Video clip

Video clips are short clips of video, usually part of a longer recording. The term is also more loosely used to mean any short video less than the length of a traditional television program.

On the Internet

With the spread of Internet global accessing (fastest Internet broadband connection of TCP with accumulator cables and semi fast connection), video clips have become very popular online. By mid-2006 there were tens of millions of video clips available online, with new websites springing up focusing entirely on offering free video clips to users and many established and corporate sites adding video clip content to their websites. With the spread of broadband Internet access, video clips have become very popular online. Whereas most of this content is non-exclusive and available on competing sites, some companies produce all their own videos and do not rely on the work of outside companies or amateurs.

While some video clips are taken from established media sources, community or individual-produced clips are becoming more common. Some individuals host their created works on vlogs, which are video blogs. The use of Internet video is growing very fast. Between March and July 2006, YouTube grew from 30 to 100 million views of videos per day. More recent developments includes the BBC's iPlayer, which was released for open beta testing in July 2007.

Humour

Humour (in Commonwealth English), or humor (in American English) is the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. The term derives from the humoral medicine of the ancient Greeks, which taught that the balance of fluids in the human body, known as humours (Latin: humor, "body fluid"), controlled human health and emotion.

People of all ages and cultures respond to humour. Most people are able to experience humour—be amused, smile or laugh at something funny—and thus are considered to have a sense of humour. The hypothetical person lacking a sense of humour would likely find the behaviour induced by humour to be inexplicable, strange, or even irrational. Though ultimately decided by personal taste, the extent to which a person finds something humorous depends on a host of variables, including geographical location, culture, maturity, level of education, intelligence and context. For example, young children may favour slapstick such as Punch and Judy puppet shows or cartoons such as Tom and Jerry, whose physical nature makes it accessible to them. By contrast, sophisticated forms of humour such as satire require an understanding of its social meaning and context, and thus tend to appeal to the mature audience.

At the Zoo

"At the Zoo" was one of Simon and Garfunkel's single releases in 1967.

The song is one of Paul Simon's many tributes to his hometown of New York City, and was written for the soundtrack of The Graduate, specifically the scene which takes place at the San Francisco Zoo. However, the song was not used in the film. The song begins with Simon's short lyrical introduction in the key of A Major, but it soon transitions to the key of G Major, being a whole note down from the beginning. The narrative tells the story of a trip to the Central Park Zoo; when the singer reaches the zoo, he anthropomorphizes the animals in various amusing ways. The song was licensed in advertisements for the Bronx Zoo and the San Francisco Zoo in the late 1970s.

Releases

"At the Zoo" was first released as a single in 1967, reaching #16 on the Billboard Hot 100. After that, it was released on the following albums:

The Zoo

The Zoo is a one-act comic opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by B. C. Stephenson, writing under the pen name of Bolton Rowe. It premiered on 5 June 1875 at the St. James's Theatre in London (as an afterpiece to W. S. Gilbert's Tom Cobb), concluding its run five weeks later, on 9 July 1875, at the Haymarket Theatre. There were brief revivals in late 1875, and again in 1879, before the opera was shelved.

The farcical story concerns two pairs of lovers. First, a nobleman, who goes to the zoo to woo the girl who sells snacks there. He tries to impress her by buying and eating all of the food. The other couple is a young chemist who believes that he has poisoned his beloved by mixing up her father's prescription with peppermint that he had meant for her.

The score was not published in Sullivan's lifetime, and it lay dormant until Terence Rees purchased the composer's autograph at auction in 1966 and arranged for publication. The opera is in one act without spoken dialogue, running about 40 minutes. Like Trial by Jury and Cox and Box, it has been staged as a curtain-raiser to the shorter Gilbert and Sullivan operas. Triple-bills of Sullivan's three one-act operas have also proved successful.