artists want to create works with various and complex relationships in them. To these artists, variety would be an important principle of design.//


 * 6 Video Strategies (maximum 3 groups of any genre)**

Flash Mob involves assembling and performing something very artistic in a public place for a short period of time. Video recording random bystanders' expressions and comments adds to the performance. It is more effective if more than one camera is used to record the performance. It is a very spontaneous and largely unrehearsed performance. Many raise awareness of public issues while others are just plain silly or fun.
 * 1. Flash Mob**

One of the best examples of this is a group called ImprovEverywhere (Click through to see their Youtube channel)
 * NYC Frozen Grand Central - Participants walking through Grand Central Station in New York freeze in place at the same time.
 * Bestbuy Flash Mob - Eighty participants go into Bestbuy wearing royal blue golf shirts and khaki pants. Hilarity ensues.
 * Human Mirror - Fifteen pairs of twins create a human mirror on a New York City subway car.
 * Pregnant Breakdancing Flash Mob - In an attempt to show support for pregnant women in 3rd world countries, pregnant women break dance in a park.
 * McDonalds Flash Mob - Imagine stuffing over 400 people into a McDonald's and catching it on tape.

Check out others like the spontaneous wedding reception, the Vancouver 2010 O Canada, and the funny walk in Hamburg.

Take a simple song or a short diddy and learn to lip sync it backwards. Record the performance, adding other elements, like someone throwing an object, simple choreography, etc. Using a program like Video Time Reversal, reverse the video and the result is some very neat video. For info on how to reverse video, check out []. (Video Time Reversal and Prism Video Converter needed)
 * 2. In Reverse**
 * lipdub - when Shorecrest challenged Shorewood to make a Lipdub video they didnt know what they were getting themselves into.

Build something up as dark and sinister and expose it for the light humor and whimsical nature that it really is.
 * 3. Comical Issues**
 * teddi addition - Evan Hardy student creates a simple video that presents a rough side of teen life in a light way. Can you come up with a sequel?

Some video poetry works use digital elaboration to achieve digital poetry that is entirely generated by software. When absent of digital effects, video poetry is akin to performance works or a poetry reading recorded in video (digital or analogue) but goes beyond the straightforward act of recording to establish a link with video art. In this sense, video poetry is a particular form of video art comprising poetry texts elaborated at various acoustic and visual levels.
 * 4. Poetry Visualized**
 * "I am" - check out the contrast that comes with age and experience.
 * "How to edit the pathetic from poetry" - who said poetry writing was easy.
 * "Home for now" - what is your home, what defines your situation?

Post your poetry here ... [] and use the online video creation tools Animoto or Flixtime.

5. Video Mashups -

6. World Tour???

One idea for video in Social Studies may be to do a video world tour built around the concept presented in the video "Where the Hell is Matt?" media type="youtube" key="zlfKdbWwruY" height="385" width="640" This can be finished using a green screen with images from other countries. It can also be local, where students go to local landmarks and do a similar video highlighting places in their community or school.