“Dude, we’re getting the band back together!” might sound like a corny line from a coming-of-age film — and it probably is — but it’s also a soundbite that has been used more than 23,400 times on popular social media application TikTok.
On TikTok, users can create videos using popular “sounds,” which can be songs, lines from shows or movies, or people’s own voices. “Dude, we’re getting the band back together!” is a line in a song called “Fabulous” from the popular Disney Channel show “Phineas and Ferb.”
One of the main characters of the animated show, Phineas, was voiced by Vincent Martella, a former UF student. Martella, 27, attended UF from 2011 to 2012 in pursuit of an online business degree before “getting too busy” with Phineas and Ferb and other projects.
“Sometimes I've thought about what it would have been like to have done the normal college experience, especially at a school as big as UF,” Martella said. “I’m glad I kept up with acting though; it’s given me some really amazing opportunities.”
Martella said the song “Fabulous” was recorded around 2008 for the first season of the show.
“In regards to ‘Fabulous’ coming back on TikTok, I find that hilarious,” Martella said.
Martella is currently working on a new Phineas and Ferb movie that’s set to be released on Disney+ this year, among other acting pursuits.
The person who put the song “Fabulous” on TikTok and helped it become popular wasn’t Martella, though. It was Molly Carstens, an 18-year-old from Columbus, Nebraska.
Carstens originally thought of using the sound for a TikTok about One Direction she was making.
“I was just watching Phineas and Ferb on Disney+ and that episode was on,” Carstens said. “There were rumors going around about a (One Direction) reunion, so the sound fit quite well.”
The sound is 25 seconds long and can be found by searching “original sound - mollscar” on the TikTok sound search page.
Carstens also said she didn’t expect her sound to become a trend. She currently has more than 32,000 followers on the app under the username @mollscar and makes videos mostly about One Direction and Harry Styles.
Like Carstens, many people use TikTok to make creative and fun videos.
Camilo Vivas, a 22-year-old UF nutritional sciences senior, and six others are the creative minds behind UF’s official TikTok page @uf. The group is led by Matthew Duffy, a 22-year-old UF telecommunication senior.
The @uf TikTok account currently has more than 93,600 followers, 1.2 million likes and is verified on the app.
“My favorite TikTok we have done was the one where we told people we invented Gatorade,” said Kristen Casey, a 20-year-old UF advertising junior who works for the UF TikTok. “It really blew up on TikTok more than we thought, which was really fun to follow as the views and likes went up. So many people loved the video and really didn’t know Florida invented Gatorade.”
Casey and Vivas said that the process for creating a UF TikTok starts from the ground up.
“An idea has to not only work for the UF brand but also appeal to the viewers on each specific platform,” Casey said. “We look at trends in the media and try and go off of that.”
The video clips are then shot on their phones and edited with Adobe Premiere Pro.
“After getting approved by our boss, he will upload it to the account,” Casey said. “And we get to watch how the video is received on TikTok.”
A new TikTok they are creating is using the “Fabulous” audio. “Dude we’re getting the band back together!” will soon be featured on the @uf TikTok page.
The Independent Florida Alligator can be found on TikTok, under the username @thefloridaalligator.
Contact Julia Collins at jcollins@alligator.org. Follow her on Twitter @JuliaAnnCollins.
The official UF account combines Gator content with popular TikTok trends.
