There are some people in this world who have creative, musical genius that absolutely knocks your socks off when you hear and see it. Jon Cozart (Paint on YouTube) is one of those people.
His 104 second video with himself, “Lord of the Rings in 99 Seconds,” has 1.3 million YouTube views to date. It makes the video I created with my kids in the summer of 2011, “The Hobbit In Five Minutes,” look like a far more coarse and amateurish attempt at a 3 novel / movie plot summary.
Jon’s most popular YouTube creation to date, with 11.8 million views, is “Harry Potter in 99 Seconds.” Jon is monetizing this popularity not only through YouTube’s advertising program, but also by selling his original musical creation on iTunes as well as original HP T-shirt designs in his own SpreadShirt.com online shop.
“The Paper Jukebox” is definitely one of Jon’s most creative videos. It reminds me of Tyler Garcia’s SoundCloud creation I featured in the January 2012 post, “Make a Song with Sounds from Your Kitchen on an iPad.”
One video which gives a bit more context and background for Jon’s amazing musical creativity is “Kid Roasts His Principal.” Jon revealed that he wrote that song in one evening, in May 2011, when he was still in high school. No doubt about it, Jon Cozart has REMARKABLE musical talent.
If you want to watch even more of Jon’s musical creativity, he’s included his 14 videos published to date in a YouTube playlist. Consider sharing Jon’s videos with your own students as examples of how clever prose, good acting, careful video editing, and singing with creative abandon can combine as powerful videos people won’t soon forget.
Have you found other examples of students demonstrating their creative, musical genius on YouTube? If so please share links to their channels or links to specific videos you admire.
Hat tip to my wife for sharing Jon Cozart’s videos, which she discovered via Pinterest.
Technorati Tags: creativity, google, student, youtube
Comments
6 responses to “When Creative Musical Genius Meets YouTube”
Justin Beiber most famous. Discovered on youtube.
We understand if a movie sold $10,000,000 in tickets, or if a TV show was rated #1, or a book was #3 on the best seller list. What does it truly mean to have a million views?
Yep. I’m sure he is the poster child for YouTube talent discovery.
My understanding is it means a heck of a lot of people found it worth watching… so it has some value in our “attention economy.” I’d like to see a breakdown from YouTube officially of how many videos have over 1 million views. I read several articles tonight about this, this article from 2009 is one of the better ones I found:
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/webhead/2009/07/will_my_video_get_1_million_views_on_youtube.html
Read post about podcast uploading. I record a dog/autism related podcast, Dogmatism. Not skilled at uploading myself and person who used to do for me is no longer available. Is there service (or do) that provides a service such as this? Also would like to better integrate into my website and have listed in numerous places in addition to itunes. Any help is appreciated. Happy Holidays!