It has been a crazy week here on The Tattered Coat, as I unwittingly played midwife to a viral video.

I assume that most regular readers have seen the re-cut Shining trailer by now; what’s amazing is how many thousands of other people have seen it, too.

Here are some benchmarks that provide a measure of how big this thing has become:

– The New York Times has published an article about it, and provided much of the backstory we were looking for (via Making Light).

– Links to the video could also be found on The USA Today, Fark, Ain’t It Cool News, MSNBC, iFilm, and hundreds of other sites.

– Rob has been approached by Hollywood studios; it’s likely that his life will never be the same again.

– Waxy reports that it burned through 560GB in one day as people linked to its mirror of the trailer

– According to Daypop, the PS 260 video link is the single most popular link on the web right now.

– According to BlogPulse, my post on the recut Shining trailer was the number two post on September 29th.

– Other videos from the contest, including Tom’s West Side Story remix, and Dustin’s Titanic remix, have now hit iFilm, as well.

Further updates are available on my original post

I think that an entirely new genre of video-making has been born — or, at the very least, greatly popularized. I wouldn’t be surprised to see these kinds of trailers show up regularly as DVD extras.

All of this is a testament to both the brilliance of Robert’s trailer and the speed with which information moves today. I’m stunned by how quickly this all happened; it’s an amazing example of how something can move from three people to three million people in a matter of hours, through the power of blogs.

Some things are just too damn good to remain secret.

Share This