By John Walker on March 18th, 2009 at 1:35 pm.
So what’s this, then? RPS readers: ASSEMBLE! We must solve and reveal. A video, below, featuring some remarkably impressive special effects, seeming to be part of the Half-Life universe. Not only does it feature some really neatly woven background mattes on regular film, but there’s a sense of scale that seems like it should be beyond a couple of guys mucking around on their weekends. Who has the capacity to take over a street, leaving cars strewn all over? And buses. Make sure to watch it in HQ.
As excellent tipper Chris Deter points out, there’s Half-life 2 sound effects, and a news ticker along the bottom that at one point reads, “Millions feared dead … no news from disaster area … Largest single collapse in history since Black Mesa”.
Also supremely impressive are the displays on the “Computer Brain Interface”. As the character holds up cellphones, data about them pops up and scrolls, in a way that makes me want a Computer Brain Interface right away. Oh, and that it’s one continuous shot Oops, wrong about that. But still.
However, this isn’t Valve’s style at all. Live-action isn’t something they’ve used, and it seems to have been shot in the Netherlands. I might be wrong about that – smart readers, can you identify the road signs/license plates? But the level of detail is astonishing. Note the circling birds at the end, who fly away at the sound of the explosion. Or the video screens inside the bus, glimpsed for about half a second. Creator Timacious shows prowess for special effects in the other videos he has on his YouTube channel. Whatever this video is – and my guess would be simply a remarkable fan project – it’s incredible, and deserves attention.
18/03/2009 at 13:41 Wookie_Wookstar (Big D) says:
Thought I heard some music from LOST! :)
18/03/2009 at 13:46 JJ says:
Yep, that’s in Holland. A sign in the bus says “Bij nood deur openen”.
Very cool movie btw
18/03/2009 at 13:48 Warduke says:
Yah, really well done. You definitely want to know what happens next..
18/03/2009 at 13:48 Chris Deter says:
Wow, thanks for taking the tip guys! I’m honored, really.
I thought the birds at the end were man-hacks that dropped right before the big kaboom at the end. I’d take another look, but alas, Youtube is blocked at work. I’m interested to see what the rest of RPS thinks of this. Thanks again!
18/03/2009 at 13:49 dhex says:
the music is the only weak spot; otherwise amazing.
18/03/2009 at 13:49 futage says:
It’s technically impressive in some ways (the fact that they managed to use a whole street etc. and the sfx are passable). But in terms of narrative or concept there seems to be nothing there, it’s evocative of the Half-Life universe and … that’s it, as if that’s an end in itself.
18/03/2009 at 13:50 Catastrophe says:
Wow. Just wow.
18/03/2009 at 13:51 SirKicksalot says:
Oh man, that music is horrible…
Otherwise it’s very good. But it’s not one continuous shot, right?
18/03/2009 at 13:53 PaulMorel says:
If it’s a fan project, then how did they get a bus?
Perhaps it’s Valve’s first viral marketing for episode 3?
18/03/2009 at 13:58 davidAlpha says:
The movie shows:
Van Zwaaij Autoservice
actual location:
Koopvaardijweg 13
6541 BR Nijmegen
http://maps.google.nl/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=nl&geocode=&q=Koopvaardijweg+13+6541+BR+Nijmegen&sll=52.469397,5.509644&sspn=5.007248,14.282227&ie=UTF8&z=16&iwloc=addr
18/03/2009 at 14:03 MacBeth says:
Very good, got the mood down nicely. Fairly convinced it’s unofficial fan work, but good nonetheless.
It’s not one continuous shot though – can see where the cuts have been sneaked in (e.g. when the lights go out, and various points where he (?) falls to the ground too I suspect)
18/03/2009 at 14:07 Cooper says:
Looks like some immensely impressive fan work around the ‘three minute war’…
18/03/2009 at 14:11 Cooper says:
Sorry, seven hour war – wrong war…
18/03/2009 at 14:16 Chris Evans says:
Very impressive whatever it is.
18/03/2009 at 14:22 cyrenic says:
We’re getting spoiled with all these awesome fan made Half Life videos.
That one definitely needed to work on the music a bit, but otherwise, yeah, great. Maybe they work (or know someone who works) in the film industry and were able to get access to a set so they could do the street scenes.
18/03/2009 at 14:30 Ian says:
I don’t really have much to add to the what-is-it-really? line of conversation, I just think it’s pretty good.
18/03/2009 at 14:32 Stense says:
Yep, thats impressively done. Very stylish.
18/03/2009 at 14:32 Bobsy says:
Either it’s a fan project, film students like the guys doing Escape From City 17, or it’s another developer’s “concept” for a first-person game very much like HL2. If it is just in concept stage, using live-action stuff to give an idea of how they want the game to look, references to Black Mesa are just a loving tribute.
18/03/2009 at 14:40 Larington says:
Theres a less sci-fi-tech equivalent to the Computer Brain Interface demonstrated here:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html
Its only 8 minutes but shows fantastic potential.
18/03/2009 at 14:42 Paul_M says:
The birds don’t fly away at the end, they just drop dead out of the sky and onto the roof of the house – which is even more brilliant and creepy.
18/03/2009 at 14:43 gryffinp says:
There’s also the mystifying video description. “This is a early temp version. Will be deleted soon.”
I HOPE this is viral marketing for Valve. I want Episode 3.
18/03/2009 at 14:49 Larington says:
Ih whant mah ehpisohd thareee.
18/03/2009 at 14:50 x25killa says:
I bet it’s some sort of portal.
18/03/2009 at 14:51 Ronnie76er says:
Did anyone else see him throw away the CBI…it had a BSOD.
18/03/2009 at 14:58 Flappybat says:
Well the swirly part makes me think of the portal storm and seven day war but having the human combine soldiers doesn’t make sense as they only came sometime after the surrender.
