The Tartan Online: "Rarely do college students take center stage in national debates about artistic plagiarism, but that’s exactly what happened to Carnegie Mellon first-years Joe Reilly, a CFA student, and Sean Hoffman, an H&SS student. Their video “What is The Creep” made national headlines after Saturday Night Live released a digital short, “The Creep,” that eerily echoed some of the elements of the Carnegie Mellon students’ video.
15 comments:
This is pretty intriguing. I had seen the SNL skit before, but had no idea about the CMU version. I spotted a CMU school of drama freshman in the video as well, one of the actors. I can see the similarities, mostly the title and some of the arm movements in the dance, but unfortunately I don't know if I see enough of a similarity that SNL will actually end up paying for them. If the students are catching some spotlight though, all the more power to them. Take what you can!
One...maybe both of these students are in the same dorm as me and I've heard a lot about this issue since it happened. They raise a good point at the end of the article that they should ask SNL about when the dance was filmed because it is the dance that really follows what they do, not the song. It does seem too eerily similar for a mere random happenstance. I can't imagine they would steal directly from it, big companies are careful about that kind of stuff but who knows maybe they thought it was too small of a video for anyone to notice. Still, I think they could get a small settlement from SNL agreeing not to take them to court. What is a few thousand to SNL?
Wow...I don't even know where to start.
I think step one is to lookup videos on youtube of "creep dance" and look at anything posted more than 6 months ago.
If it's really an issue of intellectual property, what about the comedian who inspired the kid to do the dance? I don't see the kids throwing him any recognition. Also, is it possible that the SNL writers could have potentially seen the same comedian and been equally inspired? The important question is the line between "inspired" and "original work" and there is some flimsy ground there.
And the kid's mom utilized her ties with Rolling Stone to try and escalate the situation? Via facebook? AND when reading the Rolling Stone article has the kid saying that "it's a complete coincidence?"
Oh, and the whole point of the song is to describe the dance they are doing, so even if they wrote it in summer/november then I believe they have documented the idea of "floppy hands dance = creep." And production timelines will likely show you that they were probably filming this about a month or two before it aired...because unlike the live SNL skits the digital shorts take a considerable more amount of time of shoot and edit.
Sounds to me like the kids are just going for a ride while others (friends, mothers, campus paper)are just trying to make a bigger deal out of it than it is.
PS - Remember that email to everyone about locking up rehearsal studios because of "non drama students" usage. Checkout the followup video: "how to creep."
\end rant
Definitely agree with Kevin here. There are similarities, but there are also similarities to plenty of other youtube videos out there as well. I also feel that it is probably correct that other people related to the students are probably the ones really making a fuss about this, trying to get any money and notoriety for the students that they can. I can't imagine that this case actually ends up in court because the evidence is never going to be there; I can't think of a way that they can prove that it was a rip-off unless there is a secret recording of an SNL creative meeting. Apparently this has sparked a "national debate", but I haven't heard anyone else talking about it.
When I first read about this a few weeks ago I was really confused. How would it have been possible for SNL to do that? And why would they use someone's ideas without giving them credit? I now see that, like Joe said, there's not enough evidence to make a case here. While the similarities in the videos are very uncanny, who's to say that they couldn't have been created separately? I just can't help thinking that SNL wouldn't do this. A big name company like that would want to protect themselves and would probably not hesitate to give credit where it's due. It does seem like people related to these students are trying to make this a big deal, but I really think that SNL should be able to make their statement and that should be that.
I am going to agree with the general sentiment here that there really isn't enough of a case here that SNL actually stole anything. There are coincidences in life, and I think this is one example of that. There are a heavy amount of similarities, and I can understand that if I were the students, I too would be miffed if I thought that someone else had ripped off my work. As a third party, I simply don't believe that to be the case here.
I think that it is just simply impressive that something that is on YouTube could get so big. I saw signs all around campus and I had no idea what it was for but I didn't watch the video until I heard about the controversy. There isn't much of a case, but because there is this controversy, these CMU students are now stars. This shows the power of the Internet and shows how a nationally aired SNL skit can be compared to a short video that some students did on a whim. This really gives me faith that I can put out into the world and it will gain public notoriety. I also agree whit what everyone else has said that they do not have much of a case; the two videos are not similar enough.
