chatroulette in real life

My new video will be chatroulette in real life. Basically I want to model the way in which you interact on chatroulette in a face to face interaction. Sorry the post is short, but Im at work and have limited time right now to post a longer description. So basically Im going to try to plan everything out today/tomorrow and then film friday and saturday. If you can help me out let me know Ill need people to run cameras and also interact with 'strangers' around campus and around town. Ill post more later this evening when I have more time. If you have any suggestions let me know. Im open to all ideas and the more people who contribute the better the video will be.

Um, that just happened

I started off this weekend pretty pumped to get this video made. My plan was to film the process of making a viral video. The video was going to be over the song livin in dub town that my brother and his friends made in high school. The song lyrics were posted on an earlier post. I had arranged with them to get together and rerecord the song, or at least act like we were to get some film shot. Then we were going to go and film today in wamego. The filming was going to be dual natured. One part was filming them rapping the song and screwing around in town. The other was a 'behind the scenes' type film where I showed how the whole video was actually produced. After we were done filming the video I was going to set them down and do a mock interview of the rapper persona's that they were going to be taking on. Then I was wanting to do a more in depth interview of them as themselves talking about the song and relevant questions pertaining to small town life.

That all just fell apart a little bit ago. They all said they would meet me this morning. We got together and I started to tell them the plan for the day. In the middle of that they kind of did the whole well dude we dont want to do it anymore. They also dont want me to use the song for the project anymore. We dont think the project will be any good. We dont want ourselves acting ridiculous online and they didnt want to be in a song with so many 'curse' words that could look bad later in life. So I dont know. Im currently trying to convince the guy that wrote the song and made the beat to still help, but I dont know if its going to pan out.

Anyone have any suggestions for me????
I had planned and arranged everyone to meet up today to make this video. We were going to rerecord it so I could tape the process of them making the song.

Literature for Research

Heres some literature that Ive found, I still need to edit some of the references, so they are in a more professional format.

1. Man-Computer Symbiosis J. C. R. Licklider IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, volume HFE-1, pages 4-11, March 1960
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/medg/people/psz/Licklider.html

2. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/194507/bush "As We May Think" Vannevar Bush

3. http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/1968Demo.html Douglas Engelbart Mother of All Demos

4. AUGMENTING HUMAN INTELLECT: A Conceptual Framework
By Douglas C. Engelbart
October 1962
http://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/augment-3906.html

5. Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Virtual Frontier
http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/

6. Tools For Thought, Howard Rheingold
http://www.rheingold.com/texts/tft/

7. The Secret Strategies Behind Many "Viral" Videos
http://techcrunch.com/2007/11/22/the-secret-strategies-behind-many-viral-videos/

8. Viral videos publicize- but infringe
Scott D. Marrs and John W. Lynd/Special to The National Law Journal
May 8, 2006
http://www.bmpllp.com/files/1155314768.pdf

9. Fogg, B.J. (2008). “Mass interpersonal persuasion: An early view of a new phenomenon”. In: Proc. Third International
Conference on Persuasive Technology, Persuasive 2008. Berlin: Springer.
http://www.bjfogg.com/mip.pdf

10. How to Get Popular on Youtube (Without Any Talent)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/965581/How-to-Get-Popular-on-YouTube-Without-Any-Talent-old-version

11. video interview of Sam Tsui, maker of popular viral video
http://www.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,50007231001_1939310,00.html


12."Yes We Can": How Online Viewership, Blog Discussion and Mainstream Media Coverage Produced a Viral Video Phenomenon by Kevin Wallsten
http://74.125.155.132/scholar?q=cache:hElxYFRo8a0J:scholar.google.com/+viral+video&hl=en&as_sdt=2000

13. Lucas Hilderbrand, Youtube: Where Cultural Memory and Copyright Converge, Film Quarterly Fall 2007, Vol. 61, No. 1, Pages 48–57 , DOI 10.1525/fq.2007.61.1.48

14. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964.
other good reads by McLuhan
-The Gutenberg galaxy
-The medium is the massage

15. Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.

16. J. C. R. Licklider and Robert Taylor, E. Herbert,"The Computer as a Communication Device"

17.CyberSociety 2.0: revisiting computer-mediated communication and community, Steve Jones

18. Digital anonymity and the law: tensions and dimesions, by C. Nicoll, Corien Prins, J. E. J. Prins, M. J. M. Dellen

19. Assessing Anonymous Communication on the Internet: Policy Deliberations, Kling R., Lee Y-C, Teich A, Frankel M. S., The Information Socity, Volume 15, Number 2, April 1999, pp79-90(12)

20. "Virtual-Communities, Virtual Settlements and Cyber-Archaeology: A Theoretical Outline., Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 3, 1997 New York: Viking Press

21. Aycock, Alan. "Technologies of the Self: Foucault and Internet Discourse." Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 1, no. 2 (1995)

22. Meyrowitz, J. No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

23. Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.

