Back Dorm Boys interview

In the fall of 2005, I sat down for dinner with a friend who works in international media and compared notes about the crop of UG video that were appearing on the then new phenomenon of Googlevideo and what would become the Youtube avalanche. We both had stumbled upon the lip-synching videos of two Chinese art students whose combination of sincerity and satire in their rendition of “As Long as You Love Me” made it an immediate viral hit. A few months later, Motorola had engaged these art students, the Back Dorm Boys, in a campaign to be broadcast on P2P channels. Now the BDB have graduated from the School of Fine Arts, Guangzhou University and are heading to Beijing to start their own video + multimedia art studio. We caught up with Vivi, the square-jawed member of the duo, late one night to do an IM chat about the Boys’ future sense of making art in the media sphere and their future plans. (Yi Xin, his fearless and dedicated collaborator, was being treated for a sports injury, thus could not join our conversation.) All images are courtesy of Back Dorm Boys blog. BC





Interviewer: Professor Beth Coleman
Interviewee: Vivi
Translator: Liwen Jin



Record of our interview:
Professor: Hi Vivi, thanks for joining us so early in the morning and congratulations on finishing school. To learn more about us, please visit projectgoodluck.com
I have a few questions: When did you make the first Back Dorm Boy (BDB) video? Why did you make it? And where was the first place you posted it to?
Vivi: We made our first BDB video in March, 2005. We just felt it was very funny and we actually got the inspiration from a funny video abroad. We post the video to the local internet network of college. Other students liked it very much, and then they helped us to spread it out.


Professor: Where did you see the video that help to inspire you?
Vivi: No, not youtube. My friend recommended that video to me. After watching it, we felt it really funny. But that video only lasts for around 10 seconds. We began to wonder what it could be if we completed a whole song.


Professor: Did your reputation change among your friends once the video started to be famous?
Vivi: In my friends' eyes, I am still that Vivi. They probably know that we have become more and more popular now. They are happy for us, since more and more people begin to like us.


Professor: Did you make international friends?
Vivi: Yes, we have international friends. In fact, a lot of netizens want to add our QQ and join the online alumni list of our undergraduate class. We have 8 or 9 QQ groups. They are all set up by our fans. But we are too busy to get online to talk with them.


Professor: Did art school training prepare you in anyway to make videos such as this or even talk about network distribution? (For example, Youtube or Googlevideo)?
Vivi: Art school training really helps us a lot in making videos. It prepares us with art basis and sculpture aesthetics so that we can pay a lot of attention to the composition of pictures, vision effect and light contrast in our videos. Besides, we got training of creativity and advertising in art school. It prompts us to make new creations in each video so that it can impress more people.


Professor: How did you get involved with the Motorola campaign?
Vivi: Motorola invited us. Moto proposed a conception to us and invited us to make a video for them.


Professor: What was the concept? Was it different to make that video for Motorola than to make others?
Vivi: They held an activity and invited us to make a promotion video for them. They integrate their new cell phone into our video in a smart way. And the cell phone is designed for youth.


Professor: How do you decide what to wear in your videos? What inspires your art direction?
Vivi: We don't intentionally plan our clothes in videos. It just depends on our feelings. In general, the song we mocked of is the one we like very much. We will then select clothes and design images to accord with the style and the feeling of that song. At first we made those videos just for fun. Then we began to develop some requirements for our videos. We hope to made new creations in each video. We hope to express fresh ideas through videos to our audience, rather than just play a funny show for them.


Professor: Is it a sign of affection to make fun of something you really like?
Vivi: I'm not sure whether we have that kind of affection. We just feel it’s very interesting. And we are really happy when watching our own videos.


Professor: What about your friend in the background of the video on the computer? I think he must have his own fan club by now.
Vivi: Yes, a lot of people like him because they are curious why he doesn’t have any reactions in front of such big activities of our performance. He is our classmate and he lives with us. In the beginning, he appeared in the background unintentionally. When we made our first , he was playing CS. We then invited him to play with us when the music reached to the climax. But till then, he was playing a game (mafia) happily with other students and forgot to join us. Luckily, the final effect of that video is great: we are active while he is still. (It’s an interesting and funny combination.)


Professor: What will you do now that you are have graduated from school?
Vivi: We have signed a contract with a company in Beijing. We will have our own studio very soon. It will be used to make more funny videos


Professor: In your studio, will you make more lovely sculptures such as your senior project?
Vivi: Yes, we will. We will make all kinds of things as long as we can think of.


Professor: Did someone buy that piece from the senior show?
Vivi: I think no one can afford to buy those sculptures and even they bought them, they would have the problem of placing them. Those sculptures are very huge: the height is 4 or 5 meters. We will put them in our studio in Beijing.
Actually we have two senior projects. One is the celebrity sculpture. We applied to our department to make sculptures of ourselves and our department permitted. Another project is a larger one. That is a video device.