Also it’s quite easy to film empty streets, you just have to do it at a time when the sun rises really early. It’s how they did the London shots in 28 days later.
18/03/2009 at 15:00 gryffinp says:
Thought: This guy is also the guy who made the phone book thing for Mythbusters, and it looks like the other stuff on his channel is well-made too. I wouldn’t put it past Valve to have gone “Hey, we saw your stuff. We think it’s pretty neat. We have these giant hordes of money, you wanna make an awesome video for our new project?”
18/03/2009 at 15:10 Pags says:
They also shot it around Christmas day if I remember correctly, just to make doubly sure I guess.
Anyway, I’m also of the opinion that this is just a very impressive film project that took inspiration from Half-Life. Most impressive parts in particular were the video screens in the bus, the traffic light being obliterated and the front door and garden shed being blown to smithereens.
18/03/2009 at 15:11 JWV says:
The whole movie takes place in nijmegen, the Netherlands. The first part of the movie (in the lab) is situated in the nano-lab of the radboud-university. I’ve been there and I’m 100% sure it is. The moment he opens the door to go outside the place switches. I do not know the parking lot with the bus, but the moment he leaves the bus he runs through an alley past a supermarket (with this logo: http://www.retailwiki.nl/wiki02/images/Rem_2007_lo_01_JorgDannenberg.jpg , which you can see for a milli-second on a board hanging from the building, small fault in editing i think). The streets he ends in (where’s he’s being shot from the copter) is called Daalseweg and it is in fact quite a busy street, so it’s really weird that there’s no one there. The house etc. in the end is just a normal neighbourhood (i believe there’s no cutting in the last part, that neighbourhood is indeed next to daalseweg) in the centre of Nijmegen.
18/03/2009 at 15:12 Inferno says:
It may be easy to film empty street but not to fuilm them withwrecked buses , cars and bikes all over the road. Was highly entertaining to watch, interested to see where it came from or what time it’s set in.
As Flappy says having combine humans doesn’t make too much sense if it’s the initial invasion (they may have begun seeding into the planet to take over government for a while though).
Very interested in seeing where this is going though.
18/03/2009 at 15:18 Chris Deter says:
@gryffinp:
That’s what I was wondering too. Portal was made when Valve saw Narbacular Drop and said “here are plane tickets, come work for us”, so it’s not unprecedented for them. Then again, Escape from City 17 wasn’t made on commission from Valve; it was recognized by Valve, but they didn’t ask them to make it.
Also, my first thought on the birds at the end was that they were actually man-hacks that went haywire right along with the combine soldiers before the final explosion – like it was sending out some sort of interference that messed with Combine technology right before the final meltdown.
I’m still wondering what the deuce the box does – but I suppose that’s the point of the video, eh?
18/03/2009 at 15:27 aldo_14 says:
Bloody impressive, not just in terms of compositing it but also the subtlety; it’d be tempting to focus on stuff like the screens for too long just to show off, but he/she didn’t.
Doesn’t look like HL2, though. The references to ‘Babel’ and the ‘towers’ breaking down (or something) seem to be too different (if you wanted to reference HL2, you could be far more overt, surely).
18/03/2009 at 15:32 Whiskey Jak says:
At first I read “What IS Box” which is something entirely different and completely hilarious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_8yPap-k_s
Otherwise, this movie is pretty good. I’m still waiting to see more from those other guys from Toronto who did that other City 17 fan movie.
18/03/2009 at 15:46 Dinger says:
Well, the whole Portal-Narbacular drop thing was a little more complicated and a little less expensive than that. There are no scheduled flights from Digipen to Valve, although one would hope that, the next time, Valve would use a Combine dropship to transport their new hires upon indoctrination.
18/03/2009 at 15:47 Bruut says:
I thought I recognized it, I live in the same town :P
Funny thing I never noticed the singularity
18/03/2009 at 15:51 Tonic says:
This is what’s called a demo film or demo reel. Special effects, animation, and CGI students make them to show off their skills as a kind of resume or as a project for a grade. Often they’re strapped for what resources they can bring to the project and have friends do voices and music or lift them from video games. Here you can see he’s lifted sound effects from HL2 and I think somebody else mentioned he lifted music from LOST.
18/03/2009 at 15:54 Jorlin says:
@Bruut: LOL
…you should start thinking about glasses ;)
18/03/2009 at 15:54 Tonic says:
Oh also I should mention that’s why there’s the ‘character audio track missing’ at the top and you can’t hear the character breathing or his footsteps, but you can hear all the ‘splosions and lasers and gunfire.
18/03/2009 at 16:01 DF7 says:
The lost music completely took me out of the moment, but other than that it was very impressive. When the first “combine” showed up while he was in the bus I jumped.
18/03/2009 at 16:20 Nighthood says:
If you look on their website ( http://www.whatsinthebox.nl/ ) you see that it seems to be a film project. BUT, for all you conspiracy theorists, if you highlight the box some of the text is covered in red question marks. Maybe someone could work out what that means?
Also, in terms of the Lost music, didn’t ep2 have lots of references to Lost?
18/03/2009 at 16:35 Darthey says:
There’s a direct reference to Half Life 2 at 2:33, where you can spot ‘Black Messa’ in the news feed.
I love the level of detail, like the scrolling ‘emergency exit’ signs on the ceiling at the beginning (would probably be better to have had them on the floor like aeroplanes however).
18/03/2009 at 16:40 Smurfy says:
So how long before Valve announce that this and Escape from City 17 are actually viral marketing for the film? *crosses fingers*
18/03/2009 at 16:48 AbyssUK says:
Simon Pegg as Gordon Freeman
18/03/2009 at 17:22 Zed says:
Wow, this is even more impressive than Escape from City 17.