It does seem like SNL was probably working on this before the students made their video, and it's quite possible that the SNL writers took their inspiration from the same source as the students. Who's to say they didn't see the same comedian and get the same idea? Stranger things have happened, and history is full of people making the same scientific breakthrough right around the same time because they are piggybacking on the groundwork other people have done first.
That said, even if the SNL people took their idea from the CMU students' video, I agree that the case for infringement seems weak. There's no way to prove that SNL got their idea from the students' video.
I've been following this story since the beginning because my roommate has class with the editor of the student's movie. She showed me the video a while ago and then called me as soon as the SNL version went up. I would easily believe that SNL saw this video before filming the dance, but I don't think it should be as big a controversy. The kid's dance was based on the comedian, SNL could have been looking for inspiration and typed into youtube, "what is a creep?" just to see what came up and saw this video. The rolling stones article seems to be just humoring the kids. SNL doesn't seem to be too worried about these kids getting all hyped up. Let them have their 15minutes of fame, I'm sure it was fun while it lasted.
Wow Kevin, tell us how you really feel. Though I do say I have to agree. Did anyone see any similarities to Michael Jackson's Thriller? I mean come on. And I don't think SNL moves that quickly, they are too big of an operation. It think it is a coincidence. This is not something newly developed like Fosse. Say act creepy to a junior high student, I am sure they will move something like this.
This is the next viral thing and everyone just needs to calm down.
I heard about this when this "controversy" first occurred. While issues of artistic integrity should be examined, this shouldn't be taken too seriously. The only similarities are the fact that both videos include, some form of dancing, some form of music, the same name, and a dinosaur head. While the dinosaur head similarity, it's just a coincidence. The dances aren't even similar.
What's more important here is that the youtube channel of the CMU students includes a video of them teaching the dance in what I'm pretty sure is a School of Drama rehearsal studio. The bigger mystery of this whole "creep" situation is that a rehearsal room was used, but wasn't signed out. How'd that one slip by?
^Actually, just kidding about that last part. A theatre major was with them.
(I was joking about the last part of my previous comment, but I now know otherwise. Sorry!)
Okay these comments are getting ridiculous and should be cleared up. First of all, in the video there is a drama freshmen involved in the making of this video so if they were using rehearsal rooms with the drama freshmen who I will not name then it is totally okay as long as NO BODY else is using them. And no body was at that time.
Now the issue with the actual dance move is weird because some parts of the dance are oddly similar. No body can really say except for either of the parties involved if there was some stealing of material. But the kids from CMU did film this dance way before the SNL video was ever released. The song might have been recorded before the video was released but the video wasn't. Depending on when the SNL crew filmed this I think would be a big game changer. But I guess we will never know, unless someone comes out and tells the truth.
While I see the similiarities I don't know if they much of a case. The dancing is similar but I think that is because how you portray "creeping" is very culturalized. I will be interested to see what happens but I have a feeling that SNL will do what Kevin suggested by pulling up older SNL vidoes and showing that the students from CMU were not that original.
Hey its Sean Hoffman of "The Creep." First I want to say I appreciate the debate on the situation, I'm surprised to see some people actually took the time to back-up their opinion rather than leaving a short sentence rant littered with profanity. As for the lividity of the situation it was blown out of proportion. For the most part we didn't seek a big controversy over who plagiarized who. We were just shocked at the coincidence but we did mean to ask when the video not because we were seeking to accuse them of copying us but just to calm the waters on the matter. Also I just want to clarify that Joe's mother wasn't using her connections in anyway to blow up the matter. She had simply posted the link to an article written by a student on Northwestern university on the similarities on her facebook. Joe's Mother went to high school with someone who now works for Rolling Stone and they picked the controversy up from there. Most of this has been spread to other news outlets by word of mouth and other internet articles.
We appreciate all the attention we've gotten from it, and we want to pursue making this dance bigger. Hopefully maybe even holding events that will benefit charity. We also aren't looking for any type of compensation which is why we aren't pursuing legal action, not that we have any evidence to substantiate one.
As for the rehearsal room, we did have a freshman drama major with us. I apologize if we didn't fill out the proper paperwork to use the room. We were looking for somewhere to film and that room was open. We made sure we took care of it and didn't touch anything except for the light switches.
Thanks,
Sean Michael Hoffman
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