Tag Archives: school

Online Video

Davis and His Muddy Jacket Spill

3 Comments

Okay so the last post was really boring. And the morning post was an April Fool’s joke I hope nobody got.

So let me end your week on a kinder note with my story about David and his mud spill.

His name was David but, to his parents chagrin, we called him Davis. “Hi is Davis there,” I’d ask. “Yes DAVID is here,” answered his parents.

So Davis had this really Liberace-like blue jacket with white fur lining. One day in maybe 3rd grade, Davis decides to jump from the sidewalk to a nearby piece of plywood that was resting still on wet mud. You had snow, but in New Orleans we just had muddy soil.

Naturally, the plywood sails along the mud like an Olympic ice-skater. Davis spills, and now looks like he’s been inside a porta-potty that rolled off a truck and down a hill. I remember Davis’ parents, and they were strict folks. They weren’t happy about the dry-cleaning bill, and I could see Davis’ fear in his eyes.

Flash forward a week later and he’s back wearing his blue Liberace jacket. He acknowledges that his attempts to wash and hide the jacket failed, and his folks were indeed not happy.

Now this is where a potentially forgettable moment becomes a favorite childhood memory. A lot of folks missed “the spill,” and back in the 1970s we weren’t all equipped with smart phones and cameras. So our storytelling is all we had. Despite having been disciplined, Davis’ lights up at the chance to retell what happened. He’s recounting his adventurous spill to the delight of a throng of classmates. We’re all listening intently like Davis was teaching sex ed. Of course me and Mason had seen the spill, but we enjoyed the reenactment equally.

Then Davis, in a moment of exuberance, decides to demonstrate the spill (carefully) for realism. Too real though. He does the exact same spill again. Into the mud. Same jacket.

I’ll bet his parents kicked his ass that night. But it was worth it (for me anyway).

P.S. Normally I’d keep last names hidden to preserve privacy. But I sure would like to find Davis, and don’t think he’d mind me sharing this story. He was David Preuss, and I don’t recognize any of the dozens on Linked-In or Facebook. Hey Davis, where are ya?

Online Video

Public School Choir Wins Webby Award (June 14)

19 Comments

The PS 22 Choir will receive the “Artist of the Year” award at the June 14 Webby Awards. The “YouTube sensation” elementary school chorus joins previous winners Roger Ebert, Amy Poehler, and OK Go! (see press release for such quotes as, “We’re thrilled to honor these outstanding young men and women for reminding us all about the joy and power of music.”

The 14th annual award event will be hosted by B.J. Novak of NBC’s The Office, and feature winners and honorees delivering five-word speeches in the tradition of past Webby victors like Beastie Boys (“Can anyone fix my computer?”) and Jimmy Fallon (“Thank God Conan got promoted”). Speeches and ceremony highlights will be broadcast on the Webby Awards YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/TheWebbyAwards).

5 word acceptance speech. La la la la la, anyone? Check out the choir’s channel on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/agreggofsociety. Here’s the group’s most-popular hit, which surprisingly is a Lady Gaga song. You just can’t go wrong with Lady Gaga, but if these kids can’t make you smile you’re taking life too seriously.

When you’re done enjoying this, check out when Latifah sneaks into a rehearsal. Ever seen kids scream like this for someone that old?

Online Video

Viral Video Film School’s 2009 Picks

2 Comments

I’m not a regular CurrentTV checker, so thanks to Mark for alerting me to “Viral Video Film School” in the comments of my last post. He also recommended SuperNews on Current, and I was not disappointed with “The Christmas Bailout.”

Below is a Brett Erlich video capturing 2009’s finest moments in the form of a quiz.

You’ve heard of the omni-present Susan Boyle and the Chris Brown Wedding Song, but he’s tossed in a few other gems… like a little Asian kid singing Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours,” which prompts Brett to say “I want to eat him up.” And he informs us that keyboard cat, Fatso, is RIP.

My only criticism of Current is that it doesn’t, ironically, seem to have current content… a lot of dated material in my modest surf session.

Online Video

How to Stop Kids from Using Electronics (Phone, PDAs) to Cheat in School

25 Comments

My 8-year-old son asked for help putting on his calculator watch this morning. He joked that he might use it during tests, and I quietly told him it might be a big mistake. His eyes perked up. “Why, dad?”