Crazily good for a fan film.
18/03/2009 at 17:34 Foucault says:
Yea. I would say they have to be students. The machine the main character pulls the box from is a Vecco Isolation Table, used to house an Dimension 3100 Atomic Force Microscope. The entire set up is easily counted in tens of thousands of USD, if not hundreds. I’m honestly surprised they got to stick stuff inside it. If I was the researched using that I would be livid, it could contaminate my observation environment. They definitely needed a friend in the research department to get them access to that thing.
18/03/2009 at 17:35 mandrill says:
@AbyssUK: lolwhut?
Halle Berry as Alyx.
18/03/2009 at 17:51 MacBeth says:
The box is clearly a next gen XBox, except this time the red ring of death is more dramatic than usual…
18/03/2009 at 18:11 Fumarole says:
Impressive video.
18/03/2009 at 18:11 Aermane says:
Anyone else kind of confused as to why the number on the clock after the seconds is counting up in 30s?
Unless I’m being really stupid, I thought it usually went up in 100s.
18/03/2009 at 18:13 SlappyBag says:
Very good but I doubt done by Valve, the “combine” were just terrible men in biohazard suits, how would that win a 7 hour war =P
Both this and escape from city 17 proove that we need a god damn half life movie, doesn’t even have to directly relate to gordon or city 17 or black mesa, just people fighting an shitz
18/03/2009 at 18:15 SlappyBag says:
Also
http://www.whatsinthebox.nl/
18/03/2009 at 18:17 KafkaTamura says:
Character audio track missing? Or is it just Gordon freeman?
18/03/2009 at 18:31 FluffyPanda says:
If you poke around on the site’s source you see some more clues, including a reference to this:
http://www.whatsinthebox.nl/anti.jpg
and the comments:
Every medium, as its ancestors
Every pro, has his anti’s, now you think about that
Also it looks like the intent is to display the anti.jpg when you print http://www.whatsinthebox.nl. Doesn’t quite scale correctly for me though.
18/03/2009 at 18:50 Physicser says:
The background text in the anti.jpg file look to be from a nature article published in 1991, A low-cost, high-efficiency solar cell based on dye-sensitized colloidal TiO2 films, although they changed the numbers for the simulated results.
18/03/2009 at 19:10 James G says:
Oh dear. I’ve worked in a lab too long. My first thought was ‘Is that a bottle of phenol’ and ‘I really wish they wouldn’t roll it along the floor like that. That stuff can be nasty.’*
* I’m a biologist. What we call nasty, Inorganic chemists drink for breakfast.
18/03/2009 at 19:17 IvanHoeHo says:
Nice try, but honestly the music ruins everything. Let’s hope the finished product will be better.
18/03/2009 at 19:38 Lambo says:
lol dammit Fluffy Panda, I was actually typing in pretty much exactly the 2 sentences you found into a reply here before I decided to refresh this page and you beat me to it :)
It seems you found out more anyway. I didn’t notice the “../anti” link. Nice find.
18/03/2009 at 19:51 Rosti says:
It’s obviously the Recada Cube, then. Also, tres awesome.
18/03/2009 at 19:58 RiptoR says:
@JJ: It could have been Belgium too, we speak Dutch here too (also French and a small part German)
18/03/2009 at 20:07 MaxS says:
@Rosti Actually, it’s more likely to be a reference to Prince Rupert’s Cube (the 1.0606601 reference). It’s about the largest cube that could pass through a hole in a given cube; the number is the ration of their side lengths.
The four sqare shapes at the bottom are a square, a cube, a 4-hypercube (4-dimensional extention of a cube), and probably 5-hypercube as well (can’t make it out with this resolution).
Not sure about other formulas, working on it =)
18/03/2009 at 20:52 amishmonster says:
Cool stuff! I assumed that the guys in Hazmat suits were human security forces from whatever installation it was that this takes place around – clearing out survivors, a la the marines in Half Life.
So I was a little bored and came up with a breakdown of all the letters that were covered by red question marks on the website. Letters in parentheses were only partly covered, and the clusters of letters correspond to different clusters of question marks.
O TION NTS ST(E) WHAT IS IN THE BOX
RSTI(M) CREA TEV RO ECTOR PHY BAUT MSM
S(M) TH IMS EEU(W) SM DITO MS(M) C EC MIT UT
DITIO R EREL U(R) OOST D AR
The only things that immediately leap out are a few greek letters (Ro and “Phy”/Phi), TEV or terra-electron volts, and MIT, where Mr. Freeman got his degree. This is all probably out there already, but can anyone pull any more meaning out of it, if there is any?
18/03/2009 at 20:58 Larington says:
Someone used to play a lot of UT at MIT? I kid, I’m sure theres some clever chap (Person) on the Internet who could probably figure that one out.
18/03/2009 at 20:59 FluffyPanda says:
What’s really bugging me is that I’m sure I recognise the formula:
M(n) = 1/2n(n^3 + 1)
but I can’t remember where from.
Obviously related to a cube somehow (the ^3 makes that pretty obvious) but it’s just evading me exactly what it represents.
As for the top third of the diagram, isn’t that just a representation of the volume of any cube?
I think I might need the help of someone who actually remembers the maths they learnt at school :-(
18/03/2009 at 21:02 CakeAddict says:
Damn impressive even more so when I recognized the place it was shot at, knowing the place IRL makes it more awesome, for me at least.
Probably a fan creation.. I’ve seen a few like this lately although this one is most certainly the best, especially the special effect.. and the fact that there wasn’t any real acting in it probably helped to.
Perhaps this is about a big half life 2 mod since it has a site and all.
