Les Nuits Digitales
All that they do on Saturday Night Live now is make rap parody digital shorts, with Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell. Or that's what it feels like. Following the amazing success of "Lazy Sunday," (affectionately known as "The Chronic-What!-cles of Narnia") they've shot a new one, starring Natalie Portman as the world's most hardcore Harvard-educated twenty-something Jewish girl. A category of one, but still, you want to be on top no matter what the game, right?
It's on YouTube - I've just given a link to the search results since rebroadcasting this infringes on copyright laws, and the folks at YouTube will be forced to take individual links down as they find them.
Amazingly, NBC will actually rebroadcast this on-line, for free. Or they probably will - they did it with the aforementioned "Sunday" clip, by allowing a free download on iTunes. Really smart. We talk about viral marketing all the time, and this is exactly how it works: take a good product and make it easier for people to spread the word to other people who care about their recommendations. For the five of you who are reading this, you'll probably link over right now, if you haven't already seen it. "Lazy Sunday" was downloaded millions of times - that's not an exaggeration - and some of those people will no doubt tune in to SNL some week, or buy "The Best of SNL Digital Shorts" when the DVD inevitably comes out, or PVR (ooh, look at me not being brand-specific) the next prime-time special. It's great, cost-effective marketing.
Inevitably, this is part of a larger explosion of broadband (which allows us to watch streaming video without stopping or waiting too long); digital comedy and reality (the cheapest form of video content to make, since our standards of what is acceptable production quality are lowest for something that makes us laugh or something that is real); and see-and-forward-first, the tastemaker culture equivalent of suck and blow. We can see videos on-line; we want to; and we want to be the first to tell our friends about it, too. "Did you see that last night?" has become replaced by "You didn't, but you can see it now, because I was cool enough to find out about it." Whether it's the autistic kid hitting all those three pointers or Portman hitting Parnell with a chair, if you haven't seen it yet, you will. Because someone will tell you about it.
It's on YouTube - I've just given a link to the search results since rebroadcasting this infringes on copyright laws, and the folks at YouTube will be forced to take individual links down as they find them.
Amazingly, NBC will actually rebroadcast this on-line, for free. Or they probably will - they did it with the aforementioned "Sunday" clip, by allowing a free download on iTunes. Really smart. We talk about viral marketing all the time, and this is exactly how it works: take a good product and make it easier for people to spread the word to other people who care about their recommendations. For the five of you who are reading this, you'll probably link over right now, if you haven't already seen it. "Lazy Sunday" was downloaded millions of times - that's not an exaggeration - and some of those people will no doubt tune in to SNL some week, or buy "The Best of SNL Digital Shorts" when the DVD inevitably comes out, or PVR (ooh, look at me not being brand-specific) the next prime-time special. It's great, cost-effective marketing.
Inevitably, this is part of a larger explosion of broadband (which allows us to watch streaming video without stopping or waiting too long); digital comedy and reality (the cheapest form of video content to make, since our standards of what is acceptable production quality are lowest for something that makes us laugh or something that is real); and see-and-forward-first, the tastemaker culture equivalent of suck and blow. We can see videos on-line; we want to; and we want to be the first to tell our friends about it, too. "Did you see that last night?" has become replaced by "You didn't, but you can see it now, because I was cool enough to find out about it." Whether it's the autistic kid hitting all those three pointers or Portman hitting Parnell with a chair, if you haven't seen it yet, you will. Because someone will tell you about it.
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