The viral video that I chose for this assignment happens to be just one in a slew of 'digital shorts' that NBC's Saturday Night Live has incorporated into their weekly show. This one in particular is perhaps one of the more well known: "Lazy Sunday" featuring Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg. I saw "Lazy Sunday" for the first time by actually tuning into the show, but it was also e-mailed to me, along with other digital shorts that I had missed by not watching the show, such as "Dick In A Box" which rose to popularity on the internet not just for its humor but the sheer fact Justin Timberlake participated in something so outrageous . It is unclear what motives SNL had when they began incorporating a new type of media into their show, but it does serve as a great example of collective intelligence because of the media convergence of TV with the internet. The internet allows my friends and I to easily share these shorts simply by copying a link. SNL has generally contained pre-rehearsed skits performed in front of a live audience. It is possible that the network was following a trend in the late 1990's described in Caldwell's Second Shift Media Aesthetics where networks would drum up hype, ratings and a type of cult following by integrating web content into a television show. While one need not watch a digital short online in order to better understand SNL as a whole, the digital shorts have most definitely increased SNL's popularity in recent years by keeping us wondering what next weeks digital short will contain. Caldwell's perspective is true in this case, "I hope to suggest how viewing new media through the lens of old media (and TV in particular) can provide a range of insights into the increasingly complex strategies used in the deployment of digital media forms" (Caldwell 132).
-Marisa Boles
I think SNLs choice to make these digital shorts is to follow the formula of a popular youtube viral video. The creators of most of these digital shorts are a group called the Lonely Island and all of their videos or songs tend to have something really shocking in them that leads to the comedy. That shock for comedy, while not always intentional in youtube video, seems to be pretty prevalent in most of the really popular ones.
ReplyDelete-Robert Geis
The video is hilarious and epic, but the commercial aspect is what makes it most intriguing to me. It combines product placement for Chronicles of Narnia, Red Vines, Google Maps, Magnolia Bakery, Mr. Pibb and Pringles, each of which is generating income for SNL/NBC and adds content to the video that isn't obnoxiously conspicuous. More commercials should use that style of advertising! The fact that it then went viral spread their reach that much farther, which should be encouraging to advertisers to create similar content.
ReplyDeleteThis video is a comedic version of cliche "gangsta rap" videos. I also noticed that this video is a good example of transmedia storytelling. NBC has Saturday Night Live shown on television, and they also have web content available to their fans for no extra cost. This promotes fan culture, and an active audience target. The fact that these episodes are posted online, and countless numbers of people comment on it through their online screen name shows a lot about who they are, and what they are interested in. Identity can have an effect on this video as well. There are people out there that in their every day life will not appreciate a video like this, but when they log onto the internet, they are someone else and like it.
ReplyDeleteoh p.s.
ReplyDeletepers1an = Ramin Rezvani