18/03/2009 at 21:16 Gap Gen says:
Amishmonster: If you take out the “RO” there’s a CREATE VECTOR in there.
18/03/2009 at 21:22 Ziv says:
dammit i hate it when someone beats you to stuff, well anyway the covered letters are:
o-tions-nts-ste-what is in the box
tim-creat-tev-ro-rector-phy-baut-msm
sm-thi-ims-eeuw-s-dito-ms-ce-c-mit-ut
dit-r-er el-u-oost-d-ar
I don’t think it means anything unless it’s some sort of an extremely difficult anagram.
18/03/2009 at 21:27 Gap Gen says:
Or it could be Dutch, maybe.
And FluffyPanda, yes – the top equation is a volume integral for a cube.
18/03/2009 at 21:30 Taillefer says:
Removing the “ro” for create vector is good, but, it’s a pattern that doesn’t seem applicable to the rest. However, we could also get “reactor”, but I haven’t tried to work a pattern out yet. :P
And the numbers that change under the cube, they change to letters too. But mostly gibberish. Some words are there though “read, saga, fast, boxr” the other four letter combinations seem random like random filler to me, though “asdf, qwer, uuuu”.
18/03/2009 at 21:34 Gap Gen says:
What happens if you separate the small text and the big text?
18/03/2009 at 21:40 Physicser says:
FuzzyPanda: M(n)=1/2n(n^3 +1) is the equation for the “magic constant” of a Magic cube. Still looking for info on the other equation, though.
18/03/2009 at 21:52 Gun Nut says:
Didn’t even include authentic HL2 weaponry.. tsk tsk tsk…
Otherwise great, if not unexpected.
18/03/2009 at 21:54 Physicser says:
So, the final equation has to do with hypercubes. The Z_n equation is apparently the “Hypercube point picking to the center” (from Box integral, with Hypercube point picking. Truthfully, I’m not entirely sure what it means, but the feeling I get from the Wolfram pages is that Z_n is the average distance from a point on the hypercube to its center. Not sure how much this actually helps, but it does also link at least one of the equations to the figures at the bottom of the cube, which contains, as MaxS pointed out, a hypercube.
18/03/2009 at 22:13 apnea says:
Would have been at lot more immersive without the useless music. Why, oh why didn’t listen to their own “audiotrack missing”.
Otherwise, yeah, it’s very well-done. Kudos to the filmmaker for the visual details and slowburn tension. Also, did the protagonist had some health regen going or what ;)
18/03/2009 at 22:40 Kirrus says:
May be of no use whatsoever, but the website is hosted by:
dootall.com
It probably has email accounts configured on it.
Their backup email server is running postfix (primary isn’t accepting my connections).
The webserver has been configured to provide minimal information on error messages, not very helpful at all.
The domain is registered to this:
TSM000049-DOENP
T. Smit
Boterbloem 1
6566HK MILLINGEN AAN DE RIJN
Netherlands
Not sure that that gives that much assistance… hope it’s helpful!
18/03/2009 at 22:50 RabidZombie says:
That’d be Tim Smit, (probably Timacious, who uploaded the video.)
Definitely seems fan made. But I’ve been wrong in the past. *coughdeadrising2teasercough*
18/03/2009 at 22:54 FluffyPanda says:
Physicser, Thanks! I can sleep now :-)
I learned some pretty funky stuff in A-Level maths and it saddens me just how little I can actually remember a mere 10 years after the fact.
Hypercubes have always been a little too abstract for me. I could work the maths in more than 3 dimensions, but visualising a 4+ dimensional cube? Never found it particularly helpful :-) So I don’t really get the description there either.
I’m thinking that there’s probably not much of a message hidden in this site, but it’s got my interest. I think I’ll keep an eye on it.
18/03/2009 at 22:58 army of none says:
Looking up some of the names at the info on the bottom of the page…
Tim Smit (in addition to being a palindrome) dealt with biomes, which of note is the “eden project”.
first result for google for Thibaut was a wallpaper and fabric… possibly related to Portal’s shower curtains?
Niels brings to mind Bohr, noted for his work on atomic structure and quantum theory.
Skipping past Steven Roeters… brings us to Tim Meeuwissen. Meeuwissen.com seems to be some sort of individual family hosting website.
In short, the video is about the schematics for well designed shower curtain usage in a future biome environment that is affordable to families.
Or so I think.
18/03/2009 at 23:19 Ben Abraham says:
Some of the music in there was from the original Jurassic Park too, just out of interest.
18/03/2009 at 23:42 MaxS says:
So, just to summarise our mathematical findings, we have (and make some wild guesses):
-the integral volume formula for a cube (represents the cube itself, in its 3-d version)
-expected distance to the centre of a hypercube from a point on its surface (tells us that there’s something groovy at the center of the cube)
-magic constant formula for a magic cube (not sure about this one, some constant value inside the cube?)
-Prince Rupert’s Cube ratio (might tell us that inside the cube there’s something bigger than the cube itself)
Plus a few hypercubes in various dimensions. Only thing I could think of is that whatever is inside that cube, it spans more dimensions than it looks on the outside.
PS I wonder if anyone ever makes this kind of “ads” for fun, just to see people struggling to find some logic behind it =)
18/03/2009 at 23:48 MaxS says:
One more thing – I just noticed a semi-hidden phrase on the anti.jpg image. If you look closely at around the third line of text below the bottom of the cube, you can barely see “attain ableness” in light-grey letters.
19/03/2009 at 00:04 FhnuZoag says:
Maybe it’s just viral marketting for Samsung mobile phones?
(Though I’m hoping it’s a teaser for a Seven Hour War Half Life spin-off.)
19/03/2009 at 00:15 Mr Toad says:
@ Foucault:
Perhaps the owner of the Vecco Isolation Table lent it on the condition that the actor wear the gloves?
