Berklee Students Spent a Weekend Making Videos They Hope Go Viral
Ernest Deriabin in “What Can I Do?”
While many students may have gone home for the holiday weekend, and others likely frequented the local bars, a select group of musicians from Berklee College of Music spent 21 hours trying to create music videos to put on YouTube.
As part of the first Berklee Hack Day, the school linked up with some online celebrities who once attended Berklee to get tips and advice about making a video go viral online. “[The students] were great, they were super engaged at the actual event and we had the right balance of speakers giving out information,” says Janelle Browning, Berklee’s director of marketing, of the March 30 event.
From guitar-rocking females to oddly intriguing dance sequences, the 34 videos created in the 21-hour hack-a-thon at the school’s campus offer viewers a variety of material. Browning says students usually don’t take on these types of projects on their own for fear of being judge by their peers because videos “are out there forever” when posted online. But the weekend event gave aspiring musicians at the school a chance t step out of their social norms and try something different.
The guest speakers offered students advice about production value, video tagging techniques and how to focus on a specific audience to get the most views, while also reminding them about the importance of originality. “They were encouraged try things that haven’t been done a million times,” say Browning.
Guest appearances over the weekend included Nils Gums, a Berklee alumnus and CEO and president of the Complex Group—whose artists include the YouTube group Karmin, and Charlie Puth, “a Berklee student, recording artist, and Ellen Degeneres Show regular.”
To view all of the videos created by students, visit Berklee’s official YouTube page.
Below are examples of just a few of the videos the students worked on over the weekend:
Danielle Lacey – “Satch Boogie” (Joe Satriani cover)
Gabriela Luna – “Burn You Down”
Ernest Deriabin feat. Alexae Connor – “What Can I Do?”
Midnight Snack – “Outro To A Synagogue Love Sequence”
Ian Medford – “P.O.S.I.T.I.V.E.”