Professor: what kind of video device?
Vivi: Our senior show was held in the art gallery of our college. Our projects are placed on the front door. On both sides of the door are placed the sculptures of ourselves riding horses. Entering the gallery, you will see a space like a film theater. Every seat there is an enlarged key on the keyboard, and the screen is a television. The television screen is playing our videos. And our video productions can interact with audience directly.


Professor: One last question, do you feel lucky to be able to do what you are doing?
Vivi: Yeah, we feel we are extremely lucky...it’s a great chance for us.


Professor: Vivi, thanks!!!! It was great to talk with you. We will post to the blog. Hope to meet you soon in Beijing.?
Vivi: you are welcome! See you in Beijing!

Focus Group Discussion in Shanghai

On July 13th, Project Good Luck held a successful focus group discussion about blogging and media use at the Shanghai Westin Hotel. I invited some friends and college students to join our discussion. Indeed, some of them are professional bloggers.

Take Zhou Dan (http://funny68.blog@bbs.nju.edu.cn/) for example. She is a graduate student in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature of Nanjing University (NJU). Her blog is very famous on the NJU campus BBS (www.lilybbs.net). She told us a story about her blog, which she used to greatly broaden her social network in real life.

Ye Miao (http://asdfgh.blog@bbs.nju.edu.cn/), a friend of Zhou Dan, is now studying Journalism in Fudan University (FDU). He also thought that blogs improve people’s real-life social networks.

Shen Wei (ebowei.spaces.msn.com), the youngest girl in our focus group, is also a student at FDU. She is going to study sociology in Britain. She told us that she has three blogs: one private, one for dorm-mates, and one for the public. She is a talkative and thoughtful girl, sharing stories about her modern parents and her own thoughts about life and death with us. :)

Jia Min (cooltree.yculblog.com), a PHD candidate from the Department of History at FDU, described a “magic” exchange between him and a famous author that took place on his blog. After Jia Min posted a comment on a book that he’d read, the book’s author surprisingly replied to the comment. This led to a chance to meet with each other. Our life is full of wonders!

However, not all group members believe that blogging can help them make new friends. For example, Yan Qi (http://tommygirlnju.spaces.msn.com), a graduate student from Business School of NJU, insisted that blogging was only popular among students and people who have spare time, and that she rarely makes new friends on her blog. Her friend Cao Jingjing (http://freemori.blog@bbs.nju.edu.cn/) strongly agreed with her on this issue.

When Professor Coleman asked the group why they don’t use frequent emails to contact with friends instead, Liu Tao (http://kaoolt.spaces.msn.com) made a good point. He is now studying international relations at an academic institute in Shanghai. He said blogging is much more efficient than email in that you don’t have to explain an issue hundreds of times. Friends can go directly to your blog if they want to know your recent experiences.

Celebrity blogging was also a hot topic in our discussion. All of our group members have visited Xu Jinglei’s blog (http://blog.sina.com.cn/m/xujinglei) at least once. Xu Jinglei is a famous movie star in China. Her blog was once ranked the # 1 blog in the world by technorati.com. Hu Minfu, one of my fellow alumni from the Hopkins-Nanjing Center (http://zmzx.nju.edu.cn), humorously said that it’s more interesting to read replies than read articles on celebrity. Replies from readers are full of praise, satire, criticism, admiration and quarrels, while articles are always positive and relatively tedious. Xu Qian (http://hyrax.blog@bbs.nju.edu.cn/), who will go to pursue her PHD in communications at Pennsylvania State University this fall, also shared her viewpoint on why more and more people are attracted to celebrity blogs in China. “When I read Xu Jinglei’s blog, I feel that she is not just a famous person who’s far from us. She can also be regarded as a common person living with us…” Yep! Celebrity blogs really shorten the distance between celebrities and their audience a lot.

The group also talked about the gender gap in media use, trusted channels of information, self-expression on blogs, and political censorship on blogs. Qian Chengzhen (http://mirage-space.spaces.live.com), who once worked for the cartoon channel of Shanghai television, also shared her experiences writing about her job editing animation on her blog.

It was really a wonderful experience to me. I learned a lot from this discussion. Afterwards, some of the group members emailed me saying that they enjoyed a lot from talking with us. It seems to be a Double Win! :)

On July 14th, I got my visa to the United States of America in Shanghai. I will go to MIT on August 20th to reunite with our beautiful professor Coleman and with my cute teammates-Geoff and Kevin. YEAH……I cannot wait to see you!!!