And i’m all for casting Simon Pegg.
19/03/2009 at 00:17 Gap Gen says:
MaxS: To clarify, a “magic” square or cube is one where all the lengths and diagonals add up to the same value (given by the formula, where n is the number of grid squares on a side). For a 3×3 square, the “magic constant” is 15, i.e. the magic square contains numbers where if you add up any column, row or diagonal, it adds to 15.
19/03/2009 at 00:18 Gap Gen says:
EDIT: Oh, wait, I see, you were interpreting the advert, not the magic constant itself. *shame face*
19/03/2009 at 00:24 Mr Toad says:
Also, how about the words on the cube on http://www.whatsinthebox.nl/? When it’s red, i can make out rather clearly “NOW I’M COMPLETE” on the left, “YELLOW” above that, and “NOW” and what looks like “Tenacious D” lower down.
19/03/2009 at 00:57 MacBeth says:
Not going to dive into this one and search for meaning… I’ve done quite a lot of preparatory research into Alternate Reality Games and one unifying thing I’ve noticed is that the depths of meaning people find buried in the details are always deeper than the detail the creators put in there… in other words, we humans are altogether too good at finding patterns where none exist. Still, don’t let that stop you investigating… there probably are ‘real’ details in there among the random stuff that looked vaguely appropriate when the creator needed to make a suitable image…
Of course, if the creator of the movie turns up and insists it’s just a student project… will anyone believe him…?
19/03/2009 at 01:02 Kast says:
Mr Toad: That’s ‘Timacious D’, the creator’s handle and initial.
19/03/2009 at 01:12 LionsPhil says:
“Character audio track missing? Or is it just Gordon freeman?”
This comment wins the thread.
Also, whatever this video is, it is quite awesome. Although the pursuers seem a little apathetic and/or oblivious at points, slightly undermining the tension.
19/03/2009 at 01:17 Gabanski83 says:
The cube is a lie.
19/03/2009 at 01:38 LionsPhil says:
“Anyone else kind of confused as to why the number on the clock after the seconds is counting up in 30s?”
At a rough guess, it’s hours:minutes:seconds;frames. YouTube reencoding has mangled it a bit, but 30FPS is normal for motion-heavy filming AIUI. I’m guessing that it’s just “debug” cruft for the film editor’s benefit (WIP, remember), and that the final thing will only have a HUD in the form of the computer neural interface malarky.
19/03/2009 at 01:55 Rafmunkur says:
If you go to the website for this (it’s mentioned on the youtube page) when you mouse over the box, a bunch of letters are covered with question marks. This won’t make much sense when you read this, but if you check the site, you’ll see what i mean. So, do the ?’s mean anything to anyone?
19/03/2009 at 02:48 Monosurf says:
Yeah, we totally needed some Linkin Park in there. Yeah, those songs suck lawlzorz. We need some disturbed or cliched AMV up in there. Oh, and hawhaw, im being sarcastic.
19/03/2009 at 03:17 Pantsman says:
I just figured it out. It’s Timecube: The Movie!
19/03/2009 at 04:00 Excalibur says:
It struck me as the end of Half-Life 2. The building at the center looked like the Citadel, and the storm/explosion looked like the reactor exploding. If that were the case, it would definitely have to be fan made, and some of the timing/events would be off, so I could definitely be wrong.
19/03/2009 at 04:03 mister slim says:
Maybe it’s part of the promo stuff for Raven’s game Singularity?
19/03/2009 at 05:23 Crispy says:
I’ve looked at the ??? letters and the only patterns I can see are lots of pairs of letters (most lines have 2 of each letter) and also letters from the words Tim Smit appear throughout.
Hope that helps someone, I’m at work so can’t really go to town on it.
19/03/2009 at 07:21 Gus says:
to be perfectly honest, the cube reminds me of doom 3, and the whole ‘now I’m complete’ adds to that
19/03/2009 at 08:25 Pwnzerfaust says:
The bottom of the web-page calls it an “official series.”
Think of that what you will.
19/03/2009 at 09:00 Darkelp says:
Awesome video.
If this is Valve doing viral for Episode 3, perhaps it points to Gordon using a portal to go back in time to fight in the 7 hour war?
That would be awesome.
19/03/2009 at 09:50 Rei Onryou says:
@Ben Abraham: I thought some may have been from the Star Wars prequel trilogy. Either way, definite John Williams in there.
I doubt there’s an official link to Half-Life, due to the choice of copyrighted music, but it could easily be a fan project/mod.
Also, based on Walker’s news ticker notes, it’s not likely to bee the 7 hour war, since that coincided with the Black Mesa incident, didn’t it?
19/03/2009 at 09:52 Joinn says:
I’m sure there’s a grue in that box,
19/03/2009 at 11:01 Simpsoid says:
Jut after the character puts on a face mask (2.00 minutes in) there’s a scrolling display on the HUD that says “Largest single collapse since Black Mesa”.
Perhaps based around HL/2?
19/03/2009 at 13:16 KBKarma says:
Does no-one think the most likely idea isn’t Episode 3, but Portal 2?
19/03/2009 at 17:16 Snuffy (the Evil) says:
Let’s say this is a viral ad for the next Half-Life game, judging by the sound effects, possible use of our favorite hero and references to the Half-Life universe.
Now, let’s say it takes place after the Combine have been driven off Earth, judging by the scrolling news and modernization. This would mean that it would take some time after Episode 2.
Now, in Episode 2 we know that humanity was victorious. The combine superportal was eliminated and most of the forces destroyed.
This could mean that that Episode Two was, in fact, the last of the episodes, and this video part of a marketing campaign for Half-Life 3.
It’s so simple I’m surprised you haven’t figured it out already.
