Live, from your smartphone! It’s you and your friends in a personalized sketch-comedy show, brought to you by Snapchat.
The new 10-episode Snap original series “The Me and You Show” taps into Snapchat’s Cameos — a feature that uses a kind of deepfake technology to insert someone’s face into a scene. Using Cameos, the show makes you the lead actor in comedy skits alongside one of your best friends by uploading a couple of selfies.
The first episode is set to premiere Oct. 1, with subsequent episodes released weekly. Written by Zack Bornstein, a former “Saturday Night Live” scribe, the sketch comedy episodes were conceived, written, filmed and post-produced “under strict technical guidelines” to be compatible with the Cameos technology. The goal, according to Snap, was to deliver a show in which any person could play any role, regardless of gender.
“This funny, first-of-its kind show is a great example of the kind of innovation that is uniquely possible in mobile storytelling. It also shows the breadth of Snap original series available on our platform,” said Erin Keating, senior development manager of Snap Originals.
To put yourself and a friend into “The Me and You Show,” the selfies have to be taken with the Snapchat app’s camera. If you’ve already set up a Cameos selfie in Snapchat, then the show will use that image; if not, the show will direct you to the Cameos signup page and prompt you to take a selfie at that time.
Snap’s Cameos team had to tackle different challenges, like figuring out how the Cameos-powered characters should best interact with other actors and how to pitch the vocal performances to plausibly represent the voice of anyone who was inserted into the scene. The Cameos feature is based on tech developed by AI Factory, a startup developing image and video recognition, analysis and processing technology that Snap acquired in 2019.
In early 2020, Snapchat debuted a show with a similar concept — “Bitmoji TV,” a parody of TV and movie genres that feature the Bitmoji cartoon avatars of users and their friends.
According to Snap, more than 44 million Snapchat users engage with Cameos on a weekly and more than 16 million share Cameos with their friends.
“The Me and You Show” is produced by Propagate Content’s Big Breakfast and Kids at Play.
Watch the trailer for “The Me and You Show”:
