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Viral Video Content for CCT300- THE PUPPETEERS, presents: "THE ANGRY SOCK SONG"
Due: November 24th 2011

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The Write Up

 * Production Process: **

 For this viral video assignment, we decided to create a rap music video using characters we created from socks. The music video is called “The Angry Sock Song”. The idea of the socks song came about through random conversations while brainstorming for this assignment, we called ourselves the puppeteers and thought of the idea of doing a puppet video using socks. Our ideas converged out of researching silly, absurd, and mundane yet familiar images mediated and appropriated through pop culture. For instance, the infamous Anton Dodson, “The Bed Intruder Song”, Rebecca Black’s “Friday”, and Japanese anime character Mudkip from Pokemon. All these random examples have two things in common, they involve music and their messages are meaningless. Therefore with our interests in hip hop/rap culture, our studies in critical analysis of media, and videography; The Sock Song could be considered as a culture jamming media text, similar to the styles of Nikki Lee’s hip hop project. We wanted to create viral content that is familiar to young people that can identify with the symbols and icons of rap/hip hop music in North America from ages 15-25.


 * Analysis **

 While coming up with a range of ideas that an individual is willing to receive the message, the difficulty was to produce a project that is actually humorous and that people can identify with. It was difficult because there are many failed attempts in creating viral contents as they try too hard to capture audience attention through humour. So far after dissemination, we have realized that many people found this video quite funny so it is safe to say The Angry Sock Song has the potential to become a popular internet meme. As mentioned earlier, we wanted to create a culture jamming video by critiquing the hip hop/rap culture. Hip hop is known for its continuous references to drugs, violence, and ultimately amoral music. Although it is not right to generalize that all aspects hip hop as a former, we have noticed that this is an ongoing trend that people have identify this culture. We used many symbols, both arbitrary (Michael Jordan and yellow cab) and thoughtful in this music video that represent hip hop, such as the bling on the sock (the stereo necklace), the bold eyebrows to show anger, the white powder (drugs), and fighting the other sock (violence) in a humouours way. Often in rap music, there are usually women with the connotation of sexy showcased within the videos so we decided to feature our Angry Sock rapper with a prettier and more attractive female sock.

 The platforms of dissemination that we chose to use are Youtube, World Star Hip Hop, Toronto Rappers, Vimeo (blooper videos), Twitter, and Facebook. We also send the video to popular viral video host Ray William Johnson, however, our focus of demassification is more geared towards the urban blog sites. These are portals where people who can identify, post comments and discuss hip hop.
 * Dissemination **

 The Angry Sock video is a mashup that involved careful video editing, thoughtful music production, and creativity as well as critical contents that is familiar to our targeted audience. With popular icons represented in media, we hope that this assignment meet the criteria for latitude acceptance.
 * Conclusion: **

Proposal for CCT300 Due: November 3rd, 2011

Introduction and Background
[|http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-herd-u-liek-mudkips#.TrGXUkOAq0t] The video is from a cartoon show Pokemon where people made a video clip of the Pokemon Mudkip say its name for a few minutes long. It is purely for entertainment purposes. media type="youtube" key="MKzqP4-0Z6M" height="315" width="420"

We want to know why this video has over 2 million views!

There are so many videos on the web today and many of them serve no function and purpose to society. They are there just to be. A lot of the times when people watch these videos, they stunned at the fact that whoever produced this actually had the time to produce this and put it up on the internet.

Purpose and Objective
We are interested in the reactions of people weather it is positive or negative. We want to know what makes people want to watch the video that serves no purpose. We predict that as much as people don't like to admit it, there is something about media and pop culture that is amoralizing that makes them want to watch. Perhaps because such types of media are so absurd and not typically accepted in dominant ideology that is why so many people find it so appealing and thats how these types of videos go viral.

Strategic plan
Include humorous jokes within the video that would potentially attract audience. To catch audience's attention, original lyric and song will be embedded within the video. It will be posted on Youtube so it can be accessed by anyone with internet. In addition, it will be linked to Facebook and Twitter for future exposure through social media.

Targeted Audience
The targeted audience will be those who are social media users. We believe our demographic would be young people

What is the message behind the context?
The message behind the context is essentially nothing because these videos serves no function and purpose. Frankly, society functions better without them because people think they feel stupid for wasting time watching them.

Medium usage?
-youtube -music - blast it on facebook and twitter, and google +

Timelines
We plan on keeping track of our video internet meme over a time span of 3 weeks. 2 weeks for our video to go viral and 1 week to gather and analyze the results

Recording people's comments and number of hits on Youtube. Sample questionnaire will be conducted to a selected but diverse group of people to find out their thoughts on the video while they were watching, and why they decided it was worth watching.
 * Measurements and Observations**

If people will actually watch the clip. It will mess up our observations because we are going to get our friends to watch it which defeats the purpose. Possible dishonest responses from friends and people that we know.
 * Possible complications and challenges**