How to Make a Viral Video With MTV2’s Dave Ebert

Last week MTV2 premiered its newest show, Not Exactly News.

Each week the MTV2 news team promises to cover everything important in the viral video-verse from the latest dogs doing cute things to high-speed road chases spurred by unpleasant bodily functions. Julia Kelly, Damien Lemon, and Matthew Broussard deliver the news along with ‘in the field’ correspondent Dave Ebert who you already know from MTV’s Guy Code and Joking Off. We talked to Dave about the how the show comes together, and what makes the perfect viral video.

Dave’s role on the show takes him via green screen all over the world to report on what’s happening, without ever leaving the studio. Dave told us he doesn’t get to choose the videos he reports about, but he does get some room to improv during his performance and uses that to get big laughs from the in studio audience. It’s not the first time Dave’s worked with a studio audience, and he uses a secret he learned while filming MTV2’s joking off– he messes with the audience.

He told us that he also loves to screw with the director and the rest of his team, “especially Matthew Broussard. I love doing things that screw with him a little bit” to get audience reactions. “One of the things I did throughout the entire taping was act like there was a delay in my headset and I would do it every time. The reason it worked so well in that room is that I’m standing 3 feet away from Matt and pretending I can’t hear him and like I gotta wait a second. And so every time i did it the audience couldn’t handle it. but then when you watch it on tv and you don’t know how far away I am its like ‘why is this guy bad at doing the news?’ So i dunno maybe it comes across maybe it doesn’t.”

It was a viral video that led to Dave getting his first television roles. “I made a music video called Hulk Hands. It was a really dumb song– it was a rap song about these businessmen who are successful because they never take off their Hulk Hands. The song was dumb so we actually decided to make a music video,” Dave told us. “We paid like 5 grand out of pocket to shoot it, and we shoot this video and we put it up online and we’re not sure if anyone’s gonna like it and it only gets like 35,000 views which in internet terms is not much. And we’re sad, cause we thought it should have done better.”

But even if the video didn’t go super viral, it was the Hulk Hands video that helped Dave land a huge commercial gig as spokesperson for Bud Light Lime-a-Rita campaign which had a great creative team and is directed by Matt Piedmont (IFC’s Spoils of Babylon, SNL, Mi Casa Del Padre).

Three years later, Dave is starting his third MTV2 show and getting tons of commercials including a huge Sonic campaign, and still making his own videos. We asked him to give some advice to people trying to create their own viral video.  Most importantly, he told us, nothing you can make is going to be as popular as goats in Russia yelling.

“I wish I could tell you the exact formula, I’d be a lot more successful,” he said. But he believes there are three important factors that are essential to making a big viral video.

• It’s got to be short.
• It’s got to be super punchy.
• There can’t be a moment of weakness in the video. Every second’s got to be filled with something worth watching. If there’s a moment that you kind of phone it in? the audience will sense it and turn it off.
• Do the work with the respect for the audience you’d like to have, as opposed to doing it for just clicks. I’d rather have 100 people with good taste like something than 1 million mindlessly consume it.
• Work with people you like.

We asked him what he likes to watch on the internet.  He said when he’s not watching yelling goats, or dogs on treadmills, he’s a huge fan of Avery Monson.  “He’s a vine star. He does very small comedic illusions. Like figures out how to make vines loop perfectly. And pretty much everything he makes, makes me laugh.”

Dave is working on a new viral video with a good budget and a crew he met while filming commercials, and he’s getting ready to start taping season 2 of Joking Off for MTV.  Not Exactly News premiered last Wednesday night June 17th and airs every Wednesday at 11:30 in the east and pacific, 10:30 central right after Wild ‘N Out.

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