For our latest mission, we filled a subway car with identical twins, creating a human mirror. Enjoy the video first and then see below for our report with tons of photos.

(also available on YouTube)
edited by Matt Adams / song by Tyler Walker

Digg this mission!

Featuring: Twin Agents Barrett, Barry, Bell, Brown, Clyne, Doro, Drinkwater, Kruger, Kruth, Le Boeuf, Port, Rosenblum, Scanlon, Stone, Tattenbaum, Vieyra
Digital Video: Agents Adams, Carlisle, Cobalt, Shafer, Todd
Digital Photography: Agents Fountain, Nicholson, Sokoler

Our mailing list has grown so large that we’ve started brainstorming different ways to narrow it down. Last summer, we found out how many redheads we could recruit, and this time around we sent out a request for identical twins. Within a day we heard from over 50 pairs. Most of the twins could not make the day and time of the mission, but we were delighted to have 8 pairs turn out, nearly all of whom had never participated in one of our missions before.

We actually did this mission a second time a few weeks later. The first attempt was a total success in terms of how it unfolded live, but our video footage wasn’t as good as we knew it could be. It’s very difficult to capture audience reaction to a mission like this in the subway while still keeping our cameras hidden. We invested in some wireless microphones and a new button camera and gave it a second shot.

The second set of twins

Only two of the original sets of twins (the Vieyra and Port sisters) could make the second mission. They were joined by 8 new sets who couldn’t make the first date. It was nice to involve more people. We even had some high school twins this time around. The Krueger brothers weren’t present for the group photo above, but did make it on the train.

The Kruger twins, age 16

We had some fun taking posed photos

I instructed the twins via email to do everything they could to look identical. They did an awesome job dressing exactly alike and matching accessories. It really was impossible to tell them apart, especially when meeting 8 pairs at the same time.

The Barrett twins both had iPhones

The Drinkwater twins matched several accessories

The Port twins

The Doro twins

The Rosenblum twins

I explained the mission to everyone. We would get on the 6 train at the start of the line at Brooklyn Bridge and the twins would sit on either side of the car, directly across from their sibling. Once in place, their job would be to mirror each other as closely as possible. If one scratches his head, so should the other. If anyone asked them what was going on, they should claim not to notice anything unusual and not to even be able to see their sibling.

Even before the mission started, we were attracting tons of attention. People were running up to us and snapping photos of the twins at the meeting point. Several folks stopped to gawk as we walked to the subway. The hot dog vendor above couldn’t stop laughing.

The start of the first mission was particularly funny to watch because our agents weren’t able to get every seat in a row. There was a man quietly reading on the bench, and our agents surrounded him.

He sat and read his entire journey and exited not knowing what had gone on around him. To be fair, there were several people seated on train who didn’t notice at first what was happening. If you were only looking at one side of the car it seemed perfectly normal. It was easy to see if you were standing, but those seated had to look to their sides to get what was going on.

A woman quietly smiles

This couple was from Sweden. They were among the first the notice the mirror, and immediately started laughing and taking photographs. The woman theorized that there must be some sort of twin conference happening in town.

A man looks back one last time as he exits the train

The twins exit the train at 96th street

People coming down the stairs realize an army of twins is passing by

As with most of our missions, we got all sorts of reactions from all sorts of people. Most folks laughed quietly to themselves. A few got really excited and started asking others on the train if they knew what it was. Some were bold enough to try to talk to the twins. Some pretended not to notice and kept to themselves. Some genuinely didn’t notice.

Agent Cobalt recalled one particularly good reaction:

One of the best reactions I saw unfortunately was not captured on video to my knowledge- I think it was on the first time around and a tanned middle aged woman with permed hair and a rough makeup job was sitting on the train completely surrounded by twins. She sat there for quite awhile without noticing. Then she looked up and must have seen it in the reflection of the window across from her because she did a startled quadruple take to the left and right. At first she let out an uncomfortable laugh but at that early stage nearly everyone on the train was either a hidden camera person or a twin and no one reacted to her confusion. This made her noticeably more uncomfortable so she got up and moved to another part of the car and stared at the floor till her stop. She certainly had the look of someone questioning their sanity- an awkward testament to the stellar job all the twins did in coordinating their outfits, accessories, hair, and actions- the Rosenblum twins had the same song queued on their iPods- that’s the level of dedication these agents had.