24. Douglas C Engelbart, "Intellectual Implications of Multi-Access Computing" Proceedings of the Interdisciplinary Conference on Multi-Access Computer Networks, April 1970.

25. Berners-Lee, Tim. Weaving the Web, San Francisco: HarperCollins (1999)

Going viral!?!

Viral video? A video that becomes popular due to sharing of that video amongst individuals through various online methods. Viral videos are a relatively new, well as new as the internet has gone 'public.' Most viral videos are comical clips that people post online. People then watch this clip and decide to share. Most videos that go viral are created to be viewed by a very small group of close friends and family. Yet, even with this small audience in mind these videos blow up without the creator meaning for this to happen. Take the Star Wars Kid

, do you think that he wanted to be a viral video celebrity when he posted a clip of him acting as if he is fighting a hundred foe. But his video is fun. When you watch it you get the feeling that in that kids head he is fighting a hundred foe and having an epic battle that only he can 'see'.

A great aspect of video in the ever growing digital environment that we exist, is that, what you create can easily be changed or shared by anyone that is connected. Thats why many videos go viral, due to the ease of remixes such as these clips of Star Wars Kid:



heres one that someone did with clay figures:

Viral video's and their remixes showcase the new interaction that people can have with the media generated on the medium.

As the multi-million dollar entertainment industry tries to fight this new 'sharing' culture of the younger generations with the use of their money to fight the change rather than to adapt to it. A better strategy would seem to use the millions they are spending in court on reinvesting their money back into their business because the internet was made to share information to advance research for the DARPA program in the 60's. The way they shared data was similar to torrent's, the difference was that there weren't thousands of computers to utilize in order to speed the process of sharing packets of information up. Copyright infringement is a big deal, most people want credit for their creativity and want to keep it theirs, but most of the cases that are being brought to court are against average people who generally have no motive other than to share what they view as quality material.

Many have thought about the future of this medium, they are realizing that it no longer takes millions to produce an advertising campaign, promote an artist, a movie, or any type of product. Instead it takes a camcorder, a computer, connection to the net and some editing software to create something that can be distributed amongst millions of people. Many large companies have started to realize this and are now doing viral video advertising. The process is different than advertising in more traditional mediums. These ad campaigns are a crap shoot, in most cases.

So as we slowly adapt to these changes they are trying to figure out the 'formula' to exploit the medium in their favor. For my research I want to produce a video and try to make it go viral by utilizing all the various methods that are out there to do so. Such as hiring business that will get you thousands of views I want to document the process and see what happens if I can make a viral video and become part of 'popular' culture. There are many sides to what happens when you go viral and I want to explore the viral craze by actually making Livin in Dubtown's video go viral.

Along with making this video I want to capture what life is like in a small town, since many people describe it as mundane. I lived in Wamego and I use to feel the same, but as I recollect with friends about our time growing up I realize that our life was far from mundane. Many videos online contrast what people actually say about living in a small town small town. As Ive watched many videos I notice the varying perceptions of people from a small town especially the whole small town v. city life.

Heres some vlogs of people from small towns, talking about a small town, or taping their activities in a small town:

An Horse: Big City vs. Small Town.

link

As we talked about in class Im going to produce a rap video to the song Livin in Dub Town by the Infant Stompers and try to make it go viral. So heres the link to The Infant Stompers myspace page for those interested.

http://www.myspace.com/theinfantstompersmusic

small towns are so mundane

So for my first video project Im going to do a fun project with my brother who wrote a song called livin in dub town. Its a satirical rap that him and his friends made about how boring wamego is. I did do some contextual shots of driving from I70 into town. Ill use it at the beginning of the video by speeding up the speed with some over laid audio of either me or a clip of an interview describing a small town and how people always explain their small town as boring with nothing to do.

