Latest update 22/5/13: (See below)
An excerpt from David Foster Wallace's Kenyon Commencement Speech, This is Water, from The Glossary. I'm not a huge fan of the ongoing music... detracts from it somewhat. Or the little meta-story in the vid. Some neat stuff in the visuals, though. [You can listen to the complete recording of the original speech here , then purchase it here, or buy the text version.]
Update:
Adweek - The Story Behind 'This Is Water,' the Inspiring Video People Can't Stop Watching Without permission, Glossary created an amazing homage to David Foster Wallace By David Griner.
Without permission...
What did you have to do to get permission to use the audio?We had little to no budget for this project and we knew that the publishing house was going to be really skeptical of our little company’s request to utilize his work. We had faith in our vision for the video and that once it was complete they would see that this was something made with the best intentions in mind. We are in no way making any money directly from this video; it was purely a passion project. While we had high hopes for this, we could have never seen all of this attention coming. Sometimes it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission.
Surely there's a revenue stream generated by those millions of views. :/
Update 19/5/13:
The Youtube vid is now sitting at 5.1 million views. Wow. DFW's speech is now listed on the TED site - at TED Best of the Web, and was listed as a TED bonus talk (via twitter too, so it exploded again). I personally loved seeing Stephen Fry tweet about it (to his 5.7 million followers!), and then watch another retweet explosion. David Foster Wallace searches on twitter come up almost 99% for this video (which is so much better than a few years ago when it was tweeted results from that horrid web based 'style' bot - the "I write like... [insert random author e.g. David Foster Wallace]". )
In the comments section below Tay points out that the video resulted in library borrowings and visiting this site. If that experience is extrapolated I'm guessing many more people have done the same thing.
I've had significant flow-on success here too. I can't deny it. I just hope the success now means The Glossary sorts something out with the Wallace estate. If they're the Wallace fans they appear to be I'm betting they already have. This vid, while not 100% true to the original speech, has done a great service to the profile of Wallace's writing.
Update 22/5/13:
...and it's gone (at least from the primary Youtube location). I'm not at all surprised (The Glossary did suggest not having the rights) but maybe placing an official ad for the upcoming uncollected fiction in the description would have been a good way to tap into the publicity?
"THIS IS WA..." This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by David Foster Wallace Literary Trust."Streisand effect in 3... 2... 1... ?
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