Students record 58-hour livestream in an attempt to break the world record
Nine students in the Department of Media Arts recorded a 58-hour long livestream last month in an attempt to achieve the Guinness World Record for longest livestream with only audio.
The current record
record for the world’s longest audio livestream is 52 hours and was set in 2012 by Turkish radio disc jockies Cenk and Erdem.
The livestream, recorded on YouTube Live, ran from Nov. 15 to Nov. 18. The Media Arts Living Learning Community students covered a wide range of topics involving film. About 45 people came to watch over the course of the recording. Carpanzano said it will be a couple months before Guinness officially reviews and announces whether the the new world record.
“Looking back, I think it went better than expected,” media arts sophomore Phoenix Roberts said. “Everyone brought their weight and contributed as best as they could.”
Roberts said the idea of attempting to break the record was brought up in the spring and was originally a joke, but the students later decided to go through with the idea.
Preparation for the livestream involved allocating equal amounts of time to each student and deciding what topics, each student would discuss. Each student led a four-hour segment about a specific topic while three other students participated in conversations about it. Segment topics included social issues in the film industry, monster movies, play and theatre analysis and video game-to-movie adaptations.
“We tried to grasp every corner of film there is to talk about,” Roberts said.
According to Guinness World Records, participants are only allowed five seconds of dead air, or complete silence, during the entire 58 hours of recording. The students had to make sure they were continuously talking to ensure their time would count.
“The plan was, whenever you’re not on the mic, you’re supposed to be sleeping and being energized, but I think everyone was just so nervous,” Roberts said.
Roberts said she and others were so tired that at one point they had to fight sleep while on air.
“It’s a weird feeling,” Roberts said. “You start actually going crazy, and you know you have to keep talking. It gets so hard.”
Courtesy Marielena Carpanzano
Media arts sophomore Camryn Woodson also participated in the livestream. Her segment covered the history of film. She said she found the last hour of her segment to be the most difficult.
“You already talked about everything, so you’re pulling things out of your butt,” Woodson said.
One of the most fun parts for the students was having others chime in on the conversation, Woodson said. If students on air could not think of anything else to talk about, others would grab a mic and keep the conversation going.
“I think it all just worked out how it was supposed to,” Woodson said. “We did a really good job.”
Staff mentor for the Media Arts Living Learning Community Marielena Carpanzano was there to provide support and assist in getting anything the students needed. She helped get sponsors for the livestream like Boca 31, which provided the students with food.
“As their mentor I try to be there for them and support them in any way I can,” Carpanzano said. “[I] make sure they know at any given point they feel like they can’t make it or do it, I’m always there to be their cheerleader.”
Carpanzano was not on the livestream but said she was listening the entire time.
“It was great seeing them interact the way they did,” Carpanzano said. “They have great chemistry with each other — it’s just phenomenal.”
Featured Image: Courtesy Marielena Carpanzano
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