IDeATe

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Proposal

I was chatting with my friends about what makes a meme spread quickly and what kind of meme I could make that would be guaranteed to have some exposure, and we agreed on a couple things. It's hard to predict what becomes really massively popular, like pepe or history of japan, but it's relatively easy to make something viral in a community if everyone feels like they're "part of the in crowd". Thus, I decided to make an "in-joke" for one of the largest online communities: the league of legends community. I want to remix shout casters into a memetic song for league players: silver scrapes. If I share it on reddit (/r/leagueoflegends), I think it has a chance of getting exposure.

sources:

song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erlTPDI3s6w

shout casting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IACir1ZUDIY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcNj-SHENHc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7zj-eRqArw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr1Uh0hbv24

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oC-gjFG4Mo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFIJFlpMRm4

I was inspired by: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYYhXCHMczU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xMVCUO2Sjg

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Outcome

I created a video about a league of legends team vaguely inspired by the video meme "history of japan". It narrates the creation and success of Counter-Logic Gaming's league of legends team.

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Intention

I made this project with the intention of going viral in a very particular subreddit. I used well-known memes and inside jokes to appeal to fans of the team I describe. I think that it's easier to promote a video within a group with shared interests, so I chose the largest online following that is still relatively niche and has a vaguely hive-mind feel for the most possible exposure.

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Context

I drew on the memes and humor of /r/leagueoflegends. The subreddit is saturated with in-jokes and references, so most of the humor in my video derives from things my intended audience already knows. Jokes about sodium, for example, might not make sense to people not part of a certain community. I think my video is part of the discussion particular to that subreddit and engages with the media created by that specific community, which happens to be quite insular.

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Process

I reformulated small sections until I found them sufficiently entertaining, then moved on. I mostly jumped around from section to section, focusing in on a small bit of the narration for which I already had a caption planned, then jumping to another part that I had already thought about. The bulk of my time was spent researching and writing the script, which was annotated with the images that would be presented with every bit of the narration. Thus, my project was, at its base, an audio project that happened to be supplemented by media. Occasionally, I would think a video should stand on its own rather than be accompanied by sound, but my inspiration and work still primary lies in the audio.

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Product

I remixed a plethora of CLG-related media into a video with iMovie, which is held together by its main point: the background narration. The music also does quite a lot to tire it together. I used preview to draw MSPaint-style annotations and imported the images into iMovie. I drew inspiration from videos on /r/leagueoflegends and history of japan to utilize deadpan humor, silence for effect, and imagery to enhance the narration.

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Critique

I actually quite like how this turned out. I expected to make something a lot more like history of japan, with sound effects and psychedelic imagery, but those effects were actually quite hard to make and I would not have been able to create it with my skill in the amount of time I had. However, I do think my intent, to make a humorous "viral" video, was matched quite well,

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Reflection

I learned how to use iMovie and use silence effectively for humor. The idea was to make the video as funny as possible so it would spread as much as possible. I think it was interesting to take something that I didn't know too much about and bring out the most amusing parts of it as quickly and concisely as possible.

If I could do it again, I would definitely do it in higher quality because the pixelation is currently bugging me a lot. I would also change some of my narration. I feel like lots of it is clunky. Perhaps an actual person would have been more effective.