7月13日，我们的项目成员在上海威斯汀大酒店举行了一次很有意思的小组讨论。讨论主要有关博客，媒体以及社会网络使用等议题。事实上，小组中的不少人士都是“资深”博客啊。比如周丹吧，她现在是南京大学中文系的研二学生。她的博客在南京大学小百合站上很有名气，每贴都有两三百的点击率。她告诉我们，通过博客她结交到了很多朋友，也扩大了现实生活中的社交圈。叶苗，复旦大学新闻系的在读研究生，也认为博客是结识朋友的有利工具。

沈微是小组中年纪最小的一个。她刚刚从复旦大学新闻系本科毕业，将去英国读社会学研究生。她告诉我们，她有三个博客：一个是私人的，类似于日记本；一个是给同宿舍的同学看的，用于“卧谈”；还有一个是公开的，外界都可以看到的。沈微是个很健谈的也颇有想法的女孩。在讨论过程中，她还经常提到她时尚的父母，也跟我们分享了她有关生命，有关死亡的看法。

贾敏是复旦大学历史系的博士研究生，他也曾是我在霍普金斯大学-南京大学中美文化研究中心（Hopkins-Nanjing Center, 简称HNC）的同学。他告诉了我们一个奇妙的发生在他与一个作家之间的“博客缘分”。当他在他的博客上发表了一篇书评后，那本书的作者居然在书评后留下了评语。之后，他们还有了一次“亲密接触”的机会。真是世界之大，无奇不有啊！同时，贾敏还对近来颇受关注的许巍被封一事发表了自己的观点。

但是，并不是所有参加讨论的成员都认为博客是扩大交际圈的得力助手。严琦，南京大学商学院的研二学生同时也是我在HNC的同学，认为博客只在年轻学生和其他有闲暇时间的人中流行，对于忙碌的上班族们来说，根本没有时间顾及自己的博客。许倩和曹晶晶都同意这个观点。严奇还补充到，她从来没在博客上去结交新的朋友，博客只是加强和朋友之间友谊的工具，而绝非去有意结识新朋友的手段。

当科尔曼教授问到为什么他们不经常使用电子邮件作为与朋友交流的手段时，刘涛一语中的道出了其中关键。刘涛现正在上海一所国际问题研究机构读研究生，他今年也刚从HNC毕业。他说到，博客最不同于电子邮件之处在于其简单方便和有效率。当你需要告知朋友你的新近情况时，你不需要写无数封邮件解释无数遍同一情况来告知他们，你只需要在自己的博客上发一篇帖子，想了解你情况的朋友自然可以从中获取信息。

名人博客也是我们讨论过程中的一个热门话题。百分之一百的小组成员都曾访问过徐静蕾的博客。（正在欣赏偶这篇中文博客的同志们，我不要介绍老徐了吧，HOHO）老徐的博客曾被technorati.com评选为世界第一博啊！胡铭孚，复旦历史系毕业研究生，现在上海安永工作，提到了名人博客的一个有趣现象。他说，看名人博客最有趣的不是看博客本身，而是看那些评论。评论中赞赏的，讽刺的，批评的，景仰的，咒骂的，争吵的都有；与之相对的博客文章则略显单一。许倩也对名人博客越来越流行的现象发表了自己的观点。许倩毕业于南京大学新闻传播学院（我的师姐哦，嘿嘿），将于今年赴往宾西法尼亚州立大学读传播学博士。她说，当我在看老徐的博客时，我会觉得她不再只是一个远离我们的大众明星，她同样是一个普通人，有喜怒哀乐，与我们生活在一起。确实，名人博客的一个最大的妙处在于它极大地缩短了明星与观众的距离。

同时，我们还讨论了媒体使用中的代沟，网络信息的可信渠道，博客上的自我表达，以及政府网络审查等问题。曾在上海电视台动漫频道工作的钱诚真，也跟我们分享了她在博客上记录她编辑动漫的点滴历程。

这是一次非常精彩的座谈，我从中听到并学到了许多。之后，不少参加讨论的成员都联系我说，他们也从中获益颇多。这样，我就很欣慰啦，嘿嘿。看起来是个“双赢”吗！

7月14日，在经历了两三个小时的排队等候及只有两三分钟的面谈后，我拿到了去美国的签证。我将于8月20日出发去MIT与我们狂有气质的教授，以及狂有意思的Geoff 和Kevin“团聚”~~~自己祝自己一路顺风吧，同时，偶的MIT之旅即将开始，当当当当~~~~
祝大家都幸福平安，中美中心的同胞们，南京大学的学子们。。。。。我这似乎是在利用职务之便谋私人之利啊，不过，貌似只有中国人能看懂这些咯，哈哈
另外，由于讨论那天我没做详细笔录，所以，这篇博客基本上是靠我不完全的回忆凑出来的，如果有什么错误，比如违背了你当时的观点，请及时联系我，我再做修改。谢谢！