Heres the song:
Livin in Dub Town performed by The Infant Stompers

Livin in dub town
its a place where shit goes down
rollin down the yellow brick road
go to the columbian and watch the show ho
you know peter pan is played by charlie gann
livin in dub town
white trash all around
speakin about white trash you can by some smack city park is where its at
play some tennis with a guy named dennis
you can fish in the pond with some bitch named don from the library
i swear to god that bitch is scary
want to see how bread is made go to the dutch mill
check it out and get your fill

livin in dub town
white trash all around
nothin ever goes down

want to get fat i know a place, its called mcd's bitch please get on your knees
pizza places dont get me started you cant find one in wamego you fuckin retarded
if you want some real home cookin i know the place to be
the friendly cooker good food for a small fee
the newest place in town is totos tacos they were crowned for the best food around

livin in dub town
white trash all around
nothin ever goes down

oh shit here we go again we talkin about the 320 my friend
wc and the rest of the world is hot as fuck especially our test scores
when we have snow he says hell no we havin school because im a fuckin tool
dont give a fuck about sports unless its played on basketball courts

livin in dub town
white trash all around
nothin ever goes down

livin in dub town the place we was born and raised
the place we spent most of our days
i love it here hardly nothin to do but drink beers
tell your pictures crystal clear
but never fear cause graduations almost here
dub town for life

livin in dub town
white trash all around
nothin ever goes down

hahaha dub town for life beotch

its not all correct but Trent hasnt sent me the actual lyrics yet

video script

For right now I think I'm going to stick to a more traditional documentary style video. The only other idea Ive been pondering recently is a parody on The Twilight Zone. Hard for me to describe the idea just watch the intro and think of it in the context of the internet.

music: I really have no idea, something ambient starts slow, continuously builds in layers until the end, when it just drops you down to a somber reflecting mood.

Intro. going off of my teaser video, get more voice overs, try to reduce the amount of text
-humans are social creatures
-social because we are able to communicate
-formed community
(during this flash images or video of people showing various traditional ideas of community)

when we make new forms of communication our communities and ideas of community change.
-trying to find something along the lines of time lapse of a community using yearly pictures of a community (from a distant to overhead pics) while this time lapse is going on layer with people using different communication techniques from oral, writing, telegraph, radio, telephone, television, and up to the internet.
-community changes from physical places to virtual representations

transition into McLuhan

Use a McLuhan clip/s to emphasize "the medium is the message" there's a lot of good clips on youtube that I can use, don't know which will work until I actually splice them in.

transition into the importance of studying the medium, have to take into account a historical perspective of the medium.

Go over questions:
why did we create the internet?
what was its original purpose?
how have we adapted to the new medium?
how have we tried to change the medium?

This part of the film will go into the creation of the internet
Voice over these ideas:
- brief history of ARPANet to now, how community is a core value of the internet
-people behind arpanet started the internet culture's core values
-sharing, community, interaction, ideas not people
-the entire point was to form research communities to advance knowledge
-time sharing and packet switching
-conforming protocol so that all can connect no matter what computer
-email established early on (try to find early email pics)
-email started mailing communities
-then message boards such as usenets for research collaboration (communities)
-still large computers and no real usage by general population
-creation of personal computer
-creation of world wide web
-personal computer and world wide web (www) made the general population able to connect
-community flourishes now because of more access to technology and the medium
(through each part of the voice over show images of the creators, old hardware, also visual representations of the internet, screen shots of early communities)

types of community, emphasize difference's in identity creation/exploration and how they are limited because of the medium.
-text base (usenet, irc, bbs, muds, blogs, etc.)
- can be whoever you want but handles important
- social capital gained through your 'name' identity created through posting,
- limited to text because most people dont know much about coding
- text and written word pinnacle in many communites outside of cyberspace (thinking of using religious communites to illustrate the point, which flourish even with lack of 'physical' evidence)

(use talking heads who researched early virtual communities, maybe howard rheingold? use screen shots of different text based communities like the WELL)

web 2.0 starts new communities because allows the average user to create beyond text.
-this is when visual communities pop up
-youtube community as an example
-show clips of youtubers talking about community.
-emphasis on authentic representation of self, show clips of people talking about authenticity

for those who want to escape or explore reality there are places/communities for this

creative community
-secondlife as an example
- able to be anything and represent your self through avatars show screen shots and video
-endless possibility, still limited but allows people to manipulate environment in ways they can only imagine

people put an emphasis on identity in these various community types
what happens when you take identity out of the creation, what happens?

introduce Anonymous community focused on creation of 4chan and how its a unique community built around anonymity
-screen shots of 4chan,
-trip codes allow anonymity on the forum (show what they are and how they work)
-what type of community is 4chan?

future of virtual community?
- where we might go with virtual communities depends on the medium and the changing of the medium will change all virtual communities. Will 4chan exist if the government took 'control' and made everyone log on and able to be traced?