Revisiting an Old Friend

 Not literally, mind you. I have no old friends to speak of. "Marble Hornets" is my friend in the same way my favourite YouTuber is; parasocially! I guess I should introduce the series first because unlike "The Blair Witch Project", this rather self-contained internet horror ARG was not exactly an international phenomenon. 

"Marble Hornets" revolves around a man named Jay, who after years of not having any contact with an old college friend named Alex Kralie, rediscovers old video tapes taking place during the filming of a student project (ironic, really). Throughout the course of watching these tapes, Jay begins to notice something strange changing in Alex's behaviour. He documents the alien tapes on YouTube, thus beginning the series. 

“Entry #1” from YouTube horror ARG “Marble Hornets”

I first watched this series when I was in seventh grade and around twelve years old.  I also happened to be deeply interested in games such as "Five Nights at Freddy's"  and "Bendy and the Ink Machine", so going for classic ARGs was the obvious next step in my progression within the horror genre. I still remember my first time watching this series, how utterly entranced I was and being unable to discern if the story playing out in front of my eyes was real or not. 

This is my first time in recent memory where I’ve begun to rewatch the series. It’s been in my subconscious for months at this point, as a Twitch streamer I occasionally watch recently watched the series on stream. I tuned in to a couple of those streams, but I don’t count them as a true rewatch. This is my first time rewatching the series, alone and with no one else around. Here are my notes on “Introduction” and “Entry #1”: 

My notes on the first two videos listed on the “Marble Hornets” YouTube Channel, I actually wrote on the whole page this time yippee

If anything, watching “Introduction” and rewatching “Entry #1” has taught me what not to do when it comes to my opening. I need to establish story and tone, instead of relying on only one or the other to do the heavy lifting. 

I should say that characters is something else “Marble Hornets” strives at, as I still remember the chill personality of Brian and realist traits of Tim years later. It will be difficult, however, to establish characters and an intense tone within two minutes, but not exactly possible. I’ll just have to be careful with how I want to convey my story.