This is the video that started it all for us in the realm of viral videos. I shot this video of Alexis in the eight grade during her first track meet. Contrary to belief the girls on her team did practice many times before the meet. While I do see the humor in the video I really saw it as victory for Alexis and to finish when others would have quit. It wasn’t until several years later that I finally came across the video and put it together the way you see it here. I really just did it for Alexis.

When she put it on her iPod and showed it to friends they encouraged her to have me put it on YouTube. She asked if I would and told there would be some that wouldn’t be very nice about their thoughts on the video and she should consider that in making her decision. She assured me that she had thought about it so I posted it on YouTube on March 5th 2010. It received a few thousand views of the course of about 6 months or so but really had pretty much stalled.

Then around November 11, 2010 I posted it on Facebook and asked for friends to share it. It was that day it went viral with over a 180,000 views. I didn’t know it actually went viral until I checked my e-mail later that day and it was filled with comments from YouTube.

I think it was the next week that I started getting e-mails from the networks. The first call was from Inside Edition. They wanted us to be on their show that day and we were scrambling around trying to find a place to do a satellite interview with the studio in New York. Luckily for us Purdue University was just across the river and we rushed over did the interview. Here’s the video of our extremely nerve racking interview.

We were later contacted by several other shows one of which was the Tonight Show. I was a little disappointed that they didn’t have us out to do the show but later that evening I got an e-mail from the TruTv asking if Alexis would like to be on their show of Worlds Dumbest.

At first I was very apprehensive about doing their show due to the fact that the celebrities are pretty harsh on the videos they typically show. They assured me that the producers, writers and celebrities discussed it and didn’t want it be mean in anyway. They actually wanted to turn the tables a bit on the celebrities and have Alexis on the show poking fun at them. (this is my favorite part) They asked if could I could shoot the segment of Alexis in my studio and then send it to them. How could I say no since they were willing to pay me for my part of the production.

The video below is the result, which I’m pretty proud to have been able to contribute too.

The comments on YouTube kept coming, some were pretty rude and harmful which is why I was screening them before they went public. Some were very supportive and some pretty humorous. We had several mention that it should be on tosh.0. I think it was submitted to them several times. Which at the time I was pretty unsure of if wanted it to be used on the show at all. Then it did finally happen and one of the producers called me (which by the way is an extremely strange call to get) they said they would be interested in doing the first web rematch under one condition, we had to find the other girl in the video and they both had to agree to be on the show.

At the time we didn’t have a clue who the other girl (Natasha) was. So we started trying find her. The people at tosh.0 and I found her on Facebook almost at the same time and contacted her. She was little freaked out at first and thought we were stalking her or something. Alexis contacted her and sent her the link to the video and the exciting rushed trip to L.A. began.

The day shooting was pretty exciting for both the girls and myself. Daniel Tosh by the way is one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met as well as one of the kindest. He was making sure the entire day the girls were ok with everything going on. I think this segment is one of the best ever on his show.

This is the extended interview of the tosh.0 episode.

Just when I thought it all died down and was over MTV’s Ridiculousness calls and asks if they could use the clip on their show. Of course we agreed and can’t wait to see the outcome. Stay Tuned!