The freaked out woman

The second time around was just as much fun.

This woman and her husband were really excited. “I thought it was a mirror,” she told me. The both decided to get to the bottom of it and talk to the twins, but our agents stayed in character and acted like they were crazy. It was fun to watch people like them get on the train and slowly notice the twins. At first they might just see one or two pairs, but then they’d look to the other side of the car and see seven more pairs.

A man snaps a photo as he leaves the train

This woman saw the mirror as soon as she stepped on the train

You may recognize the Stone twins from their appearances on NBC’s Last Comic Standing. They’re a stand up comedy duo.

Of all of the people we encountered, the women pictured above were our favorites. They could not stop laughing and talking to everyone about what was going on. The woman on the left did a literal double take when she first saw the mirror (which you can see in the video.) I sat across from them with my button camera recording as they tried to figure it all out.

One of the Stone brothers makes the other pick his nose

As we were waiting to board a downtown train after the mission was over, two guys were going crazy across the platform, waving and laughing.

Mission Accomplished

-More photos:
Agent Sokoler’s Flickr Set
Agent Nicholson’s Flickr Set

-Another twin mirror prank from a German TV prank show.

If this is your first time here:
-our other 70+ missions can be seen here: Missions
-sign up for our RSS feed
-New Yorkers join our NY Agents list
-everyone else can get involved in their town at The Urban Prankster Network

Today we’re proud to announce the launch of a new blog, Urban Prankster. Urban Prankster will feature pranks, hacks, participatory art, flash mobs, and other creative endeavors that take place in public places in cities across the world. If someone does something awesome in the public space, we plan to cover it.

Over the last six months we’ve seen a massive spread of urban creativity in cities across the world. We’ve been covering the global trend here on Improv Everywhere, focusing on groups that formed on our Improv Everywhere Global network. It’s been awesome to see groups recreating our past missions and coming up with new ideas of their own. With missions happening in other cities on an almost weekly basis, we decided it was time to create a new site to celebrate this work. ImprovEverywhere.com will return to focusing on our work here in New York, and all documentation of other groups will move to Urban Prankster.

In addition to Improv Everywhere style events, we’ll also be covering other forms of art and comedy in the public space and posting announcements about upcoming events seeking participants.

We’ve got a handful of posts already up on the site, and plan to add new content on a regular basis. So give the site a test run, and sign up for the Urban Prankster RSS feed to stay updated.

See it larger on flickr

For our latest mission, 700 agents lined the length of the Brooklyn Bridge a week before its 125th birthday. In the rain and cold we created a wave of camera flashes across the bridge from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Enjoy the video below and then read on for the report and tons of photos.

(Also available on YouTube)
edited by Jamey Shafer / song by Tyler Walker

Digital Video: Agents Adams, Cacy, Caruth, Joseff, Martin, Savage, Schackman, Shafer, Slocum, Winckler
Digital Photography: Agents Fountain, Nicholson, Scott, Sokoler, Brypace, Clgregor, Eppink, Fawnandfauna, Mirka
Waveleaders: Agents Fountain, Spear, Todd
Mission inspired by: Agents Gee, Taliaferrow

We get lots of mission ideas emailed in to the site. Sometimes they’re great, and we end up making them happen. Sometimes they inspire us to think of a new idea along the same lines. In this case, we had two ideas sent to us in one week that seemed to work perfectly together. Agent Taliaferrow suggested that we do “the wave” across the Brooklyn Bridge, and Agent Gee suggested that we create a wave of camera flashes on a Manhattan street. We put the two together and The Camera Flash Experiment was born.

