On the morning of October 27, “MIT Gangnam Style” was officially unleashed upon the world, and since then has been taking the world of YouTube and the internet by storm. The video, which is a parody of the worldwide sensation “Gangnam Style” by Korean pop-star Psy, has since garnered over 4 million views. The original Gangnam Style video was released this summer and has since reached over a massive 657 million views, putting it in second place right behind Justin Beiber’s “Baby” video with 796 million views.
The video was directed by Eddie Ha, produced by Ingwon Chae, and stars Richard Yoon as Psy, all current MIT students. The students wanted to create a parody that not only reflected the spirit of MIT, but was a parody to beat all other parodies.
The short features several locations around the campus and over 25 different campus student groups. It also features a few famous MIT professors including Eric Lander, Donald Sadoway, and famed linguistics professor and political activist Noam Chomsky.
Eddie Ha is a senior studying mathematics and computer science at MIT, and it was about seven weeks ago that he decided he wanted to make an MIT parody for the Gangnam Style. His original plan was to rewrite the lyrics of the song to give it a much nerdier flavor, but soon scrapped the idea after he realized that there was a better way to make MIT’s the best parody out there.
“We thought we might as well make it big, and make it the best one out there,” said Ha, in order to “tell the world what goes on in here.”
“We wanted something that could encapsulate what MIT is as a college,” added producer Ingwon Chae.
Ha’s goal was to give the video “an MIT twist to add something unique”, that would set it apart from the other parodies floating around on the internet. As a member of the Korean Student Association (KSA), Ha soon enlisted their help.
The star of the short is Richard Yoon, an MIT student who was brought in to play the part of Psy.
“This is absurd,” Yoon joked. “I was forced to be Psy. I had no choice.”
But one can argue that the real stars of the video are the handful of famous professors that are featured. Ha and his team emailed over 20 different MIT professors to see who would agree to an appearance.
Stu Schmill is the Dean of Admissions at MIT, who recreated a parody of the sauna scene from the original video with Yoon in the admissions office, and is also featured in a dance scene towards the end of the video.
“I’m glad it wasn’t in a steam bath,” Schmill said.
“I have heard from many people out there in the world — people I’ve not heard from in a long time — who have commented that they didn’t realize I could dance quite like that,” said Schmill of the feedback that he’s been hearing.
Involving the admissions department was a step in the right direction for the video, and it really helped Ha to get the project running. The team was able to borrow cameras from the department, and gaining the support of the admissions office helped to encourage other entities on campus in joining the project.
Another great moment in the video came from the help of Eric Lander, a professor of Biology at MIT, and one of the leading researchers for the Human Genome Project.
“This was an instant yes for me,” Lander said, when asked about the request for his appearance in the video.
Lander invited Ha and the group to crash the last two minutes of his Introductory Biology class.
“We invited the whole class to come down but they didn’t come down!” said Lander disappointed. “They were shy.”
After dismissal, Lander had the idea for him and Yoon to jump on a table and begin a dance off.
“If you’re going to do it, you might as well be all in,” said Lander.
When asked about the experience, Yoon said “he had dance moves I’d never seen before.”
Needless to say, Lander was very pleased with how the video turned out.
“Superb piece of work, hats off to the student who make that and the extraordinary MIT spirit behind that,” he said.
Most agree however that the highlight of the video came from none other than linguistics Professor Noam Chomsky. The 83-year-old professor is considered the “father of modern linguistics”. Although his part in the video is just a short cameo, is it most definitely priceless.
The music stops, and the clip shows Chomsky sitting quietly in his office. He then takes a sip from a cup of tea and says to the camera, “Oppan Chomsky style,” and it is seven seconds of YouTube gold.
The brief cameo has garnered quite a bit of attention for the Institute and for Chomsky himself, so much so that the Boston globe released a story on it last week.
When questioned about his involvement in the video, Chomsky said, “Quite honestly, I don’t have much to say. Some kids came in and asked me to read some incomprehensible words. They seemed to be having fun, so I agreed… I was happy to spend a few minutes with kids having some fun.”
“[Chomsky] said that his grandchildren would love this,” said Ha.
Among the handful of professors featured in the video, Ha also enlisted the help of various campus student groups.
Ha pitched the idea to MIT’s all-male a cappella group, the Logarhythms, who jumped on board right away, and were quite instrumental in making the parody stand out.
“We wanted to make this special,” Ha said. “I was thinking about all the groups at MIT, and I thought about the Logs. None of the parodies have an a cappella version.”
Ha was able to reach out to the entire MIT campus when the team hosted a flash mob on October 21, and received between 200 to 300 participants for a big dance scene in the video.
Ha spent six weeks producing the video, and devoted about four to five hours of each day to work on it. Upon its release, the video quickly became quite the phenomenon. No one, not even Ha and his team, expected “MIT Gangnam Style” to get a million hits, much less 4 million. Ha, Chae, and Yoon placed bets on how many views they would receive, and all three were blown away by the results.
“I’ve never been inside the storm that is a viral video… All of this is just a dream,” Chae said.
“We were all freaking out,” Yoon added.
“On the very first day, we were screaming we had 50,000 views,” said Ha.
According to Ha, the goal of his project was to create a video that would unite the school, and also to prove to the world that MIT students can have a sense of humor.
“We just wanted to show that MIT isn’t just the MIT everyone thinks it is, and that we know to have fun,” he said.