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-Etrocal · Boot Joined: 28 Mar 2011 Posts: 33

I think it tactually really does matter if it's good or not. Most, if not all series' are lacking something that could make it stand out as great to anyone. Usually it's budgetary stuff or actors capabilities, but all of that is important.

Also definitely playing up the interactive/puzzle solving elements I think could pull people in. If stories are actually shaped around what the fans do it'd make it feel like they actually have some sort of control, rather than deciphering cryptic messages splayed across the screen at the end of every other video.

From a purely storytelling perspective, most could use more active protagonists. There's often times a lot of sitting and waiting for scary stuff to happen. It's generally hard in horror to maintain something with a protagonist actively doing stuff, especially when the horror is derived from the unknown, but that leads me to:

Building the world, super important. Don't have the characters faces not matter, they matter literally more than the creature itself. I think that's why EMH did so well from the get go, and why people seemed to like Tim from MH so much. Some vlogs are better with characters than other but it still seems to be falling a bit short.

I'm not even sure if the found footage style is necessary at this point, it's definitely feeling played out (especially in mainstream horror.) I've seen more than a few creators have intro titles and overlay music and doing crap that just doesn't work if you're trying to make it immersive, and the wealth of crossovers just weakens that reality. I think the next highly successful series will be either completely real or shot like a movie.

My 2 cents. People keep playing up the same style of horror with Slenderman, which is admittedly creepy as hell, but eventually seeing the guy in the obvious mask staring at you in the distance loses its thrill. (Another note. Invest in a good costume.) I just watched It Follows the other day, which is hardly playing anywhere, but it's got the same sort of ambiguous terrifying creature, but the real horror comes from the characters. And, of course, the whole STD thing. That fear felt real, and that was supplemented by a creature that's creepy as nuts.

Maybe a series could be about the die hard fans trying to find if SM really exists, maybe it could be about something else entirely. I think the most creative thing MH did was creating slender sickness, so then any time you get a cough you think that creature is out there.

Importantly, there are some really simple tension building techniques that a lot of people forego completely. The 'walking around with a handy cam until TEHRE HE IS!' system isn't effective because now we know what we're looking for and expect it to be there, and if Slendy doesn't show up at the need of an eight minute video walking around a forest we feel cheated. Restraint is important. Citing 'It Follow's again, the movie, (which I'm just going to talk about assuming you've seen the trailer, if you haven't you definitely should because it's awesome,) has a the Entity or whatever it is always walking towards you. It doesn't need jump scares because you -know- it's coming. So, as filmmakers, they do lots of long shots, they show you every side of the building to give you spacial awareness so you can feel that impending dread along with the characters. Horror movies should be able to get the audience tense just with a sound effect, or lack thereof. Framing is important. Basic cinematic stuff that can still be applied to found footage. (When I say sounds though, I don't mean ear rape.)

Slenderman is most terrifying because of its mystery and unrelentingness. There's no garlic and cross, his motives are ambiguous and his actions shouldn't feel cheap in comparison. A great horror to play off with it is the fear of being singled out even if you didn't do anything to deserve it, maybe. Or, and I know some series' have done this, play off the fact that if you share SM with anyone he goes after them as well, play up the isolation. It's not just the scary setups, the executions and characters need to be good as well.

I'm sorta rambling here, but a final note is to make sure that nothing cheapens your series. If everything most everything is good 'except the acting,' it's bad. The immersion is ruined. If your SM costume looks crap, your immersion is ruined. MH was strong because for the first 20 episodes there just wasn't any acting that could get in the way. EMH though, usually pretty good with some ham in some places, had one 'dramatic' scene of a character getting strangled, and it looked so fake it took any horror out of the scene. That said, when their Rake showed up it looked so good that the horror got better.

Same said for good actors. A good actor can make the story way better, but if you don't have anyone then make sure your story doesn't emphasize it. MLAndersen's Michael was a great actor, and that's I think literally the only series I've seen where I'm not bored with a five minute video of a college kid addressing a camera.

It seems like in some cases series' don't watch horror or understand why the horror worked in the first place the the earlier series'. You need to look at previous examples of successful horror before wondering how to make SM popular, and I think in doing that you can pull it back into the spotlight.

**Posted:** Fri Mar 20, 2015 4:16 pm

gottagofast · Boot Joined: 10 Jun 2012 Posts: 62

I was mostly talking about blogs since I believe they stagnated more than the vlogs, but I should've specified it myself. I've just been a blog guy forever because I can't handle the spooky videos.

