# DLUTI 258 - Rasterflesh: An Alex Hera Joint (AKA an interview)

An episode of [Don't Look Under the Internet](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1553716120), 12 Oct 2026, 1 h 23 min.

Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1694806/episodes/19946108-dluti-258-rasterflesh-an-alex-hera-joint-aka-an-interview.mp3

Alex Hera rejoins the pod this week to share what they've been up to! (It's a lot!) Divine Dialogue Delve into the richness and soul-driven threads that exist within wonderful stories.... Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify Support the show Starting your own podcast? Use this link to receive a $20 Amazon gift card when you sign up for a paid account with Buzzsprout! https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=1671664 Linktree Buy us a beer! Join us in Discord! DLUTI.com Undefined Graphics (Photography & Graphic Design) Ghoulish Mortals Inquiries: dlutipod@gmail.com

## Chapters

- 0:00 A Cappella Intro And Guest Return
- 2:20 Alex’s New Projects Since Slenderverse
- 3:55 Why Come Back To ARGs
- 6:35 R Gathering And The First Raster Flesh
- 10:05 From Theater Event To Web ARG
- 10:13 \[Ad\] Divine Dialogue
- 11:04 (Cont.) From Theater Event To Web ARG
- 13:10 Designing A Tight Two Hour ARG
- 20:20 Launch Strategy And Player Reactions
- 24:50 Building The Site With HTML And Twine
- 27:50 ARG Versus Documentary Directing Challenges
- 35:10 Festivals, Awards, And Next Year’s Plans
- 41:20 Why Found Footage Feels Real
- 52:55 Analog Horror Boom And Cultural Anxiety
- 59:00 Why Younger Fans Crave Old Media
- 1:04:45 Defining Unfiction, ARGs, And Analog Horror
- 1:13:40 Plugs, Hometown Horrors, And Tattoo Bet

## Transcript

[0:33] SPEAKER_05: All right.
[0:34] SPEAKER_05: I need I need a I need this to be a cappella.
[0:37] SPEAKER_05: So it's gonna start with me and then it's gonna go Matt and then it's gonna go Alex and then Doug and then Jason.
[0:44] SPEAKER_05: Ready?
[0:44] SPEAKER_05: Go.
[0:45] SPEAKER_05: Hello.
[0:47] SPEAKER_05: Oh, you guys suck.
[0:48] SPEAKER_05: Okay.
[0:51] SPEAKER_07: I'm so glad you had it start with Matt.
[0:53] SPEAKER_07: Same.
[0:54] SPEAKER_05: Hello, everyone.
[0:55] SPEAKER_05: Welcome to Don't Look Under the Internet, a podcast full of party poopers like Matthew there.
[1:01] SPEAKER_04: It's been worse.
[1:05] SPEAKER_04: That's Jason.
[1:06] SPEAKER_04: Hello, as always.
[1:09] SPEAKER_04: That's Doug.
[1:10] SPEAKER_04: And hello.
[1:12] SPEAKER_05: And uh today we got a super special guest for everyone.
[1:17] SPEAKER_05: Uh you've seen a bunch of their stuff on YouTube and on our show once before.
[1:23] SPEAKER_05: We got Alex Hera back on.
[1:24] SPEAKER_05: Hey Alex.
[1:25] SPEAKER_05: Hello, hello.
[1:26] SPEAKER_05: Thanks for having me.
[1:28] SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it's been it's fun.
[1:31] SPEAKER_05: It's been a hot minute.
[1:32] SPEAKER_01: Uh two years.
[1:33] SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it's it's it's been a minute.
[1:35] SPEAKER_05: Uh last time Alex was on, uh, it's because Alex created a documentary on the Slenderverse and all things having to do with Slender Man.
[1:45] SPEAKER_05: We're not gonna talk about it today, though.
[1:46] SPEAKER_05: Don't worry.
[1:47] SPEAKER_05: We've we did that plenty uh last time.
[1:50] SPEAKER_05: But uh yeah, uh that watching that and seeing a bunch of the other stuff that you've been creating, it's uh it's it's nice seeing not like uh a change, but it's nice seeing uh like a lot of new like creativity coming out of the pipeline here.
[2:10] SPEAKER_05: Um you're not just the Slender Man person.
[2:14] SPEAKER_01: I would I would really hope not.
[2:18] SPEAKER_05: I guess uh for those at home that might not be aware, uh since uh you were on last time and we talked about the Slenderverse, uh, what you been up to?
[2:27] SPEAKER_01: I have been working on a lot of different things.
[2:31] SPEAKER_01: Uh I made a found footage coming of age drama thriller feature film.
[2:36] SPEAKER_01: Uh I made an episode of a television show, of an analog horror television show called Final Transmissions.
[2:42] SPEAKER_01: My episode was called Bethel Hill.
[2:44] SPEAKER_01: Uh, I also released a new alternate reality game called Raster Flesh just a couple of days ago.
[2:50] SPEAKER_01: And uh I've got a couple other things uh in the pipeline.
[2:53] SPEAKER_01: Oh, I also just released a short story that got published in a book called Your Body is a Fever Dream.
[2:58] SPEAKER_01: So I've been I've been working away.
[3:01] SPEAKER_01: That's cool.
[3:02] unknown: Damn.
[3:03] SPEAKER_06: I feel bad about myself now.
[3:06] SPEAKER_02: What what am I the last two years?
[3:09] SPEAKER_02: None of that.
[3:10] SPEAKER_02: Um, no, certainly not.
[3:14] SPEAKER_02: So so you mentioned the the ARG uh raster flesh.
[3:17] SPEAKER_02: I I think that's primarily what you're here to talk about today.
[3:22] SPEAKER_01: Indeed.
[3:22] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[3:23] SPEAKER_02: So is this your first proper ARG?
[3:26] SPEAKER_02: Like, have you done a full beginning-to-end alternate reality game before?
[3:32] SPEAKER_01: I have, yeah.
[3:34] SPEAKER_01: My uh very first major creative project was called uh Walker Creek, which ran from 2020 to 2021.
[3:42] SPEAKER_01: And so it was like a 14-month alternate reality game YouTube series.
[3:46] SPEAKER_01: There were websites, there were puzzles, there were social media, there was like live phone calls, there was a whole bunch of stuff.
[3:52] SPEAKER_01: And uh I really loved that experience.
[3:55] SPEAKER_01: You know, my intro to film was alternate reality games, so uh it was one of the first things I gravitated towards when I was like, well, I'm gonna do a big film project.
[4:04] SPEAKER_01: Uh so I did a big ARG.
[4:06] SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, from there, then I just got kind of increasingly into the space with the documentary work I was doing, you know, doing tons of research into ARGs and how they work and what the communities are like.
[4:18] SPEAKER_01: Uh in 2024 and 2025, uh I was working on another ARG that ended up kind of not happening.
[4:26] SPEAKER_01: Uh, but yeah, I've done plenty of other uh kind of ARG work in the past.
[4:31] SPEAKER_06: Cool, cool.
[4:32] SPEAKER_06: A creative master.
[4:33] SPEAKER_06: That's fucking awesome.
[4:34] SPEAKER_02: So what pulled you back in?
[4:35] SPEAKER_02: What you've been doing all these film projects and short stories and stuff.
[4:39] SPEAKER_02: What was the thing that was like, I gotta go back, I gotta, I gotta get back to my roots.
[4:44] SPEAKER_05: I need flesh.
[4:45] SPEAKER_05: I need a raster amount of it or something like that.
[4:49] SPEAKER_05: Raster amount of flesh.
[4:50] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[4:51] SPEAKER_01: Uh well, it's I've always wanted to do more ARGs.
[4:56] SPEAKER_01: Uh after Walker Creek, I was planning to do another alternate reality game, and then I just got kind of sidetracked by the documentary work.
[5:03] SPEAKER_01: After the Slenderverse doc, I wanted to do another ARG, and I was working on it with uh some colleagues for a while.
[5:09] SPEAKER_01: And then as I said, it ended up kind of not happening.
[5:12] SPEAKER_01: Uh, but I've always wanted to be doing more ARG work.
[5:15] SPEAKER_01: Like I really I love doing film, uh, especially, you know, kind of in world camera found footage.
[5:20] SPEAKER_01: I find it really interesting to work with that sort of immersive cinematic format.
[5:25] SPEAKER_01: Um, but ARGs and immersive storytelling is where my heart truly lies, I feel.
[5:30] SPEAKER_01: Uh, so I've been trying to get back to doing uh to creating ARGs for quite some time.
[5:35] SPEAKER_01: And uh it just kind of hasn't happened with other projects.
[5:38] SPEAKER_01: You know, doing a feature film and an episode of a TV show and you know, all the other projects I've been doing takes a lot of time.
[5:46] SPEAKER_01: Uh wild.
[5:49] SPEAKER_01: So I haven't really been able to do it.
[5:51] SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then I got the opportunity, I guess like, so I did a talk at a uh academic conference called Neriscope last year, which is all about sort of interactive storytelling.
[6:04] SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I was really energized by that conference to be like, well, I really want to get back to doing interactive work.
[6:12] SPEAKER_01: Um, and I also ended up joining an organization called the World Experience Organization, which is all about kind of immersive uh experiences.
[6:21] SPEAKER_01: And so being in these spaces, I found myself really sort of having my love for that sort of storytelling rekindled, uh, and my interest in finding ways to like push the boundaries with what kind of mediums we're telling stories in and what kind of interactivity we're having with audiences, and you know, what kind of stories you can tell through that.
[6:39] SPEAKER_01: And then I was uh given the opportunity to create a in-person alternate reality game conference in San Francisco uh late last year, which ended up being called the R Gathering.
[6:51] SPEAKER_01: Um, and it was an event, it was a one-day event where we had screenings of alternate reality game videos, we had a panel QA with uh Kay, the creator of Pirate Mary Mary, and Dragonfly, the creator of Anatomy 1963.
[7:05] SPEAKER_01: And for that conference, I wanted to create an in-person, like immersive experience alternate reality game.
[7:13] SPEAKER_01: And so that's where Raster Flush started.
[7:15] SPEAKER_01: Uh, it started from this point of well, I'm doing this ARG, it's in-person ARG event.
[7:21] SPEAKER_01: And you know, the sort of arc of it is we are bringing people in, we are showing them alternate reality games, we are talking about alternate reality games, and then the third step of that is now you are going to play an alternate reality game at the event.
[7:34] SPEAKER_01: And so there were a couple of different ideas that I was throwing around.
[7:37] SPEAKER_01: One of them was like a ghost that's like haunting the space that you have to deal with.
[7:42] SPEAKER_01: One of them was actually, I think that was the only other alternative I really seriously considered.
[7:47] SPEAKER_01: Uh, but I ended up going with this uh, this like creature that lives inside technology as the story for that.
[7:54] SPEAKER_01: Uh, because it took place, uh, the event was uh part of the Unnamed Footage Festival, which is a found footage festival in San Francisco.
[8:01] SPEAKER_01: And so we were doing the event in a movie theater, in this old historic movie theater.
[8:06] SPEAKER_01: And so one of the things we had to utilize, or that we had the option to utilize, was the cinema screen.
[8:12] SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so I was like, well, what would be cool is if you had a creature inside the screen that was talking to the audience.
[8:20] SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then it gets it gets like loose in the theater, and so they have to go stop it.
[8:25] SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so what we ended up doing was uh that we I made these videos for the Raster Flesh ARG, and the claim was basically this is a lost ARG from 2008 that like nobody has seen, and we're gonna include it alongside the rest of the ARG videos in this ARG conference.
[8:43] SPEAKER_01: Uh and then come the end of the event, the creature like shows up on screen again, uh, and like it's been summoned by the fact that we ended up playing the videos.
[8:52] SPEAKER_01: Uh, it turns out, you know, actually it was never an alternate reality game.
[8:55] SPEAKER_01: These videos were real footage of the raster flesh.
[8:58] SPEAKER_05: Yeah, there's uh your videos on YouTube, even some of the comments are like, I was there when this was shown, it was incredible.