For the mission, we would have agents line the length of the Brooklyn Bridge and then film and photograph the mission from the Manhattan Bridge, about 500 yards to the north. We weren’t sure how the flashes would look from that distance, so a small crew conducted a test run about a month before the mission. Agents Shafer, Adams, and I set up on the Manhattan Bridge pedestrian walkway and shot video of Agents Fountain, Walker, Gallagher, and Sokoler creating camera flashes on the Brooklyn Bridge walkway.

We were impressed with how four flashes looked, and were excited to find out how it would look with hundreds more. Still, capturing the flashes on video was going to be a challenge. They looked much more impressive to the naked eye than they did on the camera’s view screen. Capturing the mission via photography was going to be even more challenging, as our photographers would have to use long exposures to show the wave of light.

The biggest challenge of all in this mission was the weather. As Friday neared, the forecast looked worse and worse. We had over 700 RSVPs for the mission, and a few agents had made travel plans. Agent Nicholson, our longtime photographer, had already bought a plane ticket to fly back from a trip to Los Angeles to shoot the mission. We decided to move forward rain or shine and hope for the best. The mission would still work in the rain and promised to be a crazy adventure either way.

The crowd gathers

Mission briefing

Despite the awful rain and the unseasonably cold weather, 700 participants showed up at our meeting point ready to go. I explained the mission idea and our plan of attack and instructed everyone to set their cameras to “force flash,” (so they would have the most control over timing.) We figured each camera would have a different lag on its shutter button, so we took some practice shots with everyone trying to take a photo at exactly the same time, first holding the shutter down halfway to pre-focus.

1… 2… 3!

The plan was simple (and as it turned out to be, too simple!) We would walk over to the bridge in a single file line with me in the lead. We would line up on the bridge from the tower on the Brooklyn side to the tower on the Manhattan side, single file facing the Manhattan Bridge. I would start the wave by taking a photo and yelling, “1!” Whoever was next to me would then yell “2!” and take his shot, and so on down the line until it got to Manhattan. Just like a wave at a football game, participants would wait for the person next to them to cue them to go. We’d send the wave back and forth a couple of times and then finish with a finale of everyone flashing.

The crowd heads toward the bridge enterance

Agent Nicholson’s pre-mission shot from Brooklyn Bridge Park

When planning this mission, it was difficult to know how many people we would need to span the length between the two towers. It’s also tough to know how many people are going to show up to our missions these days. In many ways, we were lucky the weather was so bad, because had it been beautiful out we could have had 2,000 people show up to participate. Believe me, managing 700 people on a bridge is more than enough to handle. After the front of the line made it to the Brooklyn side, I walked back along the line to see if everyone was in place. Once I got to the other side I realized there were some people who weren’t even on the bridge yet. We had way more people than we needed. With the help of Agent Terracio, I started directing the people at the back of the line to walk forward and create a second line, filling in the gaps.

We were excited to see what kind of reactions we would get from the regular people on the bridge who encountered our giant single file line, but very few people saw us. The weather was just too awful for any sane person to be outside. In retrospect, this was probably a good thing. We didn’t need anyone else on this bridge, and we certainly didn’t need any bikers whizzing by us.

There were at least a couple of non-participants who walked by. Agent Garrison writes:

I just wanted to share with you that 3 people stopped and asked questions in our area. They decided to join us even though they had no idea what was going on, except that someone told them that we were doing a “flash experiment”, so one guy thought that we were going to actually flash people!They just stood there in the line. And then he kept asking “Are you all activists? Huh, tell me, are you activists?”

It took much longer than expected to get everyone in place, but most of the participants managed to have lots of fun despite the conditions. Many came alone and made friends with the people standing next to them. There were even a few “missed connections” posted on our site and on Craigslist the next day. Strangers and friends alike made the best of this ridiculous adventure.

