Viral videos of the week: Star Trek’s Christmas carol, Lego Blues Brothers and an eagle-eyed thief

8 Dec 2013

Still from 'LEGO Blues Brothers - Shopping Mall chase scene' by Bricktease on YouTube

We take a look at some of the most-viewed and most-shared videos on the web. This week features Lego Blues Brothers, a Star Trek sing-along, a Star Wars take on Queen, incredibly realistic iPad finger-painting, a thieving eagle and bad language.

About 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, 500 years of video watched on Facebook every day, and more than 700 YouTube videos shared on Twitter each minute, ensuring there is always video trending on the web.

With so much video available for viewing, we take a look at some of the viral videos that have caught our eye this week.

Lego Blues Brothers

A classic toy meets a classic film in this video from the cheekily named Bricktease, who has recreated the famous shopping mall car chase from Blues Brothers frame by frame using Lego. There’s also a ‘making of’ accompaniment so you can see the painstaking labour behind this three-minute video and a side-by-side comparison to show you just how accurate it is. Nice job, Bricktease.

 

Uploaded: 2 December 2013

Captain Picard sings ‘Let It Snow’

Star Trek’s Captain Picard and the crew of the Next Generation Starship Enterprise sing a familiar Christmas ditty, but with a twist. Really, this is a way for YouTuber James Covenant to promote a game he is working on, and his clever marketing ploy has already accrued over 1m views.

 

Uploaded: 3 December 2013

Bohemian Rhapsody: Star Wars Edition

The force is strong with these Star Wars cosplayers from Arizona who have rewritten Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ to the tune of the sci-fi franchise. A fun effort produced by the students and faculty of the Digital Video Programme at the University of Advancing Technology (UAT) in Tempe, Arizona.

 

Uploaded: 4 December 2013

Morgan Freeman finger-painting

This isn’t your toddler’s finger-painting, this is Kyle Lambert’s incredibly realistic finger-painting. This video condenses 285,000 brush strokes and over 200 hours of work into less than four minutes, showing how Lambert used Procreate, his iPad and his finger tips to recreate this photograph of Morgan Freeman by Scott Gries to an absolute T.

 

Uploaded: 2 December 2013

Why are bad words bad?

In 1972, American comedian George Carlin listed the ‘Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television’ in a famous monologue but today, 22 of these words are sent out on Twitter every second. This latest video from Vsauce explores the concept of ‘bad’ words and where it came from. Want to know what a dysphemism is? Or why swearing can be cathartic? Let host Michael Stevens inform you, without any bad language thanks to the trusty 1kHz sine wave.

 

Uploaded: 28 November 2013

Eagle steals camera

Back in May, some rangers in Western Australia set up a motion-sensor camera at a gorge on the Margaret River, hoping to capture footage of freshwater crocodiles. It was thought the camera had fallen into the water, but a few weeks ago it was discovered by another ranger about 110km away at the Mary River. It turns out, the device had been nicked by a juvenile sea eagle and the footage retrieved offers a definitive bird’s eye view.

 

Uploaded: 1 December 2013

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Elaine Burke is the host of For Tech’s Sake, a co-production from Silicon Republic and The HeadStuff Podcast Network. She was previously the editor of Silicon Republic.

editorial@siliconrepublic.com