[9:04] SPEAKER_05: Like it's it's cool seeing those comments even on the uh the video to this day.
[9:08] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, so that was that was where it began.
[9:11] SPEAKER_01: And uh this the creature shows back up on screen, it starts talking to the audience.
[9:16] SPEAKER_01: Uh, I was like the host of the event, so I led the audience through this like occult ritual to try to like expel it.
[9:23] SPEAKER_01: We were like chanting and like doing all this stuff, and then it gets like loose in the theater, and I had a team of like volunteers out in the lobby that were redecorating the entire lobby with like the tentacles you see in the video and like setting up puzzles and stuff for people to do.
[9:39] SPEAKER_01: Um, and so yeah, that was that's like iteration one of Raster Flesh.
[9:43] SPEAKER_01: It was very much this like trying to you know create this in-person experience for people uh that sort of brings them through this, like this this ARG that comes to life.
[9:54] SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then from there it was just a matter of like, well, I have this sort of base concept with like a couple of pieces of footage and stuff.
[10:00] SPEAKER_01: How do I then develop that into a full-blown ARG for the web?
[10:05] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so how close is what you showed there to the final product that's out there now, like for the broader internet?
[10:53] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so the uh the main like found footage videos are almost exactly the same.
[10:57] SPEAKER_01: There have been like some tweaks, but for the most part, those are exactly what were shown at the R gathering.
[11:02] SPEAKER_01: Um, and some of the like story content that you get to as you go through the ARG, like a lot of the stuff on the website, um, and some of the other like interactive elements are either like straight from that version or adapted from that version.
[11:18] SPEAKER_01: Um, but then I ended up just doing a lot more development on it.
[11:21] SPEAKER_01: Like I did a ton more writing for like uh, you know, particularly the like journal entries that you get to later in the game.
[11:28] SPEAKER_01: Um, all of the like almost all of the like actual interactions with Raster Flesh.
[11:34] SPEAKER_01: The footage was filmed at the same time, but the actual videos that you you kind of go through those interactions uh were built from the ground up for the web version.
[11:42] SPEAKER_01: The ending is brand new.
[11:44] SPEAKER_01: So there was a lot of stuff that ended up kind of getting developed exclusively for the web version.
[11:48] SPEAKER_01: The in-person one was it was comparatively bare bones, it was very kind of functional uh for what it needed to be for that in-person audience.
[11:56] SPEAKER_01: So did you have someone like a volunteer or someone dress up as like the entity and kind of pull like a fan of the opera, just kind of hiding around corners and shit, like no, uh, I did consider having an in-person actor, and I think when we do it again next year, that's something that I'm considering much more strongly.
[12:14] SPEAKER_01: Uh, but for this one, it was very much this idea that like it is inside the screen.
[12:20] SPEAKER_06: Yeah, it's almost like trapped by like this veil of technology.
[12:25] SPEAKER_06: Exactly.
[12:30] SPEAKER_06: You can't interact with it.
[12:32] SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
[12:33] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there the screen is the barrier that's sort of separating you and it, and it's it's it's just reaching out at you with like its tentacles and whatever else it's doing.
[12:41] SPEAKER_01: It's just it's trying to get out, but it doesn't quite get there.
[12:45] SPEAKER_02: Very cool.
[12:46] SPEAKER_02: So you mentioned doing this uh again next year.
[12:48] SPEAKER_02: Is what is on the internet now?
[12:51] SPEAKER_02: Is that do you consider that a completed product or is this an ongoing thing and what is next year then?
[12:59] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so uh Rapster Flesh as it is is something I consider totally finished as a project.
[13:05] SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm really happy with sort of the way it came out after developing it further.
[13:10] SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, it's designed.
[13:12] SPEAKER_01: I keep calling it a one-shot ARG, where it was very much designed with the intention of being a very sort of tight focused, self-contained experience where you can just as a single player go through it in like two hours, maybe three, and experience the entirety of the narrative.
[13:30] SPEAKER_01: Uh, because I think that's a really interesting structure for ARGs and something that most ARGs don't end up doing.
[13:36] SPEAKER_01: Uh, they end up being these kind of like broad, sprawling projects that go on over like weeks or months or years.
[13:43] SPEAKER_05: That's my main headache point with a lot of ARGs.
[13:48] SPEAKER_05: I was just surprised.
[13:52] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, like I think there's something like I love all those ARGs.
[13:56] SPEAKER_01: Like, I love the way that ARGs are structured, but I also think there's something really compelling about this idea of something that is just designed to be very digestible, very accessible.
[14:06] SPEAKER_01: Like you can just anyone can pick it up and play it and enjoy the experience.
[14:11] SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, as you go through Raster Flash, you'll also notice like there are only a handful of puzzles, and the puzzles that are there are very narrative-centric.
[14:20] SPEAKER_01: They're not like a lot of really convoluted codes and ciphers and all this other stuff that a lot of ARGs do, because I feel like you know, that style of gameplay is appealing to a certain type of person.
[14:31] SPEAKER_01: But, you know, I like the idea of having an ARG that is accessible to a very broad audience who just wants to experience a cool immersive narrative.
[14:40] SPEAKER_07: That is my main, like I said, my go ahead, Doug.
[14:42] SPEAKER_07: Sorry.
[14:43] SPEAKER_07: I was gonna say, I think that makes sense for like the the people, like the younger generation of people to come into ARGs right now.
[14:50] SPEAKER_07: Cause like I know people's attention spans lately are just shot.
[14:54] SPEAKER_07: Like we're all in the short form media, we got the TikTok and the Instagram reels, everybody like you know, all these youngins, they just want quick and easy to go.
[15:03] SPEAKER_07: I think I think it's it it's genius actually to have a short form ARG like this.
[15:09] SPEAKER_07: Uh and because you can you can do a million of them if you wanted to, you could keep pumping them out.
[15:14] SPEAKER_01: Like I think they're a lot more doable than a long form one, I will say.
[15:20] SPEAKER_02: If I ever have kids, I'm making them do spectograms at like five.
[15:25] SPEAKER_05: That's exactly what I was gonna say.
[15:26] SPEAKER_05: Like, that's my main issue with ARGs is like I'll go and like what we'll be researching one, or like I'll find something.
[15:32] SPEAKER_05: I'm like, oh, this might this seem interesting.
[15:34] SPEAKER_05: And then there'll be like this set of like videos on YouTube or something, you watch it, and someone's like, Oh, did anyone crack the did anyone find the puzzle or the password to the link that was in here?
[15:44] SPEAKER_05: I'm like, what are you talking about?
[15:45] SPEAKER_05: And they're like, Oh, there's a spectrogram, and that spectrogram you gotta decode, and then it's a hexawatzle code, and you gotta decipher that to get a GitHub, yeah, you gotta get that to get a GitHub uh link.
[15:55] SPEAKER_05: And that GitHub link has a password you gotta put in there.
[15:58] SPEAKER_05: I'm like, Where are you how are you doing this, dude?
[16:00] SPEAKER_02: Okay, I'm doing listen.
[16:02] SPEAKER_02: I find that equally frustrating in ways, but also I have been part of some of those experiences, and the community that develops as a result of those just awful puzzles is is something that's magical that I think you have to experience.
[16:18] SPEAKER_06: It's solidarity through suffering, right?
[16:20] SPEAKER_06: It's similar.
[16:21] SPEAKER_05: I feel like it's I feel like it's a similar community like Resident Evil, where like, hey, how stupid is it to where you have to put this this unicorn diamond into this statue to get this key that comes out?
[16:32] SPEAKER_05: That's kind of an ARG.
[16:33] SPEAKER_05: That's kind of that what I'm talking about.
[16:35] SPEAKER_05: Stupid, but like you said, there's a community that you get from it being kind of ridiculous and over the top.
[16:40] SPEAKER_05: But like, I'm someone who's like there for like I love the stories that are behind a lot of ARGs, but I don't really care for the amount of like uh like I'm a person who does not understand like uh a hexadecimal code.
[16:55] SPEAKER_05: Not no, not that not the cliff notes necessarily, but like I'm a person who just I I don't understand how like a sp how to like run a spectrogram or like I don't understand how to how people get from some of those like very, very intense steps.
[17:08] SPEAKER_05: Um like like I I feel sometimes it's geared more towards the person who is very very computer literate.
[17:15] SPEAKER_05: And you guys know this from talking to me.
[17:18] SPEAKER_05: I am not a computer literate person.
[17:20] SPEAKER_05: So if if you I feel like uh something like rasterflesh is an is a an ARG that like anyone can get into and you have all the pieces there.
[17:30] SPEAKER_05: Like a lot of the, I'm not spoiling anything, but a lot of the puzzles are uh solvable if you're just like if you're just paying attention to the story, which is what I like.
[17:39] SPEAKER_05: Like if I'm getting enveloped in the story and I come across a puzzle, I'm like, that has to do with this thing that I just found out about, you know, yesterday.
[17:46] SPEAKER_05: That's um that's amazing.
[17:47] SPEAKER_05: But if the puzzle's just, hey, you you gotta go find this geo fucking location, you know what I mean?
[17:55] SPEAKER_05: That's not that's intriguing to me.
[17:57] SPEAKER_05: I like it when it's based around the story, like what Rasterflash is going on Raster Flash is going on.
[18:01] SPEAKER_01: I don't think no, I absolutely try to like make it make sense in the narrative.
[18:05] SPEAKER_01: Like I think that's important because like when I think about alternate reality games, like there's so much potential for the format for what kind of stories we can tell and and what kind of interactivity you can do with audiences across websites and socials and however else you're doing it.
[18:20] SPEAKER_01: And I feel like so many ARGs just kind of resort to this very basic, like, we're gonna do ciphers, because everyone's doing ciphers.
[18:27] SPEAKER_01: And does it make sense for the story?
[18:29] SPEAKER_01: No, but this is what ARGs are, and it's like you know, there's just there's so much being left on the table for the kinds of stories and the kinds of games that you can create in these formats.
[18:39] SPEAKER_07: I agree.
[18:39] SPEAKER_07: Yeah, that that's like some of the even some of the clues, like uh when it was asking you like to put in a password somewhere where like you could almost see the like personalities of the people running the website coming out in just the questions, too.
[18:53] SPEAKER_07: I thought it was neat.
[18:54] SPEAKER_07: Um yeah.
[18:56] SPEAKER_05: Yeah, there's some of them, again, not to spoil too much, but one of them is like asking for a specific person's birthday.
[19:01] SPEAKER_05: And it's like that's not like the birthday, for example, it's not really like it's something that you can skip over very easy.
[19:07] SPEAKER_05: But if you find the clue that is in the website, it's right there.
[19:10] SPEAKER_05: You know, it's plain as day.
[19:11] SPEAKER_05: It tells you what the answer is if you're paying attention to the site.
[19:14] SPEAKER_05: You didn't have to watch a video and put it into some filter to find a QR code, then well, that in turn also like it forces you to pay attention to like the details of the story.
[19:25] SPEAKER_06: And honestly, at least in my opinion, I don't know if you guys share this, but it the details of a story are kind of what make that story great because you can easily pick apart a good story that has shit details.
[19:38] SPEAKER_06: If you got some good details in there that can outline and create this world and immerse you into this, this whatever's going on, you it's much easier to get everybody involved, like in actually trying to figure it out instead of just trolls that are just doing it because they love ciphers or like whatever.
[19:56] SPEAKER_07: So, Alex, did you know how we're all trying to like explain stuff without like giving away any information?
[20:01] SPEAKER_07: Uh so hard.
[20:04] SPEAKER_02: Um so so when you decided to create the web version, did you how how did you release it?
[20:11] SPEAKER_02: And did you find that there was immediately a community of people that was like trying to figure it out or and following along with the story, or how did that all play out?
[20:20] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so the way I ended up rolling it out was uh a little odd.
[20:24] SPEAKER_01: So the way it worked was there were like two like film screening events before the like public launch where I was screening the Raster Flesh like videos again.
[20:34] SPEAKER_01: Uh, there was one in New Jersey, and then there was one that was like a virtual online festival.
