Here are the full details for our next mission, The Mp3 Experiment Six. Please take the time to read all of the instructions on this page. This is event is taking place in New York City.
Please note: This is a participatory event. We encourage participants to leave their cameras at home and have fun participating. We request the same from members of the media. Let’s all enjoy the moment and resist the urge to document! Don’t worry, we will have our usual crew taking photos and video for all to see.
Date: Saturday, May 23 (rain or shine) Location: Roosevelt Island (detailed info below) Time: The event will begin at exactly 4:00 PM. Arrive early and remember to budget time for weekend subway service delays (detailed subway information below.) The event will be over at 4:47. Wear: A Red, Blue, Yellow, or Green t-shirt with a white t-shirt underneath. Also recommended: closed-toed shoes and clothes you don’t mind running around in and maybe getting a bit dirty.
For April Fool’s Day we posted a video of a fake mission where it appeared that we had lost our judgment and crashed a funeral. We fooled thousands of angry YouTube users into thinking it was real. The biggest fools of all were the CW 11 news team who reported on the funeral as if it actually happened. They didn’t do one bit of research or fact checking, they simply broadcast a YouTube video and reported it as fact (a video from a prank group on April 1st!) I of course uploaded their story to my personal YouTube channel to show the world their lack of journalism skills.
Tonight I got a copyright notice from YouTube informing me that Tribune (the parent company of the CW 11) had filed a copyright claim against the video and that it had been removed. Clearly they want this embarrassment off of the Internets. What’s more interesting is the fact that their original broadcast used our content without permission. They simply put “YOUTUBE” on the screen to indicate that’s where they found the video. So it’s OK for them to air content that we shot and own, but it’s not OK for me to upload their footage of the content they took from me? It’s “fair use” for the news to take a video off of YouTube and broadcast it, but it’s not “fair use” for a citizen to expose their poor reporting on his own content?
Good thing the video has already been uploaded somewhere else:
Now that the cat is out of the bag about our Best Funeral Ever April Fool’s Hoax, we figured it would be fun to share some of the behind-the-scenes video and photos from the project. Here’s how we did it, along with some of the more ridiculous things we cut for being just too over-the-top.
If you haven’t figured it out by now, The Best Funeral Ever mission was staged for April Fool’s Day. The “family members” were all actors and friends of Improv Everywhere. Next week we will post a new report with photo and video outtakes from the day. We staged a few over-the-top moments that were just too ridiculous to keep the video believable. Our apologizes to those who were fooled into thinking we had lost our minds and done something this horrendous. If you haven’t read the comments yet, do yourself a favor and read a few. They are probably funnier than the hoax itself.
But the hands-down funniest thing about all of this is that tonight’s evening news on CW 11 covered this mission as if it actually happened. They think the prank is on the family (our actors) when actually the prank is on them:
So basically the extent of their reporting is watching a video on YouTube and then describing it as fact on air. They didn’t bother to email Improv Everywhere for comment, call the cemetery to verify, or try to get a quote from the “family.” They just watched the video and threw it on TV. Great journalism!
They featured the story on their website tonight, but then took it down a few hours later (I guess someone filled them in.) Don’t worry. I took a screenshot.
Improv Everywhere causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places. Created in August of 2001 by Charlie Todd, Improv Everywhere has executed over 100 missions involving tens of thousands of undercover agents. The group is based in New York City.