With blogs, you don't have to worry about acting, budget, bad costumes, etc, so it's a lot easier to get by with.

**Posted:** Sat Mar 21, 2015 6:05 pm

Cyan507

**Posted:** Sat Mar 21, 2015 7:26 pm

gottagofast · Boot Joined: 10 Jun 2012 Posts: 62

While being a good writer is very hard, you can pull a lot of tricks to get by with mediocre writing skills and still have a somewhat decent blog. I think its a lot easier than acting.

**Posted:** Sat Mar 21, 2015 8:40 pm

Cyan507

**Posted:** Sun Mar 22, 2015 6:22 pm

The Totem

I looked through most of the blog/vlog trailheads that are on the second and third page and found that most of them either deleted all their videos, deleted the entire blog, or simply haven't posted anything in months. Sad

The mythos are nearly dead.

**Posted:** Sun Mar 29, 2015 9:27 pm

_________________
PhantomVoices
Totem Films (OOG channel)

AdvantageFire · Decorated Joined: 21 Jan 2014 Posts: 294

Well some series are still going, i.e. AntediluvianOne, Michael's Camera, AshesToAshes000.

**Posted:** Mon Mar 30, 2015 2:36 am

gottagofast · Boot Joined: 10 Jun 2012 Posts: 62

**Posted:** Mon Mar 30, 2015 8:27 pm

Waldron96 · Veteran Joined: 10 May 2015 Posts: 140

WARNING: This post is VERY long. Get a snack

**Posted:** Sun May 10, 2015 9:50 pm

TheFallenSeven

I agree with this, and I am definitely guilty of those few things you mentioned. It is hard to find a good slenderman youtube series anymore, besides the big ones. I really hate my earlier videos I made so im making a plot to possibly explain those videos and make up for the overall story, but yeah the plot development, I feel, came to late in my series and I believe I probably bored people from it. I would love to find other good slenderman youtube series or maybe something very similar.

**Posted:** Mon May 11, 2015 9:45 am

AdvantageFire · Decorated Joined: 21 Jan 2014 Posts: 294

me too... hell i lost alot of hope in my series as of late, i'm already considering giving up on it and just leaving it to die...

i came to late with a shit plot.

**Posted:** Mon May 11, 2015 10:55 am

The Totem

I decided to restart my whole damned series because nothing would actually be seen unless I played "Follow the leader" with the Big Five. Seriously, some of the viewers that actually know what to see in a series have already left the Slender Man fandom. Bang Head

The mythos aren't dead, I'll say that. However, I won't say that Slender Man is still mainstream. Right now, it seems like Five Nights at Freddy's is taking its place.

~~Actually, I had the idea of an FNAF ARG that takes place in the 90s... I'm just some 14 year old with a shoestring budget, though, so what do you expect?~~

Actually, that brings me to my next point. No one with an actual budget will do anything Slender Man-related anymore That's mostly the cause of so many shitty series and the disinterest in the mythos as a whole. Hell, the actual popular amateur vlogs keep getting gamejacked.

Now, I know I've been biased, so I'll address my vlog and others like mine. Without the sufficient video editing software, it'll be difficult to actually make your idea work. Hell, I've had to berate MYSELF due to how bad my earlier (deleted) videos were and how... mediocre my current videos seem without the full story revealed. Now, I don't know, I guess I'll look at all the posts in this thread and see what to improve on.

**Posted:** Mon May 11, 2015 2:53 pm

_________________
PhantomVoices
Totem Films (OOG channel)

GMan10598 · Boot Joined: 07 Sep 2014 Posts: 14

Re: WARNING: This post is VERY long. Get a snack

**Posted:** Tue May 12, 2015 12:27 pm

Waldron96 · Veteran Joined: 10 May 2015 Posts: 140

By Incident in June I meant the Wisconsin girl who was dragged to the woods and stabbed by two other girls and left to die to sacrifice to Slenderman. They found the girl on May 31st, but I remember all of the news and media coverage of it around June. So, technically, the MAY incident then

**Posted:** Tue May 12, 2015 2:38 pm

Josh Rallus · Veteran Joined: 25 Oct 2010 Posts: 119

I think the biggest problem with the mythos is series that haven't updated in over a year or are actually over are still the top five. I think if there was some kind of recognition for newer series instead of all this focus on the past things would seem less bleak. What are the five best current and ongoing series?

**Posted:** Sun May 17, 2015 12:45 am