[20:39] SPEAKER_01: Uh, and through both of those, they got like kind of basically early access to the game.
[20:43] SPEAKER_01: And even from those like two preview events, I was already getting people to message me, being like, I really love the ARG, or like I'm playing through it right now.
[20:51] SPEAKER_01: I finished it, like, here's what I thought.
[20:54] SPEAKER_01: Uh, so that was very sort of nice to see before even the public launch happened.
[20:58] SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then yeah, the public launch came, and I've gotten plenty of messages from people uh who have been really nice about the project, who have said how much they enjoyed it.
[21:07] SPEAKER_01: Um, I think most people have really enjoyed the videos the most, just because it's like that's on my YouTube channel, and you can just watch them uh and not have to go solve anything.
[21:17] SPEAKER_01: Uh, but I've seen plenty of people who have actually gone and played the game and experienced the full depth of the story, uh, which I really appreciate.
[21:26] SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, yeah, I'm glad people are playing it and enjoying it.
[21:30] SPEAKER_01: Uh, and in particular, like I've gotten some really nice comments about the fact that it is like a very sort of tight, self-contained experience.
[21:37] SPEAKER_01: Like I sort of envisioned it as being, you know, the version at the R Gathering was like a big sort of in-person, almost like immersive theater slash puzzle hunt.
[21:47] SPEAKER_01: Uh, whereas the version that's that's the web version, I almost view it as like an interactive feature film.
[21:53] SPEAKER_01: Like it a lot of it is text-based, so it's not actually like a movie.
[21:57] SPEAKER_01: Uh, but I view it as like that kind of that that length of narrative just unfolded in a way that is multimedia, that is like across platforms, that is interactive.
[22:07] SPEAKER_01: Uh, and yeah, people have people have been pretty into it.
[22:11] SPEAKER_07: Have you was there a lot of beta testing that had to go into this?
[22:14] SPEAKER_07: Like, or were you just playing your own game a bunch of times to make sure that like it all worked right?
[22:20] SPEAKER_01: Like, I have played Raster Flesh so many times.
[22:26] SPEAKER_01: I never I never want to play it again.
[22:30] SPEAKER_01: Rasterflash speedrun when we need it on the you get this yeah, you have no idea how many times I've tried to like speedrun this.
[22:38] SPEAKER_01: Thing.
[22:39] SPEAKER_01: It's because I just had to make sure all the interactivity worked.
[22:42] SPEAKER_01: So I'm like typing in the answers as fast as I can.
[22:45] SPEAKER_01: I'm like clicking buttons before like everything is fully loaded.
[22:48] SPEAKER_01: I'm just like just trying to make it through.
[22:50] SPEAKER_01: Like I've played it probably like at least a hundred times.
[22:53] SPEAKER_01: But it's just this is how projects go.
[22:55] SPEAKER_01: Like, I think I've watched my feature like a hundred times.
[22:58] SPEAKER_01: I've watched Bethel Hill a hundred times.
[23:00] SPEAKER_01: It's just I'm sick of all of them.
[23:02] SPEAKER_01: Like when I watch it, it's just it's purely functional.
[23:05] SPEAKER_01: Like there's no enjoyment, there's no appreciation.
[23:08] SPEAKER_01: It's just like the literal mechanisms of like how everything fits together.
[23:12] SPEAKER_01: Does it work?
[23:13] SPEAKER_06: Functionality.
[23:14] SPEAKER_06: Well, that's how you know you've done something great, is you no longer like it.
[23:18] SPEAKER_06: Yeah, no, absolutely.
[23:20] SPEAKER_01: I will on beta testing.
[23:21] SPEAKER_01: We did have I did have some beta testers.
[23:23] SPEAKER_01: I think I had like four people play it through.
[23:25] SPEAKER_05: So nice.
[23:26] SPEAKER_05: Weird, weird question.
[23:28] SPEAKER_05: But at some point within the last two days, I know uh um when Matt first did his uh little ARG thing to us, this happened to me.
[23:38] SPEAKER_05: There's a point in Matt's where uh we had to like put in a password and none of us were able to solve the password.
[23:45] SPEAKER_05: And he messaged me, like he was just like, here's the password, don't tell anyone because he could see how many times we were fucking it up.
[23:51] SPEAKER_05: Two days ago, did you just see like a string of fuck-ups by someone?
[23:55] SPEAKER_05: Because that was probably me.
[23:57] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, did you do the website design and everything yourself?
[24:00] SPEAKER_02: Are you looking at the at the console in the back end or anything?
[24:03] SPEAKER_01: I so I don't really have much of a window into like how people are interacting with the site.
[24:08] SPEAKER_01: I can see like the number of hints on each web page, but I cannot see like the number of password attempts or or what you're typing in the site.
[24:17] SPEAKER_01: I don't I don't have any visibility into that.
[24:19] SPEAKER_06: Someone like zeroed in on your IP address specifically, Mike.
[24:24] SPEAKER_05: Someone was watching someone was watching their monitor and saw some idiot put in the wrong password like 15 times and thought, boy howdy, this person's in for a rough.
[24:36] SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
[24:37] SPEAKER_02: So did you do the website design and everything yourself?
[24:40] SPEAKER_01: I did, yeah.
[24:42] SPEAKER_01: All uh just did it in HTML and twine.
[24:45] SPEAKER_01: So like the sort of initial website you get to is all coded in just HTML.
[24:51] SPEAKER_01: Um, very like old school, like you would like a website from the 2000s, uh, because that was the like aesthetic I was going for.
[24:59] SPEAKER_01: And then uh most everything else is built in Twine, which is a like game engine mainly designed for like choose your own adventure games, like text adventures.
[25:09] SPEAKER_01: Um, but if you decide to fuck around with it, you can do other things with it, uh, like have passwords and interactive like video segments and stuff, uh, which is what I did with it.
[25:21] SPEAKER_01: Um, my first time using it, I did like a choose your own adventure game last year as part of an event called Slender for Gender.
[25:28] SPEAKER_01: And then when I was setting out to do this, I was like, well, I want you to have a way to like, you know, not just do the passwords, like I had to figure out a way to do that, but I also was like, well, I want you to have a way to interact with this like creature somehow.
[25:39] SPEAKER_01: Uh and so I was like, well, what if I just use some of the like weirder tools from that thing and just use it for this?
[25:46] SPEAKER_01: And it worked.
[25:48] SPEAKER_01: There we go.
[25:48] SPEAKER_02: Very cool.
[25:49] SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
[25:50] SPEAKER_02: Very cool.
[25:50] SPEAKER_02: Okay, so the the elephant in the room is uh good friend of the podcast, admin in our Discord, Jason Death is very clearly involved in the project.
[26:02] SPEAKER_02: How did they get involved?
[26:04] SPEAKER_02: Uh what input did they have on the project?
[26:07] SPEAKER_02: What did they have to pay you?
[26:11] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, um, I've worked with Jason before on the uh Slenderverse docs, and then I don't remember how exactly it happened.
[26:21] SPEAKER_01: It was just it was around the time that I was starting to outline Raster Flesh, and I knew I would need I tried to do it with as minimal like number of actors and like big resources as possible, which is why like the videos are just they're in a bedroom.
[26:35] SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's this like very contained environment.
[26:38] SPEAKER_01: And the videos of Rasterflesh are just shot outside uh at this like really weird, beautiful location I found up in uh Point Reyes in California.
[26:48] SPEAKER_01: Um, there was like this Art Deco radio station with like all of these like electricity and like radio pylons and stuff, which is like the weird environment you always see Raster Flesh in.
[26:59] SPEAKER_01: Um, so I was trying to do it with like very kind of minimal resources, just using stuff I had access to, people I knew.
[27:05] SPEAKER_01: Um, and I was in another Discord server with Jason uh that was just kind of like a co-working Discord server.
[27:12] SPEAKER_01: Um, and it was really just like me, Jason, and like one other person that were using it.
[27:16] SPEAKER_01: And so we were just kind of like at that time, we just happened to be around each other.
[27:20] SPEAKER_01: And I was like, hey, Jason, do you still do voice acting?
[27:23] SPEAKER_01: Do you want to just do this?
[27:23] SPEAKER_01: You want to be a star?
[27:25] SPEAKER_01: Do you want to do this thing?
[27:26] SPEAKER_01: Uh and Jason was like, Yeah.
[27:28] SPEAKER_01: So we uh we did this uh project.
[27:30] SPEAKER_01: I like directed uh them on like the for like the voice acting segments, and uh that was yeah, that was that was the situation.
[27:39] SPEAKER_05: Um speaking of speaking of directing a little bit, you do a lot of documentary work too.
[27:44] SPEAKER_05: Um what would you say is more difficult on your end?
[27:48] SPEAKER_05: Would it be uh the act of like directing and producing a documentary or something along the lines of like creating an ARG and directing uh uh people on a project like that?
[28:00] SPEAKER_01: Uh on the directing level, I don't know.
[28:03] SPEAKER_01: I would say it's probably about equal because like the way that I approach documentaries is like I have so much sort of like cinematic film segments anyway.
[28:12] SPEAKER_01: So it's like it there's the interviewing portion of it, sure, but like the production of that is just as big as any other film project for me.
[28:20] SPEAKER_01: Uh and I don't really view them any differently.
[28:22] SPEAKER_01: The workflow is different, the like the the way you have to move through the project is different, but the actual amount of work I would say is probably about the same the amount of effort.
[28:32] SPEAKER_01: Um, but in terms of the like, I don't know, the directing of the project, yeah, I would say like documentaries are still a little easier just because when you're doing an alternate reality game, there are so many different things to consider.
[28:46] SPEAKER_01: Like, not just having to do like the film segments and the the writing and the storytelling, but you then have to think about you know interactivity, and you have to think about like exactly how you're onboarding players, you have to think about the mechanisms, you have to think about the how you're generating immersion.
[29:02] SPEAKER_01: Um, so I think there's probably a bit more that goes into it, um, especially some of like raster flesh, which has like actual like coding and stuff that I had to do, um, even though it's like just HTML.
[29:13] SPEAKER_01: Like it's still, I am not a programmer, it is not my wheelhouse.
[29:17] SPEAKER_01: Uh, I'm a filmmaker and a writer.
[29:19] SPEAKER_01: Like, I do not want to be doing that.
[29:21] SPEAKER_07: I leave the nerd work to the nerds.
[29:24] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like you did it all yourself though, right?
[29:26] SPEAKER_06: Like it was all from scratch.
[29:29] SPEAKER_01: That's crazy.
[29:30] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, from scratch or like pulling off of like website forums and stuff.
[29:34] SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah, that's that's fucking cool.
[29:37] SPEAKER_05: That's really honestly.
[29:39] SPEAKER_05: I know we're talking about um Rasterflesh, but I I wanted to ask a question that kind of works with Raster Flesh and uh Bethel Hills.
[29:48] SPEAKER_05: Sure.
[29:48] SPEAKER_05: Uh yeah, uh Bethel Hill a little bit.
[29:50] SPEAKER_05: Uh actually I want to talk about Slender Man real quick since we can so with Bethel Hill, you you mentioned that that was a uh uh a pilot for like a TV series type of type of situation, correct?
[30:02] SPEAKER_01: Uh not a pilot.
[30:03] SPEAKER_01: It's uh one of six episodes of an anthology TV show.
[30:07] SPEAKER_01: So there are five other teams that did episodes as well.
[30:10] SPEAKER_05: Gotcha.
[30:11] SPEAKER_05: Um for something like uh Bethel Hill and uh the Rasterflesh ARG, how different was the like production side of things?
[30:20] SPEAKER_05: Like uh for example, you mentioned how you got JDF involved in Rasterflesh.
[30:25] SPEAKER_05: Uh the I bring up Bethel Hill because while I was watching it, um the uh uh the person that plays uh Emogen, the uh the angel in that, uh they did a lot of like physical like core like choreography work and everything I noticed.
[30:41] SPEAKER_05: Like it seems like they're like a gymnast or something.
[30:44] SPEAKER_05: Like the the when it comes to like the production of something like that and like the hiring experience, how involved were you in the hiring experience for like Bethel Hill?