It was fun to see what a diverse crowd showed up. People of all ages, races, and backgrounds came together for this mission. Agent Coffin writes:

You may be interested to know that not only were 700 people out there in the monsoon rain, but one of them was my 71 year old mother who stayed the whole time. :)

Some didn’t even have umbrellas!

Once everyone was in place, it was time to start the wave. I took out my camera, shouted “1!”, and grinned excitedly as I heard my neighbors taking their flashes, “2! 3! 4!” Then a few seconds later, looking down the line, I realized it had stopped. The wave only made it to 15 or so before ending. I’m not sure how it stopped, but I guess it was easy to get distracted. It was pouring, noisy cars were splashing in the rain below, and folks were trying to keep warm. I realized it stopped because it hadn’t traveled too far, but how would I know if it stopped 200 people down the line? We had to figure out a better plan.

I remembered that waves at football games are usually started by a cheerleader running in front of the crowd. It was time to be a cheerleader. Agent Spear, Agent Fountain, and I devised a plan to take turns running the length of the bridge, screaming “go!” at the top of our lungs down the line. At this point we wished we hadn’t given Agent Spear’s bike to the camera guys on the Manhattan Bridge.

Agent Spear and Agent Fountain take off running

I nearly lost my voice from yelling “Go!” about one thousand times

Agent Spear runs and ducks to avoid covering the flashes

Agent Spear ran so fast he wound up in this photo twice

We had two photographers in charge of documenting the mission from afar. Agent Sokoler was stationed on the Manhattan Bridge, and Agent Nicholson was at ground level in Brooklyn Bridge Park. Both were working with multiple cameras and tripods, in attempt to get as much coverage as possible. On one camera, Agent Sokoler took six 30 second exposures, capturing six sections of the wave as it crossed from Brooklyn to Manhattan.

I put together a small animated GIF of the wave crossing the bridge using these photos.

(this animation may not work in all browsers, get Firefox.)

Agent Sokoler got some beautiful longer exposure photos as well.

See it even larger on flickr

See it even larger on flickr

See it even larger on flickr

converted to B&W with blue enhanced. See it even larger on flickr

See it even larger on flickr

Agent Nicholson had a tougher time getting good shots from Brooklyn Bridge Park. Being at ground level made it tough to capture the flashes. Here are a few highlights.

Back on the bridge, things didn’t go exactly as planned for the finale. Everyone was so wet and cold that mob mentality took over after the wave had gone down and back twice. Some stuck around and kept firing for the finale, and others assumed it must be over when they saw a few people beginning to leave. In the end, it didn’t matter. We had done what we wanted to do– create a wave of light back and forth between the boroughs.

Agents looking at their photos as they leave

Some agents convened at a nearby bar for an afterparty. Others got on the train and headed home to dry off. This made for a very wet car of 6-train riders.

We learned a lot at this mission. We learned more about how crowds work together, especially under bad conditions, and how communication does and does not work in single file lines. Next time we try to pull something like this off, we’ll be much more prepared.

Although the weather was miserable to deal with, in many ways the night we picked was destined to be the night for this mission. The next night, which was to be our rain date if we had decided to cancel, it ended up thunder storming at the exact time of the mission. Had we moved it to then, an unexpected storm would have hurt us even more, as people would have been unprepared. We also found out that Manhattan Bridge walkway was closed for construction on Saturday and Sunday nights, meaning we wouldn’t have had access for our photographers and cameramen.

Despite the glitches in the plan, we had a blast pulling this off and it seems most of the participants did as well. We never know exactly how our missions are going to work out, but we do know that they will always be an adventure. This mission was different for us in many ways. Most noticeably was the fact that we did not have much direct interaction with our audience. In fact, we can’t even be sure that anyone even saw the flashes. But we can hope that at least a few folks driving or taking the train across the Manhattan Bridge, living in a downtown apartment, or walking home in the rain looked up at the right time and saw something spectacular.

