CCTV news parody gets hits and giggles
- Source: Global Times
- [21:39 November 16 2009]
- Comments
By Pan Yan
"The 'blackout bandit' struck again last night, cutting off electricity to the Beiyuan campus, Counselor Zeng Weiping made a surprise visit to senior journalism majors and today's cafeteria food once again claimed the life of one student, arousing heated protests," says an anchorwoman dressed in red, sitting with plumb-straight posture and relaying the news in rapid fire.
Behind her is a neatly stacked pile of instant noodles; the staple cuisine of the newscasts target audience: dorm kids.
Ever since Zhaiwen Lianbo, a parody video of CCTV's nightly 7 pm News Broadcast, was uploaded on youku.com in September, it has garnered thousands of hits and a lot of controversy.
Although the video, made earlier this year by communication majors at Southwest University of Political Science and Law (SUPSL), has earned netizen praise for its humor and creativity, some pointed out that the smoking and swearing during the "live reports from dorm rooms" segment is a negative representation of modern college students and makes the humor seem shallow.
"Of course not all the college students smoke or say dirty words, but some do. It's part of life, isn't it?" said Deng Shanshan, who played the anchorwoman.
"It might be true that our idea lacks depth, but we were just freshmen at that time and the program was simply an assignment. We just want to make something interesting and relevant. We really didn't think about it too much."
The video was made for the school's "Let's interview" competition at the beginning of April, which won the communication class first prize.
"I chose news I believed most closely related with our daily lives, all of which actually happened on campus. Of course, we exaggerated to make it funnier," said Ye Fei, SUPSL sophomore who also directed and wrote the script.
With equipment provided by the university and shot at a nearby photo studio for free, Ye and his classmates finished after one week, albeit not without running into a lot of snags along the way.
"Take special effects as an example. We wanted to make a rotating globe graphic like CCTV news has. So after staying up all night reading online forums and consulting experienced video technicians, we finally made one," said student cameraman and editor Zhao Xiangqian.
"We ran into a lot of problems, but we never gave up. If we couldn't solve a problem one way, we tried it another way until we got what we needed," Zhao added.
