Unit: New Media
Details of various animations and videos for the High Holidays.
Click on thumbnails to learn more and launch animations and videos.
As the Chrismahanukwanzukah season approaches and digital greetings flood your inbox, we thought it a good idea to dedicate our December 15 session to this phenomenon: short videos that circulate online through YouTube, a kind of digital commons, email, and the blogosphere. This is nimble media, nano in scale, with inventory and audience that expand exponentially, especially around holidays. It is user generated, whether from scratch, parody, or remediated. It is inspired by such genres as the greeting card, PSA (public service announcement), advertisement, MTV, movie trailer, and home movie. It does not just circulate, but also it is shared in media-specific ways: it is tagged (folksonomy), rated, commented, and aggregated. And, it is accessed through a wide range of devices: desktops, laptops, PDAs, iPods, cellphones. While the threshold for production values (for example, resolution) is relatively low, the threshold for entertainment value is high, with amateur efforts often beating out professional ones. Private and esoteric material becomes public to an unprecedented degree (YouTube's tagline is "Broadcast Yourself") through a phenomenon known as "virals," "viral video," and "viral marketing" and there is a wide range of Jewish participation from Haredim to Jewish hipsters to Jewish organizations seeking to recruit Jews.
What are we to make of these media practices? We have made a selection of examples that would especially reward discussion and would welcome your suggests. We would like to organize the session around discussion of particular examples and invite you to select one that you think worthy of discussion.
Chrismahanukwanzakah
Screenshot from Chrismahanukwanzakah advert.Watch this video
Videos Online:
2005:
http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2683980
Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrismahanukwanzakah
Media responses:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=311874&page=1
Effied Awards: Brief of Effectiveness for Virgin Mobile Chrismahanukwanzakah.
https://modiya.nyu.edu/modiya/bitstream/1964/766/15/428_2006.pdf
Jewish responses:
http://www.jewlicious.com/?p=1638
Perspective from the advertising world:
http://www.duncans.tv/2005/virgin-mobile-happy-chrismahanukwanzakah
From media to reality: December 13 is a new holiday.
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=
/www/story/11-14-2005/0004215213&EDATE=
Satire on the Glenn Beck Program:
The RamaHanuKwanzMas song "on the Glenn Beck Program entitled Have a RamaHanuKwanzMas or Happy RamaHanuKwanzMas satirizes the need to not offend anyone at all costs."
http://www.glennpedia.com/index.php/RamaHanuKwanzMas
Hindu responses: Happy Diwahanukwanzidmas
http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/000882.html
Christmastime for the Jews
Screenshot from Christmastime for the Jews.Watch this video
Blog:
http://ultranow.blogspot.com/2005/12/christmastime-for-jews.html
http://heywriterboy.blogspot.com/2005/12/christmastime-for-jews.html (with explanation of the music and behind the scenes info) http://comedian.blogspot.com/2005/12/for-reasons-to-do-with-my-wifes.html
The Sukkot Shake
Screenshot from The Sukkot Shake .Watch this video
Videos Online:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC4IVe61p-0 (with ratings and comments)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GSPHi9t_J8&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlYIq3dLnoU
A collection of other Sukkot videos, including "how to make a lulav."
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3706255064738983261
Blog:
http://holylandhipster.blogspot.com/2006/10/sukkot-shake-this-video-is-hysterical.html
Links
Jewish Impact Films
"The Jewish Impact Films Fellowship was established by leading Hollywood producers to empower the next generation of young Jewish thinkers to use creative media, specifically short internet-based films, to effectively communicate new messaging about Judaism and Israel."
http://jewishimpactfilms.com/.
JewTube
"The best collection of Jewish video on the web."
http://jewtube.blogspot.com/
Sinai Movies
"SinaiMovies.com provides non-profit organizations with a complete movie-centric internet fundraising solution...[Their]short films are created exclusively for the internet community. SinaiMovies produces and networks your movie to reach people all over the world."
http://sinaimovies.com/