[30:54] SPEAKER_05: Was it the same as like a Raster Flesh where you had like the same amount of control?
[30:57] SPEAKER_05: Was were some aspects a bit more out of your hand?
[31:00] SPEAKER_05: Like how did how were the two uh uh to you?
[31:04] SPEAKER_05: Like how how how was just producing both those, I guess?
[31:06] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh well, Rasterflesh, as I said, was very much just kind of grabbing what I had available.
[31:12] SPEAKER_01: It was like very low budget.
[31:14] SPEAKER_01: It was just like people I knew that I grabbed, it was locations I knew that I had.
[31:18] SPEAKER_01: Uh, so it was very much trying to do something that was like small and self-contained.
[31:22] SPEAKER_01: Because like, keep in mind, at the time that I was like making the first iteration of Raster Flesh, I was also planning an entire like day day-long conference.
[31:30] SPEAKER_01: Uh like the guests and the uh the screening block and like figure out like the actual like the in-person interactions and stuff.
[31:38] SPEAKER_01: Like it was a lot of work.
[31:40] SPEAKER_01: So I was very much just trying to make Raster Flesh like doable, and even then it got out of my hands.
[31:45] SPEAKER_01: Like it just kept getting bigger and bigger to the point where it was like, uh, it was a time, I'll say that.
[31:51] SPEAKER_01: Um, but uh for Bethel Hill, that was much more of like a full-scale like film production in the same way that like my feature film was.
[31:59] SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we had like several months of lead time on pre-production where we were like really planning things out instead of me just going, Hey, I need to make a thing.
[32:08] SPEAKER_01: Do you want to help me?
[32:09] SPEAKER_01: Uh so it was a lot more of like we were planning out, you know, the location.
[32:14] SPEAKER_01: We had a larger like budget for that project as well.
[32:18] SPEAKER_01: So we like rented a cabin in upstate New York.
[32:21] SPEAKER_01: We like were going on, I think one of the actors came from backstage, and then the other like three actors, four actors in that project all came from like recommendations that like people that I I asked to be on the crew knew.
[32:36] SPEAKER_01: Um, so that was how I got in touch with most of those people.
[32:39] SPEAKER_01: But we held like formal auditions and things like that.
[32:42] SPEAKER_01: Um, went through a bunch of different potential actors for uh I think pretty much every character in that.
[32:48] SPEAKER_01: Um, and then yeah, the actual production of it was definitely a lot bigger, unlike Raster Flesh, which was like, you know, I think we did maybe three days of filming for Raster Flesh in total.
[33:00] SPEAKER_01: We did the the one day where we were out at Point Reyes, and then we did two days in the bedroom location.
[33:06] SPEAKER_01: And they were all like not full days, they were like maybe three or four hours each.
[33:11] SPEAKER_01: Um, whereas with Bethel Hill, we did uh three days of filming, um, which were all like around 10 hours.
[33:19] SPEAKER_01: Uh and so it was like a much larger production.
[33:22] SPEAKER_01: We had to like drive out several hours to like upstate New York.
[33:26] SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, we we had we'd been doing like we did some rehearsals.
[33:30] SPEAKER_01: We were like planning out the blocking.
[33:32] SPEAKER_01: We had like a really formalized shot list, which I did not have for Rasterflesh because it was so just kind of off the cuff.
[33:39] SPEAKER_01: Um, and then yeah, it was like this three-day long like weekend we were all staying at this cabin, which was supposed to be really fun.
[33:47] SPEAKER_01: And then there was a gigantic snowstorm.
[33:49] SPEAKER_01: Oh no.
[33:50] SPEAKER_01: Well, it was it was really fun, don't get me wrong.
[33:53] SPEAKER_01: But it was also like it was legitimately the most exhausting shoot of my entire life.
[33:59] SPEAKER_01: Um, because we had this gigantic snowstorm come through like the day before shooting started, and all of our blocking and shot lists and props and everything were all planned for not having snow.
[34:14] SPEAKER_01: So I had to, we had to be like improvising on the fly for like how we were gonna redo certain scenes to like fit in the snow.
[34:23] SPEAKER_01: Uh, I think like I got a total of four hours of sleep across all three days because I had to stay up every night rewriting the script to accommodate for the snow.
[34:33] SPEAKER_01: Um, we had to like change plans for like a bunch of props, and so we were like, we had people like running out to like Home Depot and stuff, like trying to get new props.
[34:42] SPEAKER_01: Like also, we were all like just freezing our asses off the entire time because like so much of that project takes place at night, and it wasn't supposed to be like literally freezing cold in the snow, but it was, and we couldn't really change the fact that the entire thing happens at night.
[34:59] SPEAKER_05: How was the uh unnamed footage festival?
[35:02] SPEAKER_05: Congratulations, by the way.
[35:03] SPEAKER_05: I know you you won an award.
[35:05] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the unnamed footage festival is a really great event.
[35:08] SPEAKER_01: I've been attending for three years now, I think.
[35:11] SPEAKER_01: Um, last year I had my found footage uh coming aid feature, what I remember.
[35:16] SPEAKER_01: And then uh this year I had the R Gathering for the in-person festival.
[35:20] SPEAKER_01: And then they we just had uh what just happened was the virtual festival, which anyone can participate in.
[35:26] SPEAKER_01: So, listeners at home, keep an eye out for this next October.
[35:30] SPEAKER_01: Um, it's called the uh UF 24 hour, unnamed footage festival 24 hour.
[35:35] SPEAKER_01: And what it is, despite the name, it's a 48-hour long live stream of found footage films uh that happens every October, the beginning of October.
[35:44] SPEAKER_01: And uh basically the Name Footage Festival selects a whole bunch of in-world camera films and they start a live stream.
[35:52] SPEAKER_01: And basically, you buy a ticket and you get access to the Discord server, and you spend however long you want, maybe all 48 hours, watching found footage films and talking with the audience in the live chat.
[36:03] SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's an absolute blast.
[36:06] SPEAKER_01: Uh, I highly recommend it.
[36:07] SPEAKER_01: It is one of the highlights of my year, as is the in-person fest.
[36:11] SPEAKER_01: But like the virtual fest is a really cool, like kind of online community.
[36:15] SPEAKER_01: And uh yeah, I had two projects greening this year.
[36:17] SPEAKER_01: I had Raster Flesh in there, and then I also had Bethel Hill in there.
[36:20] SPEAKER_01: Uh, and it was really great to see the reactions to both of those live.
[36:24] SPEAKER_01: It's a really cool experience as a filmmaker because like when you do a traditional festival screening, you know, you get to like sort of experience the audience reactions like while you're sitting in the theater.
[36:35] SPEAKER_01: Um and you get to have the panel Q ⁇ A after or whatever the QA after.
[36:38] SPEAKER_01: Um, but for the virtual and in footage festival, you get to like literally see people commentating in real time, which is like just it's a lot of fun.
[36:46] SPEAKER_06: That's super cool.
[36:47] SPEAKER_07: Like when you show your friend like a movie you really like, and you keep like a part comes up and you're like yeah.
[36:54] SPEAKER_06: How are you reacting?
[36:55] SPEAKER_05: Is this is good?
[36:57] SPEAKER_05: You like this?
[36:58] SPEAKER_05: Did you know Vigo Mortenson broke his toe when he kicked that out?
[37:03] SPEAKER_01: Classic.
[37:04] SPEAKER_06: Do you know that Willem Defoe needed a penis and smallment for this?
[37:12] SPEAKER_02: Okay.
[37:13] SPEAKER_02: Uh so so if somebody wanted to get involved in whatever you have planned for next year, how much do you have planned for next year?
[37:19] SPEAKER_02: Are you allowed to say anything?
[37:21] SPEAKER_01: Uh so for for next year, as in in general?
[37:26] SPEAKER_02: You said something about next year for the um for the festival.
[37:31] SPEAKER_01: Ah, for the R gathering.
[37:33] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[37:33] SPEAKER_01: Um, so we are in the early like planning stages of what that's gonna look like.
[37:38] SPEAKER_01: I can't really say too much just because we're still like in the process of like sort of scaffolding it and building it.
[37:44] SPEAKER_01: Uh, but I can say that I have been told by the organizers of the End of Footch Festival that it is happening.
[37:49] SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so it's gonna happen and it's gonna be cool.
[37:52] SPEAKER_01: And we're gonna do we're gonna do another like in-person immersive experience.
[37:56] SPEAKER_01: And the idea with that is going to be hopefully we have that to release as like an at-home experience sometime later next year as well.
[38:05] SPEAKER_01: Um so yeah, that's that's where we're currently at.
[38:08] SPEAKER_05: Is that your the main thing you're working on, or do you have anything else in the pipeline that you're uh uh training?
[38:15] SPEAKER_01: So many things in the pipeline.
[38:17] SPEAKER_01: Um one more quick note about the R Gathering.
[38:19] SPEAKER_01: Uh, two listeners who are making their own ARGs, the the one thing that is different about next year's is we are going to have open submissions.
[38:27] SPEAKER_01: Uh so if you have an alternate reality game and you want to submit it, uh that will be a thing that is possible uh if you go to submit to the United Footage Festival.
[38:36] SPEAKER_01: Um so keep an eye out for when that kind of gets more broadly announced.
[38:40] SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, keep it keep it in mind.
[38:42] SPEAKER_01: Uh anyway, all the things that I'm working on.
[38:45] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, God, there are so many.
[38:47] SPEAKER_01: Um right now I'm in the early stages of uh, you know, the the experience for next year at the R Gathering.
[38:54] SPEAKER_01: Um I'm currently working on a couple of like prose stories, uh, because I did my short story tape experience and had that published recently.
[39:02] SPEAKER_01: And I really enjoyed the process of writing prose.
[39:05] SPEAKER_01: Uh when I was really young, I always wanted to be an author.
[39:08] SPEAKER_01: Uh and so now I'm sort of just doing it on the side alongside all of my like film and ARG work.
[39:14] SPEAKER_01: Uh so yeah, working on a couple of prose stories.
[39:17] SPEAKER_01: Uh the big thing is later this month, uh, as long as everything goes according to plan, uh I will be hosting a Twitch live talk show called Out of Game with my co-host Rain Dalton, uh, where every month we will be talking about immersive storytelling uh with different creators and exploring sort of different immersive mysteries.
[39:37] SPEAKER_01: So keep an eye out for that.
[39:39] SPEAKER_01: And uh yeah, I don't know.
[39:41] SPEAKER_02: What Twitch channel is that gonna be on somebody?
[39:42] SPEAKER_01: It's uh gonna be twitch.tv slash out of game live.
[39:47] SPEAKER_01: And uh yeah, so we're hoping to get our first episode out later this month, and it's gonna be a really, really fun, cool show.
[39:54] SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I think that about covers like what I'm like really officially working on uh at the moment.
[40:02] SPEAKER_06: Does anybody else feel bad about themselves after hearing about the creativity that just came forth?
[40:07] SPEAKER_06: Because like I I thought when you started talking and uh Jason, you've got like three lawnmowers you gotta take care of.
[40:16] SPEAKER_02: It's not your problem.
[40:17] SPEAKER_06: I used to have four and I went through all of them in one day, and that really stymies my fucking creativity.
[40:23] SPEAKER_05: Yeah, since uh since you've been on last, I've gained about 15 to 20 pounds, so that's where my life's at currently.
[40:31] SPEAKER_05: Uh very cool.
[40:33] SPEAKER_07: You can then mean we're just playing World of Warcraft every night, right?
[40:36] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, for the last month we've just been no-life in World of Warcraft.
[40:39] SPEAKER_01: So that's that's valid.
[40:42] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I'm also writing articles on Substack, so keep an eye out for those.
[40:46] SPEAKER_01: Oh just a top number little thing on there.
[40:49] SPEAKER_02: Is um is found footage.
[40:51] SPEAKER_02: How would somebody find find those?
[40:54] SPEAKER_01: Uh if you go to Substack, I believe my name on there is just Alex Hara, and uh you can find my articles.
