COMM 150 and 337: Flash mob in Copenhagen's central train station goes viral

This item works on so many levels in both our classes, I don't know where to begin! It's an American radio station's blog post linking to a flash mob performance of Ravel's Boléro at a railroad station in the capital of Denmark. It's a perfect example of several things we'll talk about in both classes.

So let's take a minute or two to read about it, and then watch the Copenhagen Philharmonic playing Boléro in Copenhagen's Central Train Station (Hovedbanegård). Conductor, the guy in the light blue sweater, was Jesper Nordin. The performance was May 2, and Copenhagen Phil (Sjællands Symfoniorkester in Danish) put it up on their YouTube channel May 27.



Now it looks like it's going viral. I got a link in an email from my cousin on Long Island over the weekend, and on Copenhagen Phil's Facebook page, a poster said Sept. 19 that it's been shared around the world ("ja, den blev 'shared' på FB ... verden rundt"). Here's what to look for as we watch it.

Sharp-eyed COMM 337 students will also want to link to a blog: Radio WQXR, the big classical music station in New York City, posted Copenhagen Phil's video last month. Their post explains how much planning went into the five-minute video, but while you're there you'll want to click on the "Blogs" link at the top of the page and surf around athe WQXR Blog. How does it promote the station? How does it fulfill the mission of a classical music station? How does it build a community among WQXR listeners?

Students in COMM 150 will see a lot of the themes in John Vivian's "Media of Mass Communication" reflected in the performance. Here are some of the main ones:

Artistic (creative> control. Wikipedia's definition is a good one: "A person with artistic control has the authority to decide how the final product will appear." Since Copenhagen Phil put together the video for its YouTube channel, it had complete artistic control. And the WQXR blog suggests how important that was:

Copenhagen Philharmonic spokesman Stine Larson reports that the orchestra spent six months preparing this performance, from getting permissions to shipping the instruments in trucks. The orchestra hired two cameramen, one placed on the roof of a store in the station concourse and the other moving amongst the audience and musicians.

Larson added: "We also wanted the sound to be as good as possible, so close to the conductor they placed a small microphone on the ground. In the editing phase, it took some time to synchronize the sound and, for example, the conductor's movements, but it succeeded at last."

As we watch the video, check out how well produced it is. If you want to see why artistic control matters, check out some unedited footage by a musician in the audience.

Interactivity and social media. This video was posted on YouTube, which is one of the social media as well as a favorite site for music lovers. It has 1.26 million page views as of today. Now, several months later, it's widely shared on Facebook - "around the world" - and it's going viral. Also: WQXR put it up on its blog, and the station's listeners are commenting on it. WQXR bills itself as "The Classical Music Station" of NYC." Again, how does the internet help build a virtual community?

Public relations. How does this video help Copenhagen Phil's brand? Its reputation in the community? Worldwide? HINT: How many of us had ever heard of Copenhagen Phil or Sjællands Symfoniorkester before? Here's another: What is a symphony orchestra doing with a Facebook page? How does that help the orchestra connect with its audience?

One last word. Flash mobs are supposed to be spontaneous, and sometimes they are. The riots in London last summer were a type of flash mob, and the rioters used text messages and Twitter, for example.

But sometimes it takes a lot of planning to look spontaneous.

Copenhagen Phil's performance was extremely well planned, but it was designed to catch its audience in the train station by surprise. The musician who shot the amateur video caught that very well when he posted it to YouTube and called it, "A random [tilfældig] Monday afternoon in the Central Train Station." Even the choice of music was carefully planned. As Brian Wise of WQXR pointed out, Copenhagen Phil's "performance makes particularly clever use of the inherent drama of the piece itself" as musicians filtered in one by one and started playing on cue.

Something you've heard me say before, and you'll hear me say it again. I've thought about modestly calling it "Ellertsen's law," in fact. None of this stuff happens by accident in mass communications.