19/03/2009 at 18:12 n3xs says:
@Mr Toad the words on the cube when red look to be Lyrics from Beelzeboss (The Final Showdown) – Tenacious D
19/03/2009 at 18:22 Sol says:
Ok, next question is what are the letters and number that are rapidly scrolling just underneath the box of the http://www.whatsinthebox.nl/ webpage?
19/03/2009 at 18:53 Excalibur says:
A lot of things are being repeated. Read the comments, please.
@ Rei Onryou: I definitely heard some Star Wars prequel music.
19/03/2009 at 19:07 16bit says:
hay guys, i checked the swf file and found the rapidly scrolling text/numbers in the actionscript :V
bullshitArray.push(“0001″);
bullshitArray.push(“WSAD”);
bullshitArray.push(“134G”);
bullshitArray.push(“ASDF”);
bullshitArray.push(“123A”);
bullshitArray.push(“1234″);
bullshitArray.push(“5223″);
bullshitArray.push(“QWER”);
bullshitArray.push(“FASG”);
bullshitArray.push(“4213″);
bullshitArray.push(“UUUU”);
bullshitArray.push(“READ”);
bullshitArray.push(“FAST”);
bullshitArray.push(“JFSD”);
bullshitArray.push(“2123″);
bullshitArray.push(“BOXR”);
bullshitArray.push(“SAGA”);
bullshitArray.push(“JFSD”);
bullshitArray.push(“2123″);
bullshitArray.push(“6335″);
bullshitArray.push(“2347″);
bullshitArray.push(“2678″);
bullshitArray.push(“7856″);
bullshitArray.push(“1111″);
bullshitTxt = “0003″;
19/03/2009 at 19:08 TellarHK says:
I think there’s a lot of overthinking going on here, definitely.
Going on the assumption that this has some relation to the Half-Life mythos (because if it doesn’t, it’s just not as interesting to me – though it’s still cool), there are elements to look at the people seem to have skipped.
Babel Research, primarily. In the Half-Life “universe”, we already have two major research rivals. Black Mesa and Aperture Science. Babel Research appears to have a logo based on the design of the two towers at the center of the apparent portal event, which implies that they’re quite central. And also, the very concept of towers and the name Babel should be self explanatory to even a passing knowledge of religious study.
Given that Black Mesa and some form of “collapse” is mentioned, it seems logical to extrapolate that this is taking place after the events of Half-Life, but prior to the Seven Hour War mentioned in Half-Life 2.
My theory, again based on Half-Life continuity, would be that this takes place based around the very first emergence of the original Combine forces.
So likely what you have here, is an event at yet one more research facility – probably one dealing with communications, hence the first cellular phone’s use of “Babelnet”(?) as a service provider. The emergence of the first Combine forces, who may be in the process of abducting the civilian population. This could either be something directly related to the Seven Hour War, or it could be a distant prelude to same.
Lots to think about.
19/03/2009 at 19:11 16bit says:
Also, found out that they’re calling hovering the mouse over the box in the flash for ‘crossing’, which makes the box and credits beneath go into ‘panic mode’.
19/03/2009 at 20:07 Tomo says:
That was totally awesome, and the chat in this thread makes it even more intriguing ;]
Keep it up!
19/03/2009 at 20:12 Pantsman says:
@TellarHK:
If this is before or during the 7-hour war, then those aren’t Combine soldiers that we see (which would be weird anyway, since they look nothing like combine soldiers, and other HL fan movies I’ve seen had the budget for good-looking Combine costumes). The humanoid troops did not appear until the Combine’s conquest of Earth was complete and they began taking humans and turning them into their slaves and soldiers.
19/03/2009 at 20:17 Pantsman says:
Whoops.
In any case, there are three things which are leading people to conclude that this is Half-Life related. First, the reference to Black Mesa, which could just be an homage given how peripheral it was in the film. Second, the use of Combine voice effects for the hazmat-suit troopers, which could just be because they’re good voice effects for menacing future gunmen. And thirdly, broad visual and thematic similarities to HL2. At the very least we know this was made by someone who’s a fan of Half-Life, but I think it’s too early to conclude that it’s explicitly related to the games, fan-made or not. It certainly could be, but we can’t say for sure yet.
19/03/2009 at 20:41 FTB says:
Just thought I would throw this out. Someone elsewhere posted an image of the text in the background when you mouse over the cube. A quick Google Scholar search found that it comes from this paper:
http://www.luehmann.net/archive/2003/PyridineBasedMolecules.pdf
Published a few years ago by researchers in Sweden and the Netherlands.
19/03/2009 at 21:01 DS says:
Don’t think Valve has any branches in the Netherlands, which is definitely where this video is from; there’s Dutch everywhere and the website has the .nl tag.
Could be a Valve universe (the one that contains both the “Half-Life” and “Portal” games) setting, but way in the future… tech levels are beyond anything that could have been made before the 7-Hours War.
It’s more likely this is a completely different game universe, and they just used Half-Life sound files and music to fill the sound out. I did something similar in a video class: chopped out all audio, added a narration track and took apart the game’s sound archives for sound effects to use.
19/03/2009 at 21:07 Pwnzerfaust says:
Ok, some things that appear in the ticker at the bottom:
-”Largest single collapse since Black Mesa”
-”Millions feared dead”
-”No news from disaster area”
-”Hundreds found in poor condition during kennel raid”
-Various references to stock increases and decreases (specifically The Dow [Dow Jones Industrial Average, for the many non-Americans out there], NASDAQ [National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations, also American], AEX [Euronext, which is Eurpoean], and the S&P [Standard & Poor, also American]).
Messiest parenthetical ever.
