{"id":301,"date":"2009-04-10T19:27:24","date_gmt":"2009-04-11T03:27:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/?p=301"},"modified":"2016-05-16T19:03:48","modified_gmt":"2016-05-17T02:03:48","slug":"exposing-whats-in-the-box","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/exposing-whats-in-the-box\/","title":{"rendered":"Exposing &#8220;What&#8217;s In The Box?&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"What&#039;s in the Box? -  Test Film 2009\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/IU_reTt7Hj4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>(View larger on <span class=\"removed_link\" title=\"http:\/\/babel-research.eu\/witb\/stream\/\">official site<\/span>.)<\/p>\n<div class=\"imageframe imgalignright\" style=\"width:320px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/whats-in-the-box.jpg\" alt=\"whats-in-the-box\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" class=\"attachment wp-att-302\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"imagecaption\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/babel-research.eu\/witb\/\">What&#8217;s In The Box?<\/a>, a short &#8220;demo&#8221; from Tim Smit and Steven Roeters, may be a glorified homage to the popular video game Half-Life. But it&#8217;s an awful good one.<\/p>\n<p>In case you haven&#8217;t heard, with just a 9-minute video and recently a mysterious official site, it&#8217;s been a viral hit for the last month. Clocking the success on just the YouTube embed (above), it&#8217;s been seen by over a million and counting.<\/p>\n<p>But there&#8217;s more than just a one-off video. With &#8220;Box,&#8221; there&#8217;s a whole story behind the &#8220;magic box&#8221; and <a href=\"http:\/\/babel-research.eu\/\">&#8220;Babel Research&#8221;<\/a> which involves cryptic images, jumbled audio and fake sites that require some serious deciphering.<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately for you and your spare time, it&#8217;s all pretty exposed now. Of all the crowd-sourced sleuthing online &#8212; pages and pages worth at <a href=\"http:\/\/forums.unfiction.com\/forums\/viewtopic.php?t=27633\">UnFiction<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/5179465\/whats-in-the-box-is-mysterious-mishmash-of-gadgets-video-games-apocalypse\">Gizmodo<\/a> &#8212; the posts at <a href=\"http:\/\/wikibruce.com\/2009\/04\/a-big-box-of-babel-research\/\">Wikibruce<\/a> and <span class=\"removed_link\" title=\"http:\/\/scificomet.com\/2009\/03\/19\/whats-in-the-box-hidden-picture-and-formulas\/\">The Sudden Curve<\/span> have the most complete research and walk-thru of all the images, sounds and links.<\/p>\n<p>Related, the project is similar in style as J.J. Abrams&#8217; 2008 film Cloverfield, whose marketing strategy included planted viral videos online prior to the film&#8217;s release. Abrams also talked about a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ted.com\/index.php\/talks\/j_j_abrams_mystery_box.html\">&#8220;mystery box&#8221; at TED<\/a>; &#8220;Box&#8221; apparently borrows some of the sounds from the TV show &#8220;Lost,&#8221; which Abrams co-created.<\/p>\n<p>In an anonymous <a href=\"http:\/\/gadgets.boingboing.net\/2009\/03\/20\/short-film-whats-in.html\">comment on BoingBoing<\/a>, according to a Dutch TV report, the project began as a hobby and ended on a budget of 150 Euro. &#8220;[I]f you can do this with 150 euro imagine what he could do with a multi million dollar budget.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Smit and Roeters are Natural Science students at Radboud University in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n<p>(<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/chris_yi\/status\/1480655179\">via<\/a> director <a href=\"http:\/\/chrisyi.com\/\">Chris Yi<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(View larger on official site.) What&#8217;s In The Box?, a short &#8220;demo&#8221; from Tim Smit and Steven Roeters, may be a glorified homage to the popular video game Half-Life. But it&#8217;s an awful good one. In case you haven&#8217;t heard, with just a 9-minute video and recently a mysterious official site, it&#8217;s been a viral [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6253,"href":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions\/6253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fwdlabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}