As he sat in the dim corners of the room, in front the brightly lit computer of which its brightness he never really cared to turn down, Mal concentrated his eyes fully on the blinding screen as he continued to let the video render. When the video was just about 44% through with the uploading, he sat back in his chair with a sigh. Why does uploading have to be a total pain and be this troubling?
This was his fifth entry, and although with such a small but rising community on Youtube, he still couldn't contain his surprise when his entries managed to garner some attention. He's already received a few messages asking for him to upload more of Singa's tapes, and of course he was more than happy to oblige, but so far his investigation has yet to receive any useful insight from any brainstorming viewer.
They all kept constantly asking about the mysterious man that has been seen in Singa's tapes.
If only Mal had an answer for each of them, but he was just as confused as they were. After all, it was the primary reason why he even bothered to struggle through Youtube's meddlesome uploading policies in the first place just to get even one of these up.
He wasn't even sure if Singa had an answer for it, but then again, he did give these tapes to Mal albeit through some coercion. If he did have an answer, he wondered if Singa would have still gone through with giving him the large amount of tapes...
There was no telling who that man was, anyways. What Mal could see of the man's features was a black suit, his anatomy abnormally tall and slender... and Mal wasn't sure if it was the quality ripping of the camera, or if he was hallucinating... but one outstanding feature of him was that he was completely faceless. No eyes, no mouth, no hair... nothing on where his face supposedly is.
As soon as Mal saw heavily clear glimpses of Him in a lot of unrelated Marble Hornets tapes, his mind no sooner began trying to rationalize exactly what he had seen that was stalking Singa.
It could have just been wearing a tight white sack over its face to conceal his features. Mal has once heard about a man who owned elongated limbs due to a growth disease, and this stalker was probably no different. There wasn't quite any way to explain why he was wearing a business suit at all times.
Besides that, there was also no plausible reason to explain why exactly he targeted Singa. Mal tried to think a little harder about the colleague who he hasn't seen in a while, but the memories about him came up a little blurry as he tried to flash back.
One thing that stood out to Mal as a potential reason was that Singa did belong to a somewhat wealthy family, but if he remembered correctly, his family cut off ties with him when they found out that he decided to pursue an artistic career rather than becoming an accountant or something that would guarantee a large paycheque. The stalker could have known this and was aiming to kidnap him for a ransom, but there was no time to think about if his family would even be willing to pay for their "disgraceful" son in the first place.
No time to think about that.
Singa did have a load of friends, but there was only really a few that stuck with him. That was made clear when he started the production, most of his friends were extremely doubtful whether he could make his project work, so only a very few ever attended his auditions for actor casting.
But he wasn't sure what point that had to make relating to his stalker.
Singa was an ace grader, for sure. He was diligent, never stalled for time, had a need for punctuality and discipline in himself, and sure enough, was intelligent. He was the type of student that regular teachers wanted their pupils to be like in college. He even gave lectures about other people's learning habits whenever the opportunity presented itself, and Mal, being one of Singa's close friends back then, was no exception from it.
But that still presented no points of relation. And there was no way Mal would take "for the heck of it" for a proper reason of stalking.
After all, he is currently bearing witness to these tapes and how this stalker terrorised Singa's life. Mal's only seen a few, but it was enough to tell him that Singa felt haunted by this person's mere presence. Mal couldn't tell what date this person first appeared since the tapes had no labels whatsoever, and Singa has never, ever confessed to being stalked by a horrifying-looking man, so it was impossible to determine when he started affecting Singa's life downwards.
There was only two months worth of production... that person could have appeared anytime.
When the uploading number struck 74%, so did a realization in Mal. His heterochromic eyes widened as something crossed his mind.
This person only appeared when Singa had started his production of Marble Hornets. Unclear when, but it was definitely around that time. In certain tapes, there was when Singa was behaving like himself; albeit strict, he was sociable, easy-to-approach and overall a friendly type of person. It was clear in those tapes that was when the stalker hasn't yet got a deadly grip over his life.
In other tapes, especially when it was not during production, he seemed to have a dead serious look on his face, acting paranoid, on edge, and fidgety, constantly uncomfortable with his surroundings despite living comfortably in the confines of his rented home, where his stalker is expected to barge into his room at any time. Which is why he has his camera recording him at all times.
It was only after he started production that he ever had signs of recording himself constantly.
Why was he so desperate to keep the camera recording at every single point of the day anyways? What was it about this stalker that he was desperate to get on camera when the chance comes? Why did this stalker appear after production started?
More questions... yet there were still no answers. Mal sighed frustratingly to himself as he rested his elbows on the desk and ran a hand through his hair, asking himself like this will get him absolutely nowhere.
There was even still the main question of whether or not Singa was still alive...
