unforum

[CoffeeJedi]

How would you adapt ILB to film?

[WhiteGulls]

Here's how I would imagine it going...



Opening Sequence - The Artifact / Crash of the Apocalypso

Main Theme - SPDR Awakens / The Op's Monolouge / A Princess in Peril

Scene 3 - Dana's Dilemma / The Beekeepers

Scene 4 - KILLER.JPG / Dana's Escape

Scene 5 - CONNECTION (AKA - Melissa becomes coherent, Princess attempts to communicate with us, Flea !attaches to Mel. If I'm thinking correctly, this is around the same time buildingavoice.wav happened, so the CONNECTION made sence to me.)

Scene 6 - A Call for Payphones

Interlude - The Princess Plots - Conversation With Seeker #1

Scene 7 - Durga / Walkaway Girl / The Arragement / Troy

Interlude 2 - The Queen Calls for Help (Capture of the Princess)

Scene 8 - Dana's Japan Trip (Ohnoes! My ATM card froze!)

Scene 9 - 7 Paths to Freedom

Scene 9 - Location of the Killer

Interlude 3 - Not THAT Grateful! - Conversations with Seeker #2

Scene 10 - The Artifact / Rani / Comp. Legit. Buis. / Spartan 1

Interlude 4 - Blackmail of a Killer

Scene 11 - I'm going home, bug!

Scene 12 - Team Jersey

Scene 13 - Dana confronts the 'Keepers

Scene 14 - Farewell for a Princess

Interlude 5 - Dana's Return (sounds out of place, but I couldn't think of anything else to call her posting on the blog again.)

Scene 15 - Heros

Scene 16 - Goodbye (possibly put at the end?)

Scene 17 - An Explanation

Scene 18 - Section 0 - or - To Spy on Spys

Scene 19 - Yasmine

Scene 20 - Moralas

Scene 21 - Here. (EDIT: This would be a collage os sorts - switching between characters rapidly, like "just who do you think you're trying to save?!", cut to the music building in Jersey, music cuts, "oh my god" , Sophie's "what's that noise", Durga "covanent attack cruser.", Rani's "Oh no.", ends with the gun cocking, and Gilly's "That's it - they're here." - Cut to a black screen)

Scene 22 - Credits, fade in-out of site, playback of memorable moments from the audio version.

EDIT: Once again, added in a new scene, Team Jersey.

[Astald]

I would just focus on the events in the future. Maybe somehow explain the events in our time, but not really devote any coverage on it. I mean, how captivated is an audience going to be while they watch a screen for two weeks while we try to solve a prepositions puzzle (I know you wouldn't really have