[40:59] SPEAKER_01: I write about immersive storytelling and alternate reality games and stuff.
[41:03] SPEAKER_05: Sweet.
[41:04] SPEAKER_06: Fuck yeah.
[41:05] SPEAKER_05: Is um is found footage just kind of a genre that you just kind of like fell into, or is it something that you've always kind of enjoyed a lot?
[41:11] SPEAKER_05: Because I noticed you you do a lot of found footage um uh uh content.
[41:16] SPEAKER_05: Uh did you just watch Blair Witch Project and you're just like, that's my shit, dude?
[41:21] SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
[41:22] SPEAKER_01: Like well, I mean, as I think I said earlier, like my real introduction to like why I wanted to get into filmmaking was alternate reality games.
[41:30] SPEAKER_01: You know, it was like Marble Hornets and Hi I'm Mary Mary and and things like that, uh, that were all like found footage based.
[41:38] SPEAKER_01: And, you know, then I found you know the Blair Witch Project and I found a lot of other found footage films.
[41:42] SPEAKER_01: And I've always just been really drawn to them and their sort of immersive nature.
[41:47] SPEAKER_01: Like I just love the way that stories are told through that format, the way that like you as an audience member get to experience that world and that narrative through the you know, the eyes of like a diegetic camera through something that like tangibly exists in the world of the narrative.
[42:02] SPEAKER_01: If it's raw, like exactly like exactly.
[42:06] SPEAKER_01: It feels very immersive and just very like the way that stories are structured because of that is I think just very interesting to me.
[42:14] SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, as I got kind of further and further into that, the same as ARGs, I looked at it and I went, wow, there's so much here that people are not doing.
[42:24] SPEAKER_01: Uh, because I feel like a lot of found footage, just like a lot of ARGs, are just kind of very focused on like these cipher puzzles, uh, instead of trying to go for like really deep, rich emotional, like thematic storytelling.
[42:35] SPEAKER_01: The same with found footage, like a lot of these are just going for kind of cheap scares and like roller coaster thrill rides, which I enjoy very much, the same as I enjoy like the very puzzle-heavy alternate reality games.
[42:46] SPEAKER_01: But I also think like when you're doing that kind of thing, you are also limiting yourself from you know the depth of the story that can really be told in that format, from the the interesting things you can do with that format.
[42:57] SPEAKER_01: Uh so you know, coming into like my feature film, uh, I ended up doing what is basically a found footage drama uh instead of a found footage horror film.
[43:06] SPEAKER_01: It has some like horror elements, like people call it a thriller.
[43:10] SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, really first and foremost, I feel that it's it's a drama.
[43:14] SPEAKER_01: Um, and then you know, with Bethel Hill, it's that's a very like kind of hardcore horror piece, but it's also like it has all of this like sort of lore and world building and character building and like a lot of deeper things going on.
[43:27] SPEAKER_01: Um and then yeah, you know, you look at Raster Flesh and it's kind of I I kind of try to keep that same motif going where it's like, yeah, it's like a it's a good alternate reality game.
[43:36] SPEAKER_01: It's a fun alternate reality game that anyone can enjoy.
[43:39] SPEAKER_01: And as you go into it, you also find that there's like this really deep narrative there, right?
[43:43] SPEAKER_01: And it's doing things with the format that are like very sort of narratively and thematically resonant that you couldn't do in another format, right?
[43:51] SPEAKER_01: Like you can't interact with like the raster flesh in a movie.
[43:54] SPEAKER_01: You can't, you know, you can't experience like falling in love through the eyes of a of another person through a you know traditional film, but through an in-world camera film where the person falling in love is holding a camera, like you can get that experience.
[44:09] SPEAKER_05: Um it's very big, like um like I think it really adds to it with like Raster Flash, for example, where a lot of it is our our main guy like filming his computer and filming what's going on on the computer through the lens rather than just like a screen, yeah, rather than just like a screen share of the computer itself.
[44:28] SPEAKER_05: That it's it's a it's it's a small uh it's a small thing that really adds all the like holy it yeah, it it makes you remember.
[44:39] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it as an element of like gravity when you actually have to stare at the monster yourself.
[44:44] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[44:45] unknown: Yeah.
[44:46] SPEAKER_01: Pretty fucking good.
[44:49] SPEAKER_02: We have long maintained.
[44:50] SPEAKER_02: We have long maintained that the what is solely missing from the ARG slash analog horror slash found footage genre is more comedy.
[45:00] SPEAKER_02: We need analog comedy.
[45:01] SPEAKER_01: And like well, I welcome it.
[45:05] SPEAKER_01: I will not be making it, but I welcome it.
[45:09] SPEAKER_06: Well uh I I've I'm like oh sorry, go ahead.
[45:12] SPEAKER_06: I have a I actually I have I have a I have a question that I I really want to know the answer to.
[45:19] SPEAKER_06: Um since you are so involved in immersive storytelling and creating these scenarios and instances and just situations, scenarios, whatever you want to call them, that allow not only the characters in it, as well as the audience to kind of experience the either the drama, the dread, whatever the emotion is you're trying to invoke there.
[45:39] SPEAKER_06: Have you ever DM'd like for D D, Call of Cthulhu, or like been uh like a game master in any sort?
[45:49] SPEAKER_01: Surprisingly, no.
[45:51] SPEAKER_06: That is shocking.
[45:53] SPEAKER_06: That is absolutely shocking because you are from what I've seen, you are a master storyteller, and I feel like you could bring all of that to a table and just live action it for I feel like I would I would really really enjoy it.
[46:06] SPEAKER_01: Uh, I just haven't really had the opportunity with like the right group of people, or frankly, the time.
[46:11] SPEAKER_01: Uh, because I know I know that I would start doing like start designing a narrative, and then it would just become my whole life.
[46:19] SPEAKER_01: Like it would just become an entire another project.
[46:22] SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I kind of have a lot of those going on.
[46:24] SPEAKER_05: I was gonna say she's already got she's already got like a thousand things going on.
[46:30] SPEAKER_05: So don't don't put more.
[46:32] SPEAKER_06: I just know that I feel like if Alex were to advertise a table, it doesn't matter what system it was, whatever whatever group storytelling slash game slash tabletop RPG that she wanted to run, there would be as long as they knew the storytelling caliber that you tell at, there would be like applicants in the thousands, because I feel like like it would be almost like Alex Mercer level like DMing capabilities.
[47:05] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, hey, if you ever want to do maybe maybe, maybe invite me back and we can do like a one-shot or something.
[47:11] SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
[47:12] SPEAKER_01: Maybe that means I get to play finally.
[47:15] SPEAKER_07: So, what needs to happen, and I'm gonna keep this short, but there's a system called Dread, and literally it's storytelling.
[47:22] SPEAKER_07: You you would be able to make all of the characters, you would know everything about them.
[47:26] SPEAKER_07: Put us in your story, and all of the decisions are made with a Jenga tower.
[47:31] SPEAKER_07: It is amazing.
[47:32] SPEAKER_07: Wow, if you if you break the tower, your character dies, you can kill him off however you want.
[47:36] SPEAKER_07: It's fucking awesome.
[47:37] SPEAKER_07: I love it.
[47:38] SPEAKER_07: Fascinating.
[47:39] SPEAKER_02: It's super cool.
[47:40] SPEAKER_02: The problem you'd run into traditionally as someone who really likes crafting a story, though, is you intricately plan out all of these things with these like set steps in your story, and the party just fucks it up immediately.
[47:53] SPEAKER_03: Like that's expected.
[47:56] SPEAKER_05: I mean, like, what is the directing process?
[48:00] SPEAKER_05: Like, how is directing that on scene like?
[48:04] SPEAKER_05: Because obviously, with like a found footage, that camera's going all over the place.
[48:07] SPEAKER_05: So it's not like you can have like lights set up, you can't like be there on set store, you're just like ducked behind a tree, just waiting for them to stop a scene, and then you come out, see how it went on the camera, you're like, all right, try it again.
[48:18] SPEAKER_05: You run back and you hide again, or like do you just send the actors out and onto the scene by themselves?
[48:23] SPEAKER_05: Like, how does something like that work?
[48:25] SPEAKER_05: So, like, people that aren't supposed to be on camera don't get caught on the camera.
[48:31] SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of hiding involved and a lot of choreography.
[48:35] SPEAKER_01: Behind the tree.
[48:36] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, like I would say it's it's one part choreography, one part just hiding people.
[48:42] SPEAKER_01: So uh, for like what I remember in Bethel Hill for both of those, uh, I generally direct found footage pretty traditionally, I would say, compared to some other found footage filmmakers I've seen.
[48:52] SPEAKER_01: Some people are literally like, no, it's just the actor, and they go out there and they're gonna do their thing.
[48:57] SPEAKER_01: And like, we don't even maybe we don't even have a script.
[49:00] SPEAKER_01: It's just totally improved, and we just we just we have a like bullet point list of what we're gonna do, and then we just figure it out, and that's like how we make it real.
[49:09] SPEAKER_01: Uh, for me, I have like very sort of like written out scripts.
[49:13] SPEAKER_01: We have shot lists, we have, you know, blocking plans.
[49:16] SPEAKER_01: Uh, we do, you know, in in all my found footage films, there are lights.
[49:20] SPEAKER_01: There is like usually someone with a boom pole like following around the actors.
[49:25] SPEAKER_01: So it's like it's literally like a choreographed dance where you have to be like, okay, where exactly in space is the camera?
[49:32] SPEAKER_01: Where are they moving that camera?
[49:34] SPEAKER_01: How are they moving through that space?
[49:36] SPEAKER_01: What is getting captured?
[49:37] SPEAKER_01: What is out of bounds?
[49:39] SPEAKER_01: What is out of bounds when in particular?
[49:41] SPEAKER_01: Because you can have people like rotating as the scene goes to avoid being on camera, right?
[49:47] SPEAKER_01: You have like the audio capture person, you have them like literally right behind the actor, like following in lockstep.
[49:53] SPEAKER_01: So when then when the actor turns, that that sound person turns along with them, right?
[49:58] SPEAKER_01: Uh, or like with Bethel Hill, like our director of photography, uh, was like following around the actors with like his hand on the actor's back and like sort of like guiding them on like what directions to turn and like when to stop and stuff like that.
[50:11] SPEAKER_01: Um, like literally just following along one-to-one.
[50:14] SPEAKER_01: Um so yeah, no, it's a lot of just kind of choreography and just making sure that you know like what your angles are and where people can hide and stuff like that.
[50:24] SPEAKER_01: Um, and yeah, it's a it's a cool experience.
[50:27] SPEAKER_01: You know, I I think of it sometimes as more akin to like doing a stage play, because oftentimes you're running the camera for like, you know, four, five, six minutes, um, because you're doing like a full scene with no cuts, uh, which is just like you're kind of just doing this like very long form thing.
[50:46] SPEAKER_01: Uh so yeah, it's an interesting experience.
[50:49] SPEAKER_01: Uh Raster Flesh was a little different because it wasn't there weren't any other human bodies on camera besides the person holding the camera.
[50:56] SPEAKER_01: Um, and so for that one, again, like I would compare it kind of stage play-like, uh, because we had we made all of the like I made all the Raster Flesh videos that go on the monitor um before like we actually did the filming in the bedroom, of course.
[51:12] SPEAKER_01: So the way I had to do it was I had to get Jason's voice lines and I had to finish the raster flesh videos, and then I had to put them all together, like exactly timed, with like having in my brain like what I knew the body movements and camera angles were gonna be in sync with like literally everything.
[51:30] SPEAKER_01: So we assembled, I assembled all of that, and then we put it on this like really shitty like Windows 2000s laptop, um, which barely worked.
[51:40] SPEAKER_01: Uh, there was no way to log into it because the like Windows license key had expired.
[51:45] SPEAKER_01: So we had to do this like weird workaround where like if you hit like a button several times, it'll bring up like the settings for the voice command, and then you can click on a link in the voice command help tool that brings you to a web browser, and then you have 15 minutes before it kicks you out of the web browser because you're not logged in.
