Emo Kids Cry Out For “Spring Awakening” – Video Mashups on Eyespot

The hit Broadway musical “Spring Awakening” has come to the Eyespot media playground to present an opportunity for fans of the show to create video mashups expressing their teenage angst by using songs and video from the show, including the tracks “Bitch of Living” and “Totally F**cked,” coupled with their own memorabilia to create the ultimate dedication to the difficulties of being a teenager.

Popularized by a video mashup created by Rosie O’Donnell (http://www.eyespot.com/promotion/springawakening/) , a champion of the production, the contest encourages fans to create their own mashups from scenes in the play and its hit musical numbers written by famed singer/songwriter Duncan Sheik.

The new video and audio clips can be mixed and modified with Eyespot’s browser based mashup tool so that fans don’t have to download clunky software or learn new skills to create new videos from their favorite parts of the show, their own web cams, or from the community’s vast pool of movie, television, and music clips.

“We hope that fans who have gone to see the show over and over again will take Rosie’s mashup as a challenge and create new mashups with Eyespot that surprise all of us,” says Spring Awakening Producer Tom Hulce.

The angst-ridden ballads and anthems of “Spring Awakening” are especially popular among the Emo set who have never had the opportunity to mashup something new without fear of copyright concerns. “Spring Awakening” producers made the songs and video clips freely available for fans to create their own homage to the Broadway musical using the Eyespot platform.

The winning selection will be used as part of our official “Spread The Word” web banners for thousands to see as well as a posting on the show’s official website. The winner will be flown to New York City and put up for a two-night stay with tickets to the show and a meet and greet with the cast.

The hit musical joins hundreds of thousands of other clips on the Eyespot media playground to creatively intercut, score, and re-edit live on the web at Eyespot.com. The easy-to-use interface encourages playful interaction with all of the content across the user generated media platform. No expertise is needed to make artful celebrations of fans’ favorite show for distribution on video sharing sites, blogs, and social networks such as YouTube, MySpace and Facebook.

Contest entries will be judged by members of the “Spring Awakening” team, including Duncan Sheik, producer Tom Hulce and Ira Pittelman, and cast members Lea Michele, Jonathan Groff, and John Gallagher Jr. Promotion started on April 19, 2007 and commences on June 15, 2007.

About Eyespot

Eyespot changed the landscape of online digital media when it offered the world’s first suite of online video editing and remixing community applications, where consumers can easily upload, edit, mix together and share video clips, audio files or photos in one place online. The company was founded in 2005 by Jim Kaskade and David Dudas, technology and digital media industry veterans and is based in San Diego, Calif. The Company has been quietly developing a new video SaaS for online distribution, syndication, and monetization. It’s direct-to-consumer website, eyespot.com, and associated interactive applications are now offered for others to deploy on their own websites.

Jim Kaskade

Jim Kaskade is a serial entrepreneur & enterprise software executive of over 36 years. He is the CEO of Conversica, a leader in Augmented Workforce solutions that help clients attract, acquire, and grow end-customers. He most recently successfully exited a PE-backed SaaS company, Janrain, in the digital identity security space. Prior to identity, he led a digital application business of over 7,000 people ($1B). Prior to that he led a big data & analytics business of over 1,000 ($250M). He was the CEO of a Big Data Cloud company ($50M); was an EIR at PARC (the Bell Labs of Silicon Valley) which resulted in a spinout of an AML AI company; led two separate private cloud software startups; founded of one of the most advanced digital video SaaS companies delivering online and wireless solutions to over 10,000 enterprises; and was involved with three semiconductor startups (two of which he founded, one of which he sold). He started his career engineering massively parallel processing datacenter applications. Jim has an Electrical and Computer Science Engineering degree from University of California, Santa Barbara, with an emphasis in semiconductor design and computer science; and an MBA from the University of San Diego with an emphasis in entrepreneurship and finance.