Mission Accomplished

Agent Sokoler’s Flickr Set
Agent Nicholson’s Flickr Set
Agent Scott’s Flickr Set
Agent Fountain’s Flickr Set
All photos from all participants

If this is your first time here:
-our other 70+ missions can be seen here: Missions
-sign up for our RSS feed
-New Yorkers join our NY Agents list
-everyone else can get involved in their town at Improv Everywhere Global

I don’t know why we went to all the trouble to synchronize our watches when we did the original. It’s so much easier to just have Mo Rocca stand on a stepladder and yell, “No sheep!” If you watch this video closely, you’ll notice they actually replicated several shots from our video: the woman eating yogurt, the guy tying his shoe, a man pre-freeze who is holding a train schedule exactly like Rob! is in our video.

Here’s a behind-the-scenes video we found on YouTube:

To reiterate, we had no idea this was happening and the show never contacted us. I guess it’s flattering to see our work fictionalized, even if we’re portrayed as murderers who yell, “Sheep!” at everyone. Too funny!

(still from the episode)

There was footage of the group staging a freeze in Grand Central Terminal, which I guess makes it a fictionalized account of our Frozen Grand Central with a dose of murder tossed in somehow. The group also organized a public pillow fight (organized in non-fiction New York by our friends at newmindspace.)

For the record, we had no idea about any of this, and the show didn’t get in touch with us about it. Last year the Idiotarod was fictionalized (also with a murder!) by CSI:NY, so I guess crime drama writers are really plugged into the public spectacle scene in NYC.

If you saw it, let us know how it was in the comments. And if you have a link to video of it, post that too.

There has been lots of activity on our Improv Everywhere Global site the past few weeks. The Mexico City group Desordinarios staged a mission called “Train Rain.” Around twenty agents rode Mexico City’s metro wearing rain gear and holding umbrellas.

Other recent missions:

**Boston SOS held a protest to protest protesting.

**Plan B in Minnesota staged their version of our old Ted’s Birthday mission.

**Suddenly Midwest in Kansas City staged their version of The Moebius.

**Scene Diego put a giant button in a park labeled “Do Not Push.” The planted agents began to dance whenever the button was pushed.

**The DC Defenestrators have been busy down in our nation’s capital. They staged a concert on the mall using rock band instruments and created a fake celebrity for a day.

**Improv Jakarta had their first mission over in Indonesia, causing random folks to look up into the sky.

**A couple of Improv Everywhere agents from New York are traveling to Manchester, England next week to assist with an Improv Manchester mission at the Futuresonic conference. The event will be at 9 AM on Thursday, May 1. Here is the facebook invite.

The “freeze” craze started by our Frozen Grand Central mission has now reached 70 cities in 34 countries and 6 continents (come on Antarctica, get with the program!) Agent Piskvor from Prague made a very cool map showing the locations of all the freeze missions. It’s a Google Map, so you can interact with it and click through to see the video for each city.

A couple of recent freezes of note include the first freeze in the Middle East:

Beirut, Lebanon

…and a freeze in Hong Kong where legislators and councilors from the local government participated.

Frozen Hong Kong, Councilors Version

The IE Global group based in Prague turned a subway car into a living room this past weekend. Here’s their report and video:

- Mission: Travel first class … on the subway!
- When: April 4th, 2008, from 5pm onwards
- Where: Prague subway system (eastbound yellow line)
- Agents: 12

On Friday, April 4th, the commuters on one of the trains were rather surprised when a girl has boarded a train, carrying a rug, and spread it out on the floor. Imagine their shock at the next station, where two guys brought in a large armchair, on the following stations accompanied by a coatrack, table, antique telephone, slippers, and a flower in a vase.

This was just the set-up. At Jinonice, some six stations from the start, a dressed-up man came in, put his coat and umbrella at the rack, sat down in the armchair and made himself comfortable: he loosened his tie, removed his shoes and put on the slippers, picked up a magazine and started reading.

Get involved in your local area at Improv Everywhere Global