While there’s plenty of Half-Life lore in there, it seems pretty clear to me that this has absolutely nothing to do with the Half-Life universe. The stocks, news reports, and pristine city-streets strongly suggest that the world never went through the Combine apocalypse (unless a significant period of time has passed). Furthermore, the suggestion that Black Mesa collapsed within a singularity doesn’t coincide at all with the Half-Life story, and the clearly-human pursuers are completely uncharacteristic of the Combine, especially when it’s so early in the invasion.
19/03/2009 at 21:13 JWV says:
The box appears in the mythbusters movie by the same maker.
http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/37134/2771e162/millingenaar_tim_smit_en_nijmegenaar_steven_roeters.html
from 3:50 – 3:53.
Weird
20/03/2009 at 01:37 Andy`` says:
Apparently it’s not official (say Gamespy: http://uk.gamespy.com/articles/964/964493p1.html ), but it’s definately a viral something: http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=27633&start=30
It’s scarily good quality, however. Most impressive.
20/03/2009 at 12:44 Kreis says:
I live in Nijmegen (where this was shot apparantly) and noticed something you should see. There is a physics magazine called leonardo bode, and on the back of some issue’s there appear to be a hint to what’s in the box!!1!!
http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/4773/dsc00783f.jpg
What does this mean!
20/03/2009 at 13:17 NikRichards says:
What’s in the box?
GLaDOS
20/03/2009 at 13:59 jwm0429 says:
http://www.whatsinthebox.nl/
Anyone else notice that when you cursor over the box to make the ?’s appear, that there is something written on the cube, but only when it is red?
20/03/2009 at 14:52 A-Scale says:
I don’t mean to be the wet blanket, but I rather disliked this. It was only vaguely related to Hl2 via the storm around the tower and some sounds, but everything else was original. The helicopter model was not Hl2 based, the combine were not dressed as they are in HL2, they weren’t using guns that appear in Hl2, the pulse hand held weapon that the viewer uses is not in Hl2, etc.
And the cheese factor of the Computer Brain Interface and showing anger via exaggerated hand motions was too much for me. I consider this a step back from video #1. Lets hope video #3 is better.
20/03/2009 at 21:47 UncleSmoothie says:
A-Scale, you are indeed the wet blanket, but a dumb one.
Perhaps if you read the thread, you’d notice that very little is HL2-based because Valve didn’t make this, some fans did. Perhaps you’d like to pony up some budget for some more authentic-looking Combine uniforms.
20/03/2009 at 23:32 WolverineFan says:
Anyone interested in following this further, there’s a thread over at unfiction:
http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=27633
21/03/2009 at 12:09 Anonym says:
6:49 the sheep from one of his other videos…
21/03/2009 at 15:40 RC-1290'Dreadnought' says:
Yea, looks like its Dutch, the phone book myth video you can find on that account was made for a Dutch Discovery Channel Contest. And there are more things, like the dutch writing and the freezer bag packaging :p.
21/03/2009 at 15:51 RC-1290'Dreadnought' says:
Finished watching, definitely shot in the Netherlands. Well, that’s the second fan made Half Life video this month. Maybe its the start of a trend?
22/03/2009 at 10:25 Occasional Reader says:
Very interesting, although that it was set in the Netherlands reminds me of something that always interested me from HL2. Why is it set in Eastern Europe? (from the cyrillic characters everywhere). What are MIT graduates doing there, especially given that Black Mesa and Aperture Science were in the US? I doubt this video is much more than a well made fan video or a viral for a new movie, but I sure hope I am wrong.
22/03/2009 at 14:44 Actaeon says:
It’s in the Netherlans alright. I even recognized the street.
I also believe this to be nothing more than a graduation project rather than a viral marketing campaign set up by VALVe.
24/03/2009 at 02:12 SAGA says:
It is actually a smartly used application of viral marketing but not in the sense of promoting a game or phone etc. Bare with me. This particular movie is only a showcase of the possibilities of the producers. By implementing some Half Life elements in combination with the mystery box, the Lost music (JJ Abrams did a lecture on a mystery box) and the website they use mystery as the binding element for a viral marketing synergy. Since gamers are very active on the Internet, the word about this short movie is easily spread.
The mystery makes it unclear what the origine and goal of this movie actually is, thus it leaves enough space for speculation which in turn keeps the mystery alive.
Today a couple of things have become clear: It is fact that this is made by Dutch students for a budget of around €150, although production time is not taken into account. Furthermore Tim (Smit) has already been contacted by various hollywood studios, one off them being 20th Century Fox.
So concluding; what they did was show that with passion and autodidactic qualities it is possible to make these kind of quality special effects. By using viral marketing they have been able to showcase this to a broad audience, peaking the interest of the bigname studios and possibly other potential groups of interest such as sponsors.
I love to see passion and entrepreneurial spirit being paid off. Imagine what they can do with a budget.
Further the movie was shot in a city in east of The Netherlands called Nijmegen. My best guess is that it will never become clear what is in the box and finally the interview with Tim Smit of last night (in Dutch):
24/03/2009 at 02:13 SAGA says:
http://dewerelddraaitdoor.vara.nl/Video-detail.628.0.html?&no_cache=1&tx_ttnewstt_news=5738&tx_ttnewsbackPid=631&tx_ttnewscat=148&kalender=1237849140&cHash=7ff714635e
24/03/2009 at 02:17 SAGA says:
or: http://dewerelddraaitdoor.vara.nl/Video-detail.628.0.html?&no_cache=1&tx_ttnewstt_news=5738&tx_ttnewsbackPid=626&tx_ttnewscat=148&kalender=1237849140&cHash=5968957fd9
25/03/2009 at 12:26 MaxS says:
@SAGA
So you’re saying that the countdown in the video information on youtube (which currently stands at “5″) will eventually reveal Tim Smit’s business card for movie studios to collect?
