Look Closer [Countryhumans x Marble Hornets]

PROLOGUE: tapes

He cautiously dug his hand into it and pulled one of the many plastic thingies he apparently had stocked up.

Though, within the second he had pulled it off and registered its shape and size, Mal instantly remembered what they were.

Tapes. These two bags contained a heavy load of tapes.

But... why were they here? What were they for again? What were they supposed to contain?

Upon trying to remember the origins of these tapes, Mal felt like a huge chunk of his memory regarding these tapes was missing from his brain. He doesn't remember where he collected so many tapes from, and why were they in his closet.

He was a film student, of course, but he doesn't remember--

...

All his questions were suddenly instantly answered at that very second when he remembered his third college semester.

Where he had been helping a friend work on his very own ambitious film over the summer of 2006. Where he had been the script supervisor for it. Where production gradually grew dissatisfaction. Where his friend had eventually halted it, and soon enough, cancelled it. Where he had requested to take its production tapes for himself upon hearing his friend's answer to the question of what he wanted to do with them.

"Burn them. What else?"

An old friend, to be exact.

-----

June 20, 2009

A video has been released on the Youtube website, where said website was only in its early days and people only released whatever they wanted to, and Mal was no exception. After he had finally sorted out his closet and his apartment became much more liveable and comfortable, he instantly brought the plastic sacks into his room, where his camera was there so he could watch these tapes.

During this past week since he had found these tapes again, he had been busying himself watching all the tapes, and quite a lot of them stuck out to him, much to his surprise and delight.

However, something in him compelled him that he should publicize his investigation. Post it somewhere, perhaps the Internet could be somewhat of help. He didn't know why, but he had felt an abnormally strong urge to post his findings on the Internet, where many strangers who potentially don't know any better than he did, but it was still worth a shot. After all, this was 3 years ago, many things could've happened since then. He hasn't seen said friend ever since he cancelled production and moved away to a new college, he hasn't seen anybody else who were involved in the production either.

Anything could have happened, and whatever he had seen on these tapes only solidifed the mystery behind those happenings.

His friend had broke contact with him, and the only people Mal ever really kept in touch with from college were his two friends who had nothing to do with the project at all. He even tried getting one of said friends, Indo, to try and get in touch, but it was just last night when he finally broke the news to Mal, "no avail".

Regardless, Mal doesn't think his contact is important now. He's been away for 3 years, and Mal could only hope that nothing particularly bad has happened.

His only source and help guideline could only be the Internet, which is why he had to start up the channel under the name Singa had entitled his failed student film project with: "Marble Hornets".

That was when Mal released his first video, on June 10, 2009, titled "Introduction".

The following clips are raw footage excerpts from Singapore.

A college friend of mine.

In 2006, Singa was in the process of shooting his student film, entitled Marble Hornets.

Over the three months that this took place, his film crew complained of his increasing levels of stress and irritability.

Near the end of shooting, Singa halted production indefinitely and dropped the unfinished project.

He told me it was due to the "unworkable conditions" on his set, which was less than a mile away from his house.

I asked what he planned to do with the countless number of tapes he had filled.

"Burn them."

Being a film student myself, I hated to see all of his work go to waste.

And after some coercing, he agreed to give them to me, under the condition that I never mention it to him again.

Soon after, Singa transferred to another school and I haven't seen him since.

At the time, I was too unnerved to look through the tapes, and eventually forgot about them.

And last week I found them filed away in the back of my closet.

After three years and zero contact with Singa, I've decided to look through them.

All the tapes are unnumbered and missing timestamps. Other than taking place in the summer of 2006, it's impossible to determine the exact order or date of each.

I've looked through several of them, and I've found something that convinced me to upload them to keep as permanent record.