Case 1017: Interesting Viral, or more?

Written on 16th March 2008                                                                                                              3 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur

There is an interesting viral coming up on Youtube. A guy calling himself Eric Brody started a video blog a few weeks ago and has been uploading simple video’s about his new job, how bored he is and how he hopes to meet women online though his blog. Then, yesterday,in an angry post he told his audience he was fired from his job and was sent home with a box with his belongings. So far nothing exciting.

But today he uploaded a video titled ‘case 1017′ which he says he found in his box with personal belongings. It shows a weird scene, filmed in secret, of an apparent cover-up, somewhere in the US. There is the usual muffled sound, gunshots and shaky camera movements. As noted in the comments the video looks just slightly too good to be a home video so we can assume this is a viral video in the style of Cloverfield or even The Blair Witch Project. Or maybe it isn’t. Check it out yourself.

The ‘Fired from work, found a disk’ video (watched only 120 times)

The Case 1017 video (watched 120.000 times):

What I find interesting is that the movie industry is turning movies into something bigger than just the experience of going to a theatre for a 2 hours. George Lucas was one of the first, or most prolific, directors embracing merchandising which turned his movies into a starting point for a lot of kids who then spent years playing with their star wars inspired toys. Making up new episodes in their own heads along the way.

Now the movie becomes ‘just’ a part of a story. One day the characters in movies might start their existence years in advance with virtual characters on Facebook, fake movies on YouTube and real Google Ranks and online identities. The movie will then look and feel more like a documentary which will make it less clear where reality ends and fantasy begins. With Cloverfield and maybe ‘Case 1017′ we will see this movement begin where the Internet is not just used as a promotional medium but as a way to tell a cross-media story.