26/03/2009 at 19:55 ReTribution says:
I swear i have seen that bloody hand posing somewhere before, am I the only one? Far Cry 2 or something? idk, maybe it’s used more than I think. I think some things in this video say Valve, some things say no, escape from city 17 looks even more viral valve than this does though, this looks more like a college media project.
28/03/2009 at 14:12 Crispy says:
Well it was basically someone’s demoreel. Nothing more.
Some of the aspects are totally incongruous as well. Why would peaople leave in an emergency without their phones? Even if they had no signal it makes sense to keep it if their network becomes available in another location.
The billboards were often in nonsensical locations and at redundant orientations.
Also, how retarded are the cops? If you haven’t got the budget to have them fire, don’t give them guns or just don’t have them running so closely behind you and not firing. The way they pursued they looked like Police Community Officers or something.
02/04/2009 at 03:23 Monosurf says:
Anyone else notice that as he ventured out of the lab, the whole street is completely devoid of human life? Aside from the hazmat soldiers and the main guy himself, there were cars, bikes, and buses littered throughout the street. All empty, while people’s belongings, like their backpacks/purses are still there. Theories?
02/04/2009 at 03:26 Monosurf says:
Crispy, maybe they’re not cops? Maybe theyre confused as to how theres only one guy remaining, and the other people are gone somewhere. Maybe they want to capture him and interrogate him. Maybe theyre NBC military soldiers?
02/04/2009 at 19:37 Serondal says:
Anyone else notice at the end they say they are going to amputate him? What does that even mean? Are they going to try and save his life on the spot or does it mean amputate him from his life ? lol Or maybe I heard that last part wrong.
I’m impressed with the exploding garden shed.I assumed at the end one of those nasty brain things from EP 2 came through the portal and was shreiking its stunning song.
15/04/2009 at 16:21 AdaIsDead says:
@Serondal The combine use medical anaogys when talking about ‘criminals’ in the hl2 universe – when gordon is escaping city 17 in ep1 they talk about an ‘infection’ and ‘steralizing’.
So the amputation thing is just a euphamasim for execution…
16/04/2009 at 14:38 ferdy182 says:
I am very conviced of a viral. After viewing the official page http://www.whatsinthebox.nl/ which have a flash and a frameset which leads to http://babel-research.eu/witb/. You can see the source code of that page and see some things that resemble a game like LOST did on their website, where you can follow some clues to get something. There are comments in code that leads to an mp3 file (http://babel-research.eu/witb/snd/jables.mp3) and other comments that say:
“some things will only be revealed through mirrors and light”
“Unmask the URL”
There is also some letters over the big O in the flash that looks like letters in hexadecimal code which probably leads to more stuff. I think that’s very elaborated for just a fan film.
16/04/2009 at 14:45 ferdy182 says:
http://babel-research.eu/ which is where the flash movie is hosted looks like another fake website which have logos of Black Mesa, Portal, and…. HANSO Foundation (creators of The Dharma iniciative in LOST).
Looks like a fan copy of the game that LOST made on their site which was revealing some clues after completing research games.
16/04/2009 at 15:01 ferdy182 says:
Since there are references to Half Life 2 (Black Mesa), Portal and LOST (HANSO Foundation, Oceanic airlines)… either is a fan-made-large-scale-well-done big game, or Valve and ABC joined their brands to make a tv show of hl2/portal…
Definetly not fan, or fan at the beggining and someone bought the idea to exploit it.
16/04/2009 at 17:56 Doldo says:
Babel-research.eu hides a mp3 file named discedoMalum, it needs to be reverse-played to hear a voice “Sound, project detainable misfailed” o something like that.
another webpage: babel-research.eu/witb host a flash, overexposing reveals some text down left: +HS PQY – 4FLI
click on each side of this red circle, apears this things: S o E X P P E
click on each piece of paper
Whois results on babel-research.eu domain shows: registrant: “timaciousd@gmail.com”
appears address and other numbers…
I’m stuck on it… viewing dots in colors and hex colors
17/04/2009 at 21:31 Leonardo says:
lots and lots of “hidden” images at the babel-research.edu website i.e: http://babel-research.eu/images/schrodinger.gif
17/04/2009 at 21:38 Serondal says:
lol, a Lost/Half Life 2 cross over would certianly help Lost make more sense. The Island is obviously a portal to Xen or something crazy like that.
17/04/2009 at 21:40 Leonardo says:
@4:16,01 Remote Access Code = 59462
@http://www.babel-research.eu/ enter code at the top
And you get this message “As of 6th of august all remote systemchecks have come to a halt. Please contact local authorities or use remote any remote accesspoint.” meh. :(
25/04/2009 at 19:26 Jimbo says:
who are you, Dennis Nedry?
09/11/2009 at 05:18 Oliver says:
Hey guys my brother just found out something, if you go to the main page: http://www.whatsinthebox.nl/?, and write the word “Babel” on the text field you get the next message:
“Why are you giving me the directions if you are the one who needs them” Pretty weird, hu?….. I really dont have a clue of what it means….. It would be great if you find out something else….greetings
09/11/2009 at 05:34 Oliver says:
Besides something even weirder. If you type: “Babelresearch” you get back the message: “Babel re-search” I guess the page is indicating that you must type only “Babel” as i just indicated.
And here comes the Big part, if you type: “Hanso” you will get: “4 8 15 16 23 42″ THE LOST CURSED NUMBERS!!!! AAAAAAAAAH!!! What does this mean???!!!!!! Lost Numbers!!!!!!
09/11/2009 at 05:37 Oliver says:
One last Thing….. if you type “4 8 15 16 23 42″ you’ll get “System Failure” back….. System failure??? what does this mean??? the Lost Last season??? Half Life?? or What??? WATH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!