[52:02] SPEAKER_01: So, like so that was how we got the videos on the laptop.
[52:07] SPEAKER_01: Um, but crazy words, yeah.
[52:09] SPEAKER_01: So it was like this very kind of choreograph.
[52:11] SPEAKER_01: Like, I think a lot of the time I had like earbuds in where I was like listening to Jason's voice lines and then making sure I was moving around like the space correctly in time with that.
[52:21] SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, so it was just like this trying to get this like very meticulously timed like scenes going and just having everything happen perfectly in sync.
[52:32] SPEAKER_02: Well, that is way more work than I imagined watching the video.
[52:37] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[52:38] SPEAKER_02: Isn't that the way it always goes, I guess?
[52:40] SPEAKER_05: Yes.
[52:41] SPEAKER_05: My I okay, I just had the last question, and then yeah, we can give you the floor, I suppose.
[52:45] SPEAKER_05: But it's I don't think it's like mean to say that there is somewhat of I don't know if oversaturation is the right word, but there is an abundance of like analog horrors and things like that on on like YouTube and whatnot right now.
[52:59] SPEAKER_05: Uh, do you yourself feel that like this overabundance is a good or a bad thing that we're coming across for like that genre?
[53:09] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I wouldn't say it's a good or bad thing from my perspective.
[53:14] SPEAKER_01: It's an interesting thing, is how I would describe it.
[53:16] SPEAKER_01: Um, especially this like this year in particular, the like gigantic kind of explosion and and like Hollywood gold rush on analog horror uh has been very fascinating and something that I'm not personally really complaining about because I'm seeing people all around me like having now like this crazy kind of Hollywood success, um, which is great for them.
[53:39] SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, I have an analog horror television show that I'm trying to promote.
[53:42] SPEAKER_01: So like but uh, you know, yeah, I think so people have been talking about oversaturation in the analog horror scene for almost as long as the analog horror scene has existed, quite frankly.
[53:57] SPEAKER_01: Like my analog horror feature documentary came out in 2022, and there was a massive section in that about how oversaturated analog horror was becoming and had already been for quite some time.
[54:09] SPEAKER_01: Uh, I don't know if that's a direct quote, but like that's like the vibe that people were bringing, right?
[54:15] SPEAKER_01: Uh, and that was, you know, four years ago, four and a half years ago.
[54:19] SPEAKER_01: Um, and so now like it's just continued to grow, it's continued to get even bigger and even bigger.
[54:25] SPEAKER_01: Um, and like again, I find it very deeply fascinating.
[54:30] SPEAKER_01: Uh, in a way that like when I did my analog horror documentary, I found it fascinating because it was, you know, this form of ARGs and unfiction that was like getting really, really big.
[54:41] SPEAKER_01: And that was the thing I found I think most interesting about it was like, why is this appealing to so many people?
[54:47] SPEAKER_01: Like, why is this the unfiction thing that's getting big?
[54:50] SPEAKER_01: Um, now when I look at it, I'm really more interested in the sort of broader cultural reasons that it's like this.
[54:57] SPEAKER_01: You know, like I've I I think to like Mark Fisher's work a lot, you know, on ontology.
[55:02] SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I'm I'm really interested in that perspective.
[55:05] SPEAKER_01: Like, what does it mean about our culture, not just in America, but I mean globally, that we're all kind of having this like interest in, especially the younger generation, is having this interest in these, you know, these antiquated analog formats, and not just the the formats and the resurrection of them, but the like the corruption of them, um, and like the the turning them into something with like these dark, sinister secrets underneath.
[55:32] SPEAKER_01: Like, why are people doing that?
[55:34] SPEAKER_01: And like, what does that kind of say more broadly?
[55:37] SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, what are the mechanisms at play that like are really gripping people about this?
[55:43] SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, I think there's a lot of interesting things about it that I am currently kind of thinking about and researching.
[55:51] SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, it's and there's still good analog horror coming out, I will say.
[55:56] SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't spend nearly as much time watching analog horror as well, just because sifting through all of it to find the good stuff is just so much harder than it used to be.
[56:07] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[56:08] SPEAKER_01: Um, so I find myself doing that a bit less than I used to.
[56:12] SPEAKER_08: But there's still a lot of yeah.
[56:14] SPEAKER_01: No, but I mean, there's still really good analog horror work coming out, uh, and stuff that's like really kind of different for analog horror too, right?
[56:22] SPEAKER_01: Like um Anatomy 1963 by Dragonfly is, I don't think the thing that people would typically describe as analog horror, but the format of it is it's a film from the 1960s that has been like lost and has now been found again.
[56:37] SPEAKER_01: And there's like film damage and film grain and like these sort of warped like film reel effects and stuff like that.
[56:44] SPEAKER_01: And it's like imitating the style of like a 1960s film.
[56:47] SPEAKER_01: It's like very much like a type of analog horror.
[56:50] SPEAKER_01: It's just something very different from what we expect from like the you know, the live TV broadcasts and the VHS instructional tapes and whatever else.
[56:58] SPEAKER_01: Um, which I think those are those are what's gotten really quite old.
[57:02] SPEAKER_01: Um, but people were yeah, people are doing interesting things with just taking the analog format in a different direction, you know, like looking at the found footage scene as well, like there's a lot of sort of more traditional found footage films that just happen to be set like in the 80s or the 90s, um, that are telling like pretty cool, interesting stories, um, and not doing the like, you know, text over a static background thing that like most analog horror projects do.
[57:29] SPEAKER_01: Um, and those are, you know, those are analog horror.
[57:32] SPEAKER_01: So it's just it's it's growing and adapting into new forms and you know, really sort of getting so big to the point where it's like it's not just this like concentration of projects that like you're looking at as like this is the analog horror genre, it's now this like gigantic sprawling thing across multiple different mediums and communities and and subcultures um that are all sort of bringing different things to the table.
[57:58] SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, when you look at like the sort of traditional internet analog horror subgenre, like yeah, I'm not really looking too much at that either.
[58:05] SPEAKER_01: I do on occasion, and like especially if you know a project comes out from a creator that's already sort of well known as a creator in that space, I'm definitely paying attention.
[58:13] SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, yeah, I think there's a lot of analog horror work going on right now, and a lot of it's really interesting.
[58:18] SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I think the broader sort of culture that we're looking at that is that is allowing analog horror to become as big as it is, like allowing the backrooms to become, you know, this multi-million dollar like smash hit success over this thing that's like VHS tapes in this alternate dimension that is basically like an infinite manifestation of late-stage capitalism.
[58:41] SPEAKER_01: Like there's something interesting there, right?
[58:43] SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, I don't know.
[58:45] SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm looking at it and I'm I'm fascinated.
[58:48] SPEAKER_01: And yeah.
[58:50] SPEAKER_02: I as a younger person, I I don't know, I don't know exactly how old you are, but I I suspect that you're significantly younger than any of us old weird.
[59:01] SPEAKER_02: Um what do you what do I'm 24?
[59:05] SPEAKER_02: What do you think?
[59:08] SPEAKER_02: What do you think it is that is attracting younger people that didn't grow up with analog technology the way that us or generations before us did?
[59:19] SPEAKER_02: What what what makes that so appealing?
[59:21] SPEAKER_02: Is it is it and what I what I suspect it is is that AI and the internet and everything has become so overwhelming and toxic and horrible that it it's like a yearning for a simpler time and and an escape from that.
[59:34] SPEAKER_02: But what do you think?
[59:35] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think there are a lot of different things at play.
[59:39] SPEAKER_01: I'll cover and a couple of the the big ones, I guess.
[59:42] SPEAKER_01: One of them is, yeah, I mean, there's nostalgia to that, right?
[59:46] SPEAKER_01: There's there's the looking back at a you know perceived simpler time.
[59:50] SPEAKER_01: Uh, and there's a sort of interest in that, right?
[59:53] SPEAKER_01: Like we see even among like people who were alive in the 80s and 90s, like there's a big rise in nostalgia for those kind of eras.
[1:00:00] SPEAKER_01: Um, people are just they like looking back.
[1:00:03] SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think that definitely says a lot about kind of how people feel about where things are at at the moment, that we're all looking back several decades ago and being like, wow, those were the golden years.
[1:00:13] SPEAKER_01: Um but you know, I think there's also, you know, when when you're looking at that nostalgia, and when a younger person is looking at that nostalgia, and when we're looking at analog horror in particular, there's this idea of like, okay, we're looking back at the simpler time, and then we're corrupting it, right?
[1:00:28] SPEAKER_01: Like we're looking at we're looking at the simpler time, this like the sleek, joyous, like, you know, vibrant colors and like uh, you know, vibey music and whatever is on the surface of the 1980s.
[1:00:40] SPEAKER_01: But then we're going, okay, and actually underneath that, there are these horrific government things going on, and there are these terrible monstrosities around the planet, and there are like all of these different things.
[1:00:51] SPEAKER_01: Like the media you're watching is like fundamentally harmful to you, right?
[1:00:56] SPEAKER_01: Like we're doing, we're we're playing with all of these kinds of themes when we're when we're doing that nostalgic thing.
[1:01:01] SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, what's there, I think, is you're looking back at the past and you're looking back at like, you know, what was perceived to be like a sort of cultural, like glory days era.
[1:01:12] SPEAKER_01: Um, but then you're looking at that, you know, maybe a bit more critically, and you're going, like, well, okay, but those like glory days led us to where we are right now, right?
[1:01:20] SPEAKER_01: So, like, how did that happen?
[1:01:21] SPEAKER_01: Like, what was actually going on back then?
[1:01:23] SPEAKER_01: And like, you know, so we're sort of we're looking back, but we're then then then taking the rose tinted glasses off, or you know, maybe even exacerbating how bad it really was with like, you know, Lovecraftian monsters and whatever.
[1:01:35] SPEAKER_01: But like, you know, I think there's something definitely sort of fundamentally there about why the younger generation is looking back on the past and then actively taking steps to like corrupt it and insert horrific things into it.
[1:01:47] SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, there's also, I think, just the sort of base fascination for younger people, you know, coming back to what you're saying about like AI and the internet, with the like tactility of those mediums, you know, and the sort of the cultural presence that those mediums had.
[1:02:02] SPEAKER_01: Like the idea that you can go to a video store and like, you know, get a physical copy of a film that other people have touched and watched, and like you get the tape and you put it in and it hasn't been rewound because the last person didn't rewind it.
[1:02:14] SPEAKER_01: Like, so you're sharing, you're like in a way, sharing that kind of experience with another human being, right?
[1:02:19] SPEAKER_01: Or like you look at live TV and you know, you're watching something at the exact same time as everyone else, right?
[1:02:26] SPEAKER_01: Like you're all kind of connected through that.
[1:02:28] SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, and again, like going back to VHS, you have this like it's a film and it's it's physical, right?
[1:02:33] SPEAKER_01: Like it actually tangibly exists.
[1:02:36] SPEAKER_01: Uh, and it's not just in the internet, it's not just in the cloud.
[1:02:39] SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, so I think there's something there for like just the the appeal of those mediums.
[1:02:45] SPEAKER_01: I know certainly for me, that's what appeals to me about the analog medium.
[1:02:48] SPEAKER_01: It's why like Bethel Hill is shot on high-eight tapes.
[1:02:51] SPEAKER_01: Like, I think there's something really fascinating about being able to make something and have it exist on like tangible mediums, uh, and be able to potentially manipulate that if you want to.
[1:03:02] SPEAKER_01: But even if you don't, like it's just it's a thing that physically exists.
[1:03:05] SPEAKER_01: And when you watch it, you see the evidence of that, right?
[1:03:08] SPEAKER_01: Like you see the static or you see the bits of dust on the tape.
[1:03:12] SPEAKER_01: Um, you see like you hear the buzz of like the tape actually going in the camera.
[1:03:17] SPEAKER_01: Like, there's just something really sort of aesthetically appealing about that, about the idea that it's it's real and it's tangible in a way that almost nothing is anymore.
[1:03:27] SPEAKER_02: The the corruption of the medium is something that I hadn't really thought about or considered.
