SANTA MONICA, CA, July 7, 2008 - "Whether I'm working on a broadcast commercial or something in another medium, it's all storytelling, and I like it to feel very authentic," says tight director Danny T, who worked with the project's visionary creator Matt Wolf of Double Twenty on an alternate reality game promoting Guillermo Del Toro's upcoming film HellBoy II: The Golden Army. Danny T, whose spot credits include projects for Nike and Coke, was responsible for directing the live-action segments appearing online via a variety of distribution platforms.

Recognizing the Internet as a vital tool to communicate with people all over the world via video cam, blogging, and websites, the team has incorporated all of these Web sectors to create an interactive, alternate reality game that encourages participants to work together to uncover clues, unravel a mystery, and solve a myriad of puzzles. 

An innocent visit to YouTube serves as a portal to the ARG's live action clips, luring viewers through the looking glass with segments that are alternately amusing, intriguing, and startling: a young, amateur vlogger named Lexi gradually finds herself drawn into a world of fairies, trolls, and other things that go bump in the night; video footage of random people encountering a spray painting with secrets of its own; and clips of leaked military training and experiment footage. Each of these videos contain clues to help win the game. The YouTube videos have already received thousands of hits while message boards on other sites associated with the game have become popular tools for players to communicate and to work together to figure out who the characters are and what the clues to unlock the final puzzle - known as the Secret Device - could be.

 

 

There are a variety of sites to visit creating various ways to be introduced to the game. Because of this there are three distinct groups of players: Hellboy fans, gamers, and an audience that stumbles upon it either by seeing the YouTube videos or by word of mouth. The main sites introduce you to the Secret Device, where clues are given and received and where the true mystery will be revealed, HETFET, which has message boards, forums, information, articles, and links to the YouTube sites, and finally Panatrog, which is a mysterious organization associated with the game.

Wolf explains, "It combines story narrative and gameplay in one. Designed to entertain diehard fans of Hellboy and new fans alike, our goal was to create a parallel experience for people to get excited about, as the upcoming movie approaches." As the participant becomes more involved with the game and the online characters, they are educated about the upcoming Hellboy movie as well. While the game is fantasy, it does include a real eco friendly message that people believe in and can relate to since there is a concentration around HETFET, Humans for the Ethical Treatment of Fairies, Elves and Trolls, and their environmental safety. As well as the connection with live-action characters that gamers have already formed a rapport with through YouTube and message boards. The players are introduced to various characters and scenarios that will allow them to formulate a relationship with the franchise and therefore create new Hellboy fans without giving away any details of the actual film.

A co-host of the award-winning The Totally Rad Show (referred to by Wired Magazine as "The best weekly podcast-period"), Danny T routinely covers the latest in movies, television, videogames and comic books. "Matt and I are both gaming geeks and through hanging out we recognized that and collaborated well," the director says. "Being part of making a game and the process was very exciting and cool. I am a guy who plays the games, I'm that guy we're targeting. I'm a consumer of other products as well, and I always try to relate to the audience for a campaign. Still, when it comes to the gaming stuff, I was uniquely connected."

For Danny T, the challenge was to grab viewers' attention and inspire an "is it or isn't it real" reaction. "Even in a movie theatre, we're asked to suspend disbelief, if just for a moment," he explains. "We wanted the videos to be just believable enough to have people, for a second or a minute, to question whether or not this is real."

The vlogger, Lexi, for example, had to be "a real person, not a character," Danny T says. "There is a point where you realize she is an actor, but at the same time, when these videos broke, people were emailing Lexi thinking she did not know she was being used as part of a game." For the spray paint videos, we paired visual effects with a very grounded shooting style to strike the perfect balance between credibility and unreality. Danny T shot the "educational film" pieces on Super8, which most closely resembled the look of the old-school 16mm films he studied as references and Wolf really wanted to obtain. "We want people to laugh at it because it's so dead on," he says. "It could have been made thirty years ago, it could be the real thing, something we found in a vault, but it's not." The believability throughline extended to editorial and music, Danny T says. "You don't want it to be so crappy that it's unwatchable, but the artistry can't be too polished."

With increasing views and response, the game has rapidly been gaining momentum in anticipation of the film's July release, and both Danny and Matt are pleased by the reaction to the work. "Hopefully, by avoiding overt stylization that would reveal the hand of the director," Danny T concludes, "I've been able to put my own stamp on it, after all."

 

To view the game and various websites visit www.thesecretdevice.com, www.hetfet.org, www.panatrog.org. Danny T's live action material can be viewed atwww.youtube.com/user/lexivision, www.youtube.com/user/aSmarmyYeti, www.youtube.com/user/dutchfelines, as well as Tightfilms.com. Double Twenty is located at d20.com The game will wrap on June 4, 2008 and the Secret Device will be exposed to the public. Universal's Hellboy II: The Golden Army premieres world wide July 11, 2008.

Project Credits

Client: Universal Pictures (The Secret Device Alternative Reality Game)

Agency: Double Twenty
Executive Producer: Matt Wolf
Writer/Director/Game Design: Matt Wolf
Producer: Tania Thiele
Additional Writers: Tania Thiele, David Wohl

Production Company (Live-Action): tight
Director: Danny T
Executive Producers: Rich Carter, Don Block, Elaine Behnken
Head of Production: Annie Hanlon
Producer: Ari Hakim

Editorial: Jigsaw
Editor: David Trachtenberg
VFX: Mark Leiss
Executive Producer: Kirsten Thon-Webb

Editorial: Cosmo Street Editorial
Editor: Asako Ushio
Executive Producer: Yvette Cobarrubias

Music: Finger Music & Sound Design
Composer: Dave Hodge