The Hawks have gone viral.
The team recently unveiled an NBA Code of Conduct message done as a parody of Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" hit video. Two days after it was shown during the Hawks' second home game of the new season it grabbed much public attention. It has been viewed nearly 64,000 times on YouTube, was the subject of much social-media discussion and has been linked to by Sports Illustrated, USA Today and many other websites.
“When I woke up the next day my Twitter went crazy,” said Ryan Cameron, the Hawks’ public-address announcer, morning host of radio station V-103 FM and star of the parody.
The NBA requires teams to display the league’s Code of Conduct policy before the start of a game and the second half. Some teams have players or celebrities read from a script. The Hawks recently used Judge Joe Brown and Conan O’Brien via video to relate the message.
Now, they have taken it to a new level.
The one-minute, 36-second video features Cameron, three Hawks cheerleaders, the mascot and a City of Atlanta police officer.
The idea was the brainchild of David Schindler, the Hawks’ senior director of video production. This summer, he scripted the league policy into the “Blurred Lines” song.
"We have a really great creative team, and fortunately the Hawks allow us to stretch our creativity a little bit, which not every team in the NBA allows you do to," said Schindler, who makes a brief juggling appearance at the end of the video.
He then sent his creation to Cameron. He and Octavia March tweaked the lyrics, recorded it and then used some audio effects to produce a final version.
“When Octavia first sent it back to me, it was just me singing,” Cameron said. “I said, ‘This sounds awful. I can’t do this.’ So she took it to her own studio and put the Auto-Tune effect on it. When I heard that, I as like ‘OK, this could work.’ The original version, people would have been running out of here. They would have been throwing things on the court. It would have been the exact opposite of what it was supposed to be.”
Auto-Tune is an audio processor that allows for altered pitch in musical recordings.
The video took just an hour to film. It was done at the end of September as the Hawks kicked off training camp.
The NBA allows each team leeway to create its own Code of Conduct message as long as it contains the verbiage of the policy.
“You never expect it,” Schindler said of the success of the video. “You try to do something fun and creative. We thought it was a fun idea. We thought the shoot came out really great. You put it out there. You hope that people will like it. You don’t expect it to be on all the different websites.”
More is on the way.
Cameron and Schindler said another video parody is in the works. It likely will be ready for the second half of the season. They offered little details — except for one hint.
“It’s another play off another huge song, and it’s more of an international song,” Cameron said. “It has a lot to do with the hawk. That’s all I will say.”
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