“The alarm goes off… it’s really embarrassing  when the ‘cheating alarm’ goes off.” He smiled, realizing I was quite likely joking. It didn’t help my credibility when I described the alarm’s sound as “beeep weeepp… CHEATER IN THE CLASSROOM!!!… beeeep weeeep.”

Then I realized the fish was nibbling at the bait, and decided to grab for anything that might substantiate my fib. “It happened to a friend of mine named Mason once,” I explained with a sincere and sad face. “Really?” he said, forgetting that when I was 10 we were lucky to have a watch with lenticular lense that made Tony the Tiger smile, or smile even more creepily.

My 10-year-old daughter challenged my story by asking, “how would it know if you’re cheating?”

Here, my dear WVFF reader, is why modern advances like Wii controllers and facial-recognition software can make a parent’s ‘white lie’ pass the mustard.

“It’s not always accurate, guys,” I conceeded. “It first computes how many other kids are around you and if they’re clustered or in even rows,” I explained. They were biting. “Then it searches for level planes- like the top of desks.” As far-fetched as this sounds, they’ve seen smarter technology in their lifetime.

My four-year old grabbed a rock and tossed it at a tree. He wasn’t listening.

“There are ways to beat the watch’s logic, but it’s not easy,” I confided. “For instance, if you’re taking a make-up test alone it may think you’re just playing around since there aren’t other kids near by in rows.”

By the time the bus arrived, I’d coined “cheating detection algorythms” and encouraged my still-skeptical son to try cheating today so he could hear the alarm himself… but warned him that Mason was so frightened of the watch’s alert warning that he peed at his desk. “Have fun at school guys,” I said before kissing them each.

advertising, book, Online Video

Consumer-Generated Ad: Oreo Global Moments Finalist?

18 Comments

oreo naltsI usually don’t make a lot of noise about a contest I’m entering, and I’ve been entering fewer lately. The competition is high, and I rarely win (although often I’m a finalist). The Oreo contest intrigued me because certain YouTube creators were asked to enter, and I figured that would improve my odds. There’s going to be an open amateur contest too, but those will be judged separately. Here’s the clip because if I embed it, it kills the entire blog template.

In truth, the “behind the scenes” may be funnier than the video itself. What child says to his father, “are we going to get arrested again?” Let the record show we’ve never been arrested for making a video. We’ve been hollered at a few times maybe.

oreo I thought the deadline was next week, and then received an e-mail last evening before leaving work. Thanks to a vigilant babysitter, we conceptualized, shot, edited and sent it all last night. My wife was teaching, and we had to an attend an animal-shelter event. So everything was quite rushed. The concept emerged when Jo suggested making “Oreo Man” out of one of the kids. Jen, our sitter, then said she had an Oreo costume from her childhood. She took all four kids to her parents’ house and found the costume in the 100-degree attic. When she returned, we did the kitchen shot, and decided to get some cow footage (Charlie was going to be our cookie, but he wasn’t in the mood). Jen asked if I wanted to take along the cow suit, which ended up inspiring a nice resolution to the 2-minute spot. If I may be so bold, here’s what I like about the video (which is posted on my “responseofnalts” YouTube account).

  • The camera shots are amateurish, but the editing was a labor. It took about 3-4 hours to edit if you include the score. I finished it just in time for the midnight deadline.
  • Grant (the orange shirt Oreo dude) was priceless. He’s 5 and reminds me of Charlie Brown sometimes, and I gave him the “good grief” line to pay homage to Charles Schulz. Can’t you just feel his pain when his brothers laugh at him? And when he whispers in my ear, I melt.
  • The video — by sheer fortune, the sitter’s innovation, the kids patience, and careful editing — actually has a story arch (conflict, resolution, etc.). This, of course, was accomplished without a pesky script or storyboard. If I go there I almost always lose energy before I turn on the camera.

Typically consumers entering brand contests try to emulate what they believe should be a television ad. I think that’s where many miss the mark of consumer-generated ads, because they end up looking like lame cable-television advertisements instead of a crafty amateur spots. The only thing commercial about this video is the music, product shots and frequent messages of Oreo. I stayed faithful to the brief by telling a story about Oreos and milk. But I was careful not to sell Oreos… it’s more about creating an affinity moment than hocking some product attribute.

I think my chances are good, but I don’t know who else entered. And if all else fails, the good folks at Kraft did send me a giant box of Oreos. They’re really good frozen.