Taiwan Today

A video shot by a Taiwanese student has become an overnight sensation, catching the eye of several international media giants and landing him industry job offers. Liu Bang-yao, a student with the Graduate School of Art and Technology at the Taipei National University of the Arts, filmed the two-minute video of a person putting Post-It Notes on a wall. The clip garnered two million plus hits on YouTube in just two weeks. After seeing the video, CNN invited Liu to be the producer of a new show they were planning. Microsoft Corp. also asked him to assist in the production of films related to their soon-to-be-released search engine. Similarly, ad agencies have been in touch. Liu said as he is scheduled to return to Taiwan in August to finish his studies at TNUA, and is yet to undertake compulsory military service, the job offers will have to be put on ice. After putting the video on YouTube at the urging of his professor, it attracted more than 200,000 hits in only two days, and around a million hits within two weeks. Around 1.6 million visitors saw the clip between June 5 and July 3. More than 6,000 Post-It Notes were used in the video, which was filmed in stop motion—an animation technique that makes physically manipulated objects appear to move on their own. Before shooting the video, Liu first simulated the entire process on a computer before projecting the images on a wall. Since every second of the film required 12 frames, more than one thousand frames had to be made within fours days. Liu spent four days and nights editing more than 1,000 frames into a seamless sequence. Many viewers mistakenly believe Liu is the star of the video, but in fact, he does not appear. He credits four other students from Taiwan for their help in completing the three-month project. According to Liu, Hollywood actor Ashton Kutcher highly praised his YouTube debut in comments left on another Web site. He said this feedback left a deep impression on him. Liu is currently studying at Savannah College of Art and Design in the United States, with funding from the Ministry of Education’s Scholarship Program for Overseas Study in Arts and Design. (HZW-JSM)