I don't like this blogmajigger, but Viralcom must be heard about!

Zach Graber
RTVF 65i
Webisode Review
Viralcom

“Viralcom” follows several interconnected story lines based within or around Viralcom Studios, which is a professional studio likened to the ones involved with major motion pictures except this studio exclusively produces viral videos. Unlike some web-series like “We Need Girlfriends,” this series does not seem to have much of a future with any other medium besides the Internet. This over the top and ridiculous comedic series preys on memes created through the Internet for its own humor and there is no doubt it is funny, but only if you get the references. Cameo appearances are made by Internet celebrities such as the guy from “Chocolate Rain” and YouTube webcam star username DaxFlame. There are also special guest co-stars such as Michael Showalter, from Stella, and Sam Reich, from Collegehumor.com, both of which have experience with producing content on the Internet. This is the quintessential piece of web content that criticizes web content.
Joey Mandarino and David Young are both comedy sketch artists who got their starts in New York City. After working with Comedy Central and making Variety Magazine’s “10 Comics to Watch for 2007” they decided to move out to LA where they produced this web series. A part from being the creators, writers, directors, and executive producers for the series, they also act as writers struggling to write a viral video that actually has a story. This is just one of several plotlines that climax at the viral video awards show, the “Webbys.”
The Webbys is where the web series really drives home its thoughts on viral videos. Basically everything that Viralcom spent millions of dollars to produce lost and two 12 year olds who were given some money to just be violent and rambunctious and video tape it swept the awards. This web series actually brought up one of the most pertinent topics in this class in regards to what is successful on the web with current technology. Viral videos get millions of hits, get tons of media attention, and even become memes that translate into life outside the computer, but amateur camera people produce almost all viral videos. Meanwhile, people with an education in this background, such as myself, struggle to get recognized in the same fashion without conceding their creative and professional vision. There is no doubt in my mind that sometimes two 12 year olds with a camera can do something that is worth watching, especially using a medium as casual as the internet, but this web-series really brings to light how impactful that can be on people like us.
In regards the technical mechanics involved, the absence of pixilation and good audio lead me to believe it was compressed in H264. I did notice some artifacts in episodes 2 and 10; episode 2 had strange horizontal lines whenever something on screen moved left or right and episode 10 had black that wasn’t as dark as the other episodes. This lead me to believe that either they employed a different person to perform the compression or if they experimented with other compression types. They didn’t particularly utilize any camera techniques as a result of shoot for a smaller screen, but the script was more of the focus than the actual visual content. They did use a really creative technique where they would shoot a viral video and purposely make it look like it was using the worst compression tool on the web (just like YouTube looked back in the day), then zoom out and fade the effect to normal H264 compression when the shot started to include all the behind the scenes action that was producing the viral video. In regards to distribution, a Google search will reveal that they have their own site that hosts all the webisodes at www.joeyanddavid.com and they also have a username specific only to this webseries at http://www.youtube.com/user/ViralcomSeries. However, their videos have also been found on other sites such as Collegehumor.com, funnyordie.com, and dailymotion.com.