ILB, my first Alternate Reality Game (ARG), kept me occupied during boring summer days, forced me to stare at my monitor for hours on end, and heavily impeded on my grades early in the school year. I was introduced to the ARG community, a fantastic group of people. I found things hidden within the website (and then screamed obscenities when I discovered that they already had been found). I madly ran for pay phones, much to the dismay of nearby university students. The past three months have been some of the most interesting of my life, and I bid a fond farewell to this excellently created game.
In the summer of 2004, a unique story was broadcast over payphones ringing across the country.
More than one million people made the I LOVE BEES saga a unique storytelling experience.
By not only consuming the story, but driving it, the audience created a hybrid of conventional drama, online alternate reality game, and expanded street theatre.
The audience brought I LOVE BEES to life. This compilation is dedicated to them.
Thus begins the I Love Bees anthology DVD.
The I Love Bees DVD
Last night, Thursday Nov 4th, I took a 45 minute trip with Boxer to Richfield, OH, one of the rendezvous locations for the DVD's. When we arrived, we realized that the location was a mall. With 20 minutes until 9:00, the designated meeting time, we ran up and down the shopping center, but to no avail. After about 10 minutes of panicky scurrying, I called someone I believed would be able to provide me assistance, Verdafolio (long distance, on a cell phone). He verified that the address we were at was the correct one, and thanks to some quick thinking on Boxer's part, we were able to deduce that the rendezvous was at the Loews theatre adjoining the mall. On the way to the theatre, we met up with several other people sharing a common goal.
We went to the theatre's box office, and said the codeword, "The Operator left a message for me." The woman working at the time made us wait four minutes until 9:00, apparently wanting to adhere to protocol. When the time was nigh, I once again approached the woman and said the pass phrase. She handed me the disc for which I had come so far.
Boxer flaunts his swag
On the disc is the Pious Flea's mantra, "Seek. Behold. Reveal." The disc's art also contains the Xbox Live, 4orty 2two and Halo 2 logos, and a honeycomb pattern in the background.
The DVD itself is not very content-rich. On the main menu, after the opening statement quoted at the beginning of this article, there are three menu options: Story, Creation, and Credits. Here is an overview of the DVD contents:
The DVD's root menu
- Selecting Story will bring you to I Love Bees audio feature. Also included is a special farewell audio track from the Operator, thanking all of the fans for their hard work and dedication.
- The Creation option takes you to a submenu containing Images, Unused Scenes, Audio Progression, and The Widow's Journey.
- Images is a slide show of screencaps from the ILB website, as well as pictures of axon hunters (those devoted few who answered the game's ringing pay phones).
- Unused Scenes is several audio clips that did not make it into the final cut of the story. They include such as Jan's perspective of the base escape in chapter 1 and Kamal's and Jersey's reactions to the chatter net's downtime.
- Audio Progression demonstrates the process of turning an audio clip from raw audio to finished product. This, the section's preface, explains the process:
The audio recording and post-production for I LOVE BEES (ILB) was done entirely at Mix Magic Studios in Hollywood. Never has a business been more aptly named. The following samples, taken from Jan Chapter 7 ("Bigger Dog"
show the Mix Magic alchemy at its best.
First we created the script.
Then we recorded the dialogue. Most VO work is done with actors reading their lines "wild", meaning on their own, with nobody else in the room, leaving pauses between each line for the director to edit together in post-production. On ILB, we did just the opposite. We put as many actors together as we could, encouraged them to make eye-contact and hand-gestures, told them they were not only allowed but encouraged to step on one another's lines, and generally tried to get performances that felt as warm and as natural as possible. The day Jan recorded this part, the feeling in the booth was electric.
After the initial recording, the raw takes were compiled by the sound engineer. That file was passed along to our Emmy-winning sound designer, who created all the f/x for the game. Unlike a movie, where the sound designers usually have at least SOME ambient sound taken from the recording locations, the ILB designer had to create and entire world literally from nothing. The sound of netguns firing, floors dropping, and the squeaks of Jan's restraints, were all added during sound design.
After sound design, the audio went to Mixing. For ILB, we had to create a very strange construct: the Point Of View Microphone. Every sound in every scene had to be located relative to the character being monitored. The mixer ensured that lines said by characters farther from Jan were fainter and had more echo, footsteps approached and receded from her, and characters passed through the scene in stereo.
Presented with the challenge of making a movie without pictures, Mix Magic transformed plain words on a page into scenes playing in the imaginations of the audience. - The Widow's Journey shows the SPDR's story from original concept to near completion, as each of the ARG's creators added to it.
- Credits is exactly what you see here.
The Widow's Journey
So, there you have it, the I Love Bees DVD.
This game was one of the most interesting things to ever happen to me, and I thank 4orty 2wo Entertainment for doing such a great job of putting it together. I laughed with this game, and not to say I cried with it too, but I did get a little misty-eyed at times. The story was absolutely phenomenal, as was the presentation. I am floored by the sheer badass-ness of this ARG, and I hope to see something like it in the future.
What, you ask, does this have to do with Halo? Go listen and find out! I don't want to spoil it for you, but trust me when I tell you that it is definitely worth your time.