When he looked back up, his eyes landed on the completed loading bar. The uploading process was 100% done. He pressed a few more buttons, and finally he got the fifth entry uploaded.
All he can really do right now is to wait.
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Entry #5
Before Marble Hornets began production, I went location scouting with Singa.
I filmed him talking about the locations he was interested in using.
I came across one of the tapes containing this footage that has its audio severely distorted.
The camera cut to a clear shot of Singa, with the bright glimmer in his eyes, standing in the middle of a dim-lighted gazebo in the middle of a forest. Mal was the one holding the camera, and off-screen, he told Singa, "Okay, it's recording."
"Okay," Singa nodded in confirmation, before he gestured to the empty, clean gazebo, "This is the gazebo where I want Ame to come back and reflect later in the movie, this will probably be about... 3/4ths on the way through."
Mal looked around using the camera, where the gazebo has seats for any passerbys to use for resting, "This will just be by himself, right?"
"Yeah. I'm thinking about maybe... putting in a--" Singa started to muse, before the audio suddenly receives loud, deafening and deep-sounding distortions that completely blocked out every other noise in the tape.
Mal had walked closer to Singa as he talked about the scenes he planned to record in use of the gazebo, but Mal himself didn't quite remember what exactly Singa was talking about, and he wasn't a lip reader either so it was hard to discern what he was saying. He was sure it wasn't anything important to note, it was only about the location usage after all.
It took about a few seconds of distortion, then it cuts to complete silence before the audio finally came back.
"--and we'll have him like... reflect and decide to actually go back to Mexi and try to win her back," Singa finished. He then started gesturing to the tall trees surrounding the gazebo, "And we have a good number of shots here. We have the stream down there."
His eyes trailed down as he pointed to where the camera's gaze followed suit, which was indeed a small running, rocky stream, but that was where the audio faced distortions again, disabling anything else to be heard. The camera did turn to look at where the sun is, judging by the bright light.
When the audio returned, it was Mal speaking, "-area. It's very... I don't know, secluded, I guess."
There was deliberate silence for a few seconds before the video cut to a new scenery, and Mal pointed the camera up to view a different area. If Mal remembered correctly, they were still in the same forest.
"Alright," Mal in the recording said.
"Alright, this is going to be near Mexi's hunting camp," Singa gestured to the dirt which had no grass growing, and surrounded by a thin layer of very tall trees.
He then gestured far off to a fire pit in the fair distance, to which the camera zoomed to, "Over there, we're going to do the bonfire scene, over by the fire pit."
Mal gave a large cough, before nodding, "Yup."
His friend continued, "Uh, I also want to have a shot of the next day, where--" Once again, the audio distorted, but this time, Singa's words could still be heard albeit terribly amplified.
"Mexi and Ame--... Uh, I might also have Rus there at some point... are sitting around, thinking about the past. You know, just talking about..." The distortion ends, reducing his voice to a normal volume, "-days gone by."
Mal could only listen and respond with, "Yeah."
"Uhm... I really like this place since we have the treeline that basically blocks off our entire shooting area," Singa pointed to the treeline where the bare ground cuts off into fresh-looking green grass, which gave almost an aesthetic kind of look. Then he looked up, "And we also have these really tall trees in the middle which... personally I think are kinda cool, it at least doesn't make the background look any cramped."
Even to this day, Mal does think they look pretty cool and really neat as a fellow nature lover himself. Of course as a city boy, Singa wasn't accustomed to seeing nature all that much, but he did insist on using outdoor scenery a lot for his movie. He wondered if those trees are still there.
The camera then panned over to a red tower in the distance, where the tall grass ended. He asked as he zoomed in on it, "What's that tall red thing over there?"
"Oh, I think that's an old climbing wall," Singa said, which surprised Mal in the recording because he figured Singa wasn't one to know about the little things in areas like these, "Though I can't remember if it was a climbing wall or if the fire department used--" Yet his words cut off by another loud distortion, but the camera still remained fixated on the red tower... or climbing wall as proclaimed by Singa.
But as soon as Mal finally zoomed out away from the wall and the distortion ended, the topic seemed to have changed as Singa gestured with an outstretched arm, "--although I wish the tall grass were all level or we had more of it. It just kind of abruptly stops there, and it kind of irritates me."
That had Mal audibly chuckling in the recording, "Well I think it looks just alright, but of course you'd say something like that."
"I'm not complaining or anything, I'm sure we can work a way around it," Singa retorted.
"You know that's not what I meant," Mal said, before the tape ends there, followed by the current Mal's commentary.
In addition to the audio distortion, there have been instances of visual tearing.
I've noticed these occuring in previous entries as well.
It's possible that I've missed other occurrences of this in tapes that I've already watched.