[1:03:33] SPEAKER_02: I I wonder if there to some people there's an element of like we have to suffer, and so we're gonna fuck up your your era too.
[1:03:42] SPEAKER_02: We're gonna inject our suffering into your pleasant rose-tinted memories.
[1:03:48] SPEAKER_06: Solidarity through suffering.
[1:03:50] SPEAKER_07: The real horror is not rewinding the VHS.
[1:03:56] SPEAKER_02: The real horror is when you re- rewind your cassette tape too hard and stretch it out and ruin it.
[1:04:01] SPEAKER_02: That's the real horror.
[1:04:04] SPEAKER_06: No, you I heard they didn't rewind it, and I went, those motherfuckers be kind, rewind.
[1:04:11] SPEAKER_06: It's the whole thing.
[1:04:12] SPEAKER_06: It's the blockbuster motto.
[1:04:14] SPEAKER_02: They have a machine at the store for that.
[1:04:16] SPEAKER_02: There's a guy that gets paid minimum wage to stick those in there.
[1:04:20] SPEAKER_07: They're just gone.
[1:04:24] SPEAKER_07: So I did want to ask, yeah, you were saying something that kind of made me think about this, but where is the line for analog horror?
[1:04:32] SPEAKER_07: Like, what makes like I feel like we're almost going into like the EDM music situation where there's like all these sub-genres of like what you could potentially call what you're watching and like what the media would be considered.
[1:04:48] SPEAKER_07: Like, where's the line for for something being analog horror on fiction and ARG?
[1:04:53] SPEAKER_07: Are they all the same thing?
[1:04:55] SPEAKER_07: Like, you know what I'm saying?
[1:04:56] SPEAKER_07: I know that's a pretty broad question, but like whenever I think of I personally think of analog horror, here's the weather channel screen, and like there's some like playing music in the background, you know, royalty-free.
[1:05:12] SPEAKER_07: Uh that that's just like where my mind goes when I think of like analog horror.
[1:05:16] SPEAKER_07: I'm like, all right, we're about to see some slideshows.
[1:05:19] SPEAKER_06: We're about to see a PowerPoint presentation with all right.
[1:05:23] SPEAKER_01: Strap strap in.
[1:05:24] SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Unfiction 101 with your professor Alex Tara.
[1:05:28] SPEAKER_01: So uh I would say so.
[1:05:32] SPEAKER_01: Unfiction is stories told as if they're real.
[1:05:36] SPEAKER_01: That is generally how I consider it, and I think that's probably broader than some people consider it to be.
[1:05:41] SPEAKER_01: Some people restrict it very specifically to stories told as if they're real on the internet.
[1:05:46] SPEAKER_01: Uh, personally, I don't subscribe to that.
[1:05:48] SPEAKER_01: Uh getting into why will make this actually an hour-long conversation, so I won't.
[1:05:54] SPEAKER_01: Um just go watch the history of analog or read read my subsec over the next few months.
[1:06:00] SPEAKER_01: I promise there will be some deep dives.
[1:06:02] SPEAKER_01: Um, uh's are unfiction stories that you can interact with, right?
[1:06:08] SPEAKER_01: So that's the big differentiator between them.
[1:06:10] SPEAKER_01: Is unfiction is stories told as if they're real.
[1:06:12] SPEAKER_01: ARGs are stories told as if they're real that you can interact with, right?
[1:06:16] SPEAKER_01: Like there is an interactive element to it.
[1:06:17] SPEAKER_01: There are users will change the outcome.
[1:06:21] SPEAKER_01: Change the outcome, yes, that's definitely a possibility.
[1:06:25] SPEAKER_01: It's not a requirement, I would say.
[1:06:27] SPEAKER_01: Like just the fact that there are there are puzzles to solve, or there is a social media account that you can interact with that will interact with you back.
[1:06:34] SPEAKER_01: Like that is enough interactivity in my eyes to make something an ARG instead of just a Fiction.
[1:06:39] SPEAKER_01: Um now moving on to analog horror.
[1:06:42] SPEAKER_01: Analog horror is basically any sort of horror media that uses the aesthetics of the analog age.
[1:06:52] SPEAKER_01: Like I wouldn't even go as far as say that it needs to take place in the analog age because something can be, you know, uh someone pulls a VHS camera out in 2026 and they film a thing and it's horror and it takes place in 2026.
[1:07:06] SPEAKER_01: And that's I would still count that as analog horror because it's on an analog medium, right?
[1:07:11] SPEAKER_01: Um, so for me, I view it as horror media that uses the aesthetic of analog technology.
[1:07:17] SPEAKER_01: So whether that's VHS, that's T that's uh, you know, live TV, that's films from the era, that's cassette tapes.
[1:07:24] SPEAKER_01: Um, it can be basically any sort of recorded media that is using analog technology or the aesthetic of analog technology.
[1:07:32] SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, I think historically it's really been thought about as a genre because that's what it obstensibly has been.
[1:07:41] SPEAKER_01: It's been this collection of projects that are by people with relatively similar sort of aesthetic and stylistic, you know, ideals for what they're looking at on the internet.
[1:07:52] SPEAKER_01: And I would still call it a genre, but I think the point to which it's grown now makes it a little bit more of just an aesthetic sensibility, I would say.
[1:08:03] SPEAKER_01: Um, where you have, you know, you don't have like the same level of like a unified genre that we did, you know, four or five years ago, where we had like basically everyone was kind of on the same page about what they were making and what analog horror was.
[1:08:18] SPEAKER_01: Now we have just it's so much broader, and everyone is bringing their own ideas to the table.
[1:08:23] SPEAKER_01: And that's fantastic, in my opinion.
[1:08:25] SPEAKER_01: But it's also like when you look at one analog horror project and another analog horror project now, those might be just completely different things.
[1:08:33] SPEAKER_01: And their only similarity is that they both happen to be using the the aesthetic of analog technology.
[1:08:39] SPEAKER_01: Um so it's a little bit less helpful as a descriptor than I think it once was, just because of how broad it has become.
[1:08:48] SPEAKER_01: Um, but I don't think it's become a useless descriptor by any means.
[1:08:51] SPEAKER_01: Like I don't think it's it's no longer a genre or anything like that.
[1:08:55] SPEAKER_01: It's just it's definitely gotten a lot broader in terms of what you can do with it.
[1:09:00] SPEAKER_06: Well, it's like what Doug was saying with the EDM genres, it's the same thing with metal music.
[1:09:04] SPEAKER_06: You can like there's a whole genre of metal music called Russian singing finish doom metal.
[1:09:10] SPEAKER_06: Like that's a wild amount of descriptors for one subsect of music.
[1:09:14] SPEAKER_06: And I think that's where analog horror is heading because there's so many different like you have to classify them differently because if you want to see a local 58 clone, you can do the whole PowerPoint presentation type analog horror.
[1:09:27] SPEAKER_06: At the same time, you can still get analog horror as long as it's using and utilizing analog technology, it doesn't have to be exactly yeah.
[1:09:36] SPEAKER_01: No, and I mean, for me, like I'm at the point where I am sort of playing with this idea of a broader genre label, which I'm tentatively calling ontological horror.
[1:09:46] SPEAKER_01: Um, and I'm gonna have an article about this at some point.
[1:09:50] SPEAKER_01: But the idea is, you know, we're not just looking at just analog technology, we're looking at anything that is sort of drawing on specters of the past uh that are like recreated and re-manifested in the modern day, right?
[1:10:03] SPEAKER_01: Like there are so many other ways that something like that can manifest, you know, when we're looking back at older historical eras in, you know, the 1900s, or we're looking at, you know, what people keep calling like digital horror, what I call millennium horror, just because I think that makes a lot more sense.
[1:10:18] SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, it's basically that's analog horror, except the decade is shifted up by one, right?
[1:10:23] SPEAKER_01: Like it's the 2000s instead of the 1990s and 80s.
[1:10:26] SPEAKER_01: Um, and there's no reason for that to be like people get so up in arms about like, no, digital horror, it's a completely different thing than analog horror.
[1:10:34] SPEAKER_01: It's like, no, it's not, it's exactly the same thing as analog horror, it's just a different decade.
[1:10:39] SPEAKER_02: I think this Discord has like a controversial past, but I re very vividly remember being in the analog horror creators discord and watching this like huge argument where people were like, oh no, this isn't analog horror, this is digital horror, it has to go in the other channel.
[1:10:53] SPEAKER_02: And that was the point where I was like, I don't think this Discord is for me.
[1:10:56] SPEAKER_01: Um Yeah, no, I mean, like it's it's so ridiculous because like there's just so much overlap between those two things.
[1:11:04] SPEAKER_01: And it's like that's where the problem with like, you know, we have analog horror, and our descriptor of analog horror is it's recreating the analog aesthetic.
[1:11:12] SPEAKER_01: And so when you take that one decade forward to the 2000s, suddenly that descriptor can no longer apply.
[1:11:18] SPEAKER_01: And so we're like, oh, well, this is a different thing, but it's not a different thing, right?
[1:11:23] SPEAKER_01: It's exactly the same thing, which is why again, like I'm playing with this kind of broader genre label of just like you know, things from the past that are we are reviving and corrupting.
[1:11:32] SPEAKER_06: Nostalgia.
[1:11:33] SPEAKER_06: Corrupted nostalgia.
[1:11:35] SPEAKER_01: Yes, hell yeah.
[1:11:37] SPEAKER_05: Yeah, I think um I think another reason analog horror.
[1:11:43] SPEAKER_05: I'm so sorry.
[1:11:44] SPEAKER_02: I can already see that this is oh no, you're not.
[1:11:47] SPEAKER_06: First and foremost.
[1:11:48] SPEAKER_02: I'm not sorry, because you wouldn't have opened your fucking mouth.
[1:11:52] SPEAKER_05: I was trying to think of a better segue, and I was like, this will be funny, and now I'm thinking of it.
[1:11:57] SPEAKER_05: No, you gotta do it now.
[1:11:58] SPEAKER_03: You gotta do it now, whatever it was.
[1:12:00] SPEAKER_03: You're you're too deep.
[1:12:02] SPEAKER_05: I think I think another reason people like analog horror so much is because of the way the screen looks, and it's kind of like a raster, which refers to an image or data model composed of a rectangular grid of tiny color screens from pixels.
[1:12:17] SPEAKER_03: Yes, it does.
[1:12:18] SPEAKER_05: That term originates from the Latin rastrum, a rake, reflecting the pattern of scan lines used to display images on screens, create digital files, which isn't that what the flesh is all about, you know.
[1:12:27] SPEAKER_07: Yeah, so to be clear, Mike hasn't been paying attention for the past 10 minutes because he's been googling the definition.
[1:12:34] SPEAKER_01: He's been realizing that raster flesh isn't a name that I just pull out of my ass and it actually has some meaning.
[1:12:40] SPEAKER_03: So I'm like, what the fuck is a raster?
[1:12:44] SPEAKER_01: It's a Latin word or I'm glad you got there.
[1:12:48] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, maybe yeah, maybe we should have started with letting you know that Mike is borderline illiterate.
[1:12:55] SPEAKER_06: Borderline?
[1:12:57] SPEAKER_06: I think you can ditch that word.
[1:12:59] SPEAKER_06: He's just ill fucking literal.
[1:13:00] SPEAKER_06: He participates in the Facebook chat, so he has to have like millennial hieroglyphs are pretty much where he's at.
[1:13:11] SPEAKER_02: That explains why his texts are always just emojis.
[1:13:14] SPEAKER_02: You're right.
[1:13:15] SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
[1:13:18] SPEAKER_05: Well, I guess uh I'll we'll give you the floor, Alex.
[1:13:22] SPEAKER_05: Uh is there anything?
[1:13:23] SPEAKER_05: I know we we covered a bunch of stuff today.
[1:13:25] SPEAKER_05: Uh, is there anything else you would like to you know uh plug, talk about, anything like that?
[1:13:31] SPEAKER_05: The floor is yours.
[1:13:32] SPEAKER_05: I don't know.
[1:13:33] SPEAKER_05: Confess, yes.
[1:13:35] SPEAKER_01: No, no confessions today.
[1:13:37] SPEAKER_01: Um, but uh yeah, I mean, uh follow me on social media.
[1:13:43] SPEAKER_01: I do I'm on pretty much everything as Alex Hera or Alex Hera underscore.
[1:13:47] SPEAKER_01: Uh follow me on Substack for deep dives into how immersive storytelling works.
[1:13:52] SPEAKER_01: Um on socials, I also like post short form content now, so you can see that.
[1:13:57] SPEAKER_01: Um go play Rasterflesh.
[1:13:59] SPEAKER_01: It's available at www.rasterflesh.com.
[1:14:02] SPEAKER_01: Um go follow out of game, it's twitch.tv slash outofgame live.
[1:14:08] SPEAKER_01: Go buy the book that I was just published in.
[1:14:10] SPEAKER_01: It's called Your Body Is Uh Fever Dream.
[1:14:12] SPEAKER_01: Uh I don't know.
[1:14:14] SPEAKER_01: Keep an eye out for Bethelha and what I remember.
[1:14:16] SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be in festivals and eventually on streaming.
[1:14:19] SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
[1:14:20] SPEAKER_01: There's so many things I can plug.
[1:14:21] SPEAKER_01: I could keep plugging for hours.
[1:14:24] SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, I don't know, go play Raster Flesh.
[1:14:27] SPEAKER_01: I think that's like the biggest and you know cool coolest thing that I've done lately.
[1:14:30] SPEAKER_06: It's very good.
[1:14:31] SPEAKER_06: From like I didn't do a whole lot, but just messing around on the website and like following along with the narratives that were happening, it was it, it drew me the fuck in, and I ran out of time to explore, but it's so fucking cool.
[1:14:45] SPEAKER_06: You should finish it.
[1:14:46] SPEAKER_01: I think that the the last like third of it is I think my favorite part.
[1:14:50] SPEAKER_02: Just very cool.
[1:14:54] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you that I told you that you took that from me.
[1:14:58] SPEAKER_03: What but we we literally get opened the page together.
[1:15:02] SPEAKER_03: What are you talking about?
[1:15:04] SPEAKER_05: I told you last I told you, I was like, I love it.
[1:15:07] SPEAKER_03: Just because you like it means that I'm not allowed to also like it.
[1:15:13] SPEAKER_03: Liking a page, I liked it first.
[1:15:17] SPEAKER_03: I liked it first five seconds before I did.
[1:15:22] SPEAKER_06: Alex, have you enjoyed us all just fawning over you?
[1:15:26] SPEAKER_06: Absolutely.
[1:15:27] SPEAKER_01: This has been an absolute delight.
[1:15:29] SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me, truly.
[1:15:32] SPEAKER_01: We loved it.
[1:15:32] SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, this was a blast.
[1:15:34] SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
[1:15:35] SPEAKER_05: If you ever want to come, if you ever want to take a minute from uh not using your brain all the time, and you want to come be stupid on another episode, you're more than welcome to join us on one of our normal ones where we're stupid all the time.
[1:15:47] SPEAKER_02: You gotta be ready for the horror.
[1:15:50] SPEAKER_02: You gotta be ready for the horrible, horrible things that Doug Dugs up at or edit, though.
[1:15:55] SPEAKER_06: Yeah, the new okay, the new fucking Doug's like oh god, the new criteria we have, and the new like the way we're doing things, it just it's good and it attracts viewers, but your lord, yeah, do I know things now?
[1:16:12] SPEAKER_07: I apparently have don't look into the just been desensitized to everything and uh everything, all of it, all the things.
[1:16:21] SPEAKER_05: Doug's learned quickly that some of us have not been fully desensitized.
[1:16:25] SPEAKER_06: Hey Doug makes his desensitations our problem, like that's that's how it goes.
[1:16:35] SPEAKER_05: Right.
[1:16:35] SPEAKER_05: To uh to wrap this episode up, there's a couple things I want to bring up.
[1:16:38] SPEAKER_05: First and foremost, hometown horrors.
[1:16:41] SPEAKER_05: Uh Alex, if you have any fun horror stories of like that happen to you at any point, if you want to come on our hometown horrors episode or something and tell us our stories, that'd be super cool.
[1:16:50] SPEAKER_05: But uh yeah, but we uh and if if any of our listening out there, if you have a scary story of something that's happened to you or something that's in like your town or something like that that's personal to you, send it to our emails, dilutypod at gmail.com.
[1:17:03] SPEAKER_05: Uh make the subject line Hometown Horrors 2026.
[1:17:06] SPEAKER_05: We have last date.
[1:17:08] SPEAKER_07: Last date is the 20th of October.
[1:17:11] SPEAKER_07: That's the last day you can submit to us if you want something, Red.
[1:17:15] SPEAKER_07: I will say it is filling up.
[1:17:16] SPEAKER_07: We're getting a lot, yeah, we're getting a lot.
[1:17:19] SPEAKER_05: And uh the uh one of the other things I want to bring up is uh last week we mentioned about getting a tattoo.
[1:17:25] SPEAKER_05: Um goddamn.
[1:17:27] SPEAKER_05: I'm gonna preface, I'm gonna preface the first person to get the tattoo.
[1:17:31] SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[1:17:32] SPEAKER_05: We can only get one of you.
[1:17:33] SPEAKER_05: We can only shout out so much money.
[1:17:35] SPEAKER_05: So only one of you if you get the tattoo of the lost meme, but the bottom line is Saddam Hussein.
[1:17:41] SPEAKER_05: Alex, this is weird for you to just come in.
[1:17:45] SPEAKER_05: Okay, okay.
[1:17:46] SPEAKER_03: So last week we had the idea.
[1:17:48] SPEAKER_02: Last week we had the idea for a tattoo that is you know what loss is, right?
[1:17:52] SPEAKER_02: And you said the meme that is just the lines of the people.
[1:17:56] SPEAKER_03: Sure.
[1:17:57] SPEAKER_02: So the last panel, right, is him and his wife, and his wife is sideways, right?
[1:18:01] SPEAKER_02: So the tattoo is lost memes, but the sideways line is Saddam Hussein, like the the diagram of this is where Saddam Hussein was.
[1:18:10] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, wow.
[1:18:11] SPEAKER_03: Okay.
[1:18:12] SPEAKER_03: The first you're making someone permanently on their body, we just not making, not making it.
[1:18:18] SPEAKER_05: We said if they did I'll make it for yeah, legally, we're not forced to if you want to subject yourself to that.
[1:18:26] SPEAKER_05: Be if you are send us send us proof of it in the email if you get the tattoo, and we will send you$200 for the tattoo.
[1:18:33] SPEAKER_05: But we're only sending it to the first person.
[1:18:36] SPEAKER_05: The first person.
[1:18:37] SPEAKER_07: Uh so we should the price a lot of AI out there, so we need you to take a video of it happening.
[1:18:42] SPEAKER_07: A picture submission probably isn't uh great.
[1:18:45] SPEAKER_06: I mean, we're also gonna run it through tattoos.
[1:18:48] SPEAKER_03: Like they put in a newspaper of the current day.
[1:18:52] SPEAKER_02: You can make that pretty easy.
[1:18:55] SPEAKER_02: If you can get the tattoo shop, you get it done at to take a picture and put it on their Instagram.
[1:19:00] SPEAKER_05: There you go.
[1:19:02] SPEAKER_05: But if you're if you're like the fourth person to do it and you submit it, sorry, you just got that for free.
[1:19:06] SPEAKER_05: That's not a race now.
[1:19:09] SPEAKER_05: Everybody now.
[1:19:10] SPEAKER_07: The great lost race.
[1:19:12] SPEAKER_02: We're gonna get sued.
[1:19:13] SPEAKER_02: Just a courtroom full of people with Saddam Hussein lost tattoos that are just piston.
[1:19:22] SPEAKER_06: It's like a judge will have no what is going on right now.
[1:19:29] SPEAKER_04: I don't know what's going on right now either.
[1:19:32] unknown: Okay.
[1:19:32] SPEAKER_06: Well, good.
[1:19:34] SPEAKER_05: Anyway, everybody, uh, thank you for joining us uh on this lovely episode.
[1:19:37] SPEAKER_05: Thank you, Alex, for coming on.
[1:19:39] SPEAKER_05: It's it's been a really lovely time.
[1:19:40] SPEAKER_05: I have the time has been lost on me.
[1:19:43] SPEAKER_05: I didn't realize we've already been chatting for like an hour and a half almost, and it does not feel like that.
[1:19:48] SPEAKER_05: And uh I really appreciate it, and I had a lot of fun tonight.
[1:19:51] SPEAKER_05: Thank you very much for being on.
[1:19:52] SPEAKER_05: Um RasterFlush.
[1:19:55] SPEAKER_05: Go raster your flush, go do it.
[1:19:56] SPEAKER_04: Rasterflush.com.
[1:19:58] SPEAKER_04: Do it.
[1:20:00] SPEAKER_04: That's the way.
[1:20:03] SPEAKER_07: Oh, yeah.
[1:20:03] SPEAKER_07: And if you ever need uh some cameos from four idiots, you you know who to reach out to for any of your projects.
[1:20:10] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you can pick up a box in the background of a shot very well.
[1:20:15] SPEAKER_06: That's just professional, like that's on his resume, I'm sure, at this point.
[1:20:19] SPEAKER_07: Man, I was I saw that video you posted in one of our episodes, and holy fat fuck.
[1:20:25] SPEAKER_07: I was like, dude, what happened to me?
[1:20:29] SPEAKER_02: I think you had like a big hoodie on or something though.
[1:20:33] SPEAKER_02: In what?
[1:20:35] SPEAKER_06: Matt Matt's over here trying to be the kindest soul.
[1:20:39] SPEAKER_02: I've been taking clips that we recorded and sticking them at the beginning of the episodes in or or screenshots of the clips.
[1:20:47] SPEAKER_02: Nice.
[1:20:47] SPEAKER_02: And one of them was Doug picking up the box at Schnooks.
[1:20:51] SPEAKER_07: I don't remember that.
[1:20:53] SPEAKER_07: It was when we were down for Halloween.
[1:20:55] SPEAKER_07: Yeah, when we were.
[1:20:56] SPEAKER_05: No, I don't remember that in the in the YouTube, is what I mean.
[1:20:58] SPEAKER_06: I don't remember that on the you probably won't remember that at all.
[1:21:04] SPEAKER_06: Most of us won't.
[1:21:05] SPEAKER_06: I was everybody was so fucked up.
[1:21:09] SPEAKER_05: I'm assuming you cut already, right, Matt?
[1:21:12] SPEAKER_02: Oh no, I'm still recording.
[1:21:14] SPEAKER_02: I thought we were still on.
[1:21:16] SPEAKER_02: I thought we still needed to do Alex.
[1:21:18] SPEAKER_02: Do you have anything else you want to say?
[1:21:20] SPEAKER_01: Uh no, thank you so much for having me.
[1:21:23] SPEAKER_01: Go play Raster Flash.
[1:21:24] SPEAKER_06: Okay, Jason.
[1:21:26] SPEAKER_06: Uh, as always, stay the fuck paranoid.
[1:21:29] SPEAKER_06: You never know when a very decent amount of narrative and analog horror style footage will come out and hit your screen.
[1:21:37] SPEAKER_06: Just be on the lookout.
[1:21:39] SPEAKER_06: Doug.
[1:21:41] SPEAKER_07: Uh as usual, slap your peen against your computer and go to rasterflush.com.
[1:21:48] SPEAKER_07: Mike.
[1:21:50] SPEAKER_07: I don't I wasn't Saddam Hussein.
[1:21:53] SPEAKER_05: It's been worse.
[1:21:55] SPEAKER_05: It's been worse.
[1:21:56] SPEAKER_05: It's been worse.
[1:21:56] SPEAKER_05: Whatever I ever remember Doug said, I'm looking for the Saddam Hussein rookie card.
[1:22:01] SPEAKER_03: John Porker.
[1:22:03] SPEAKER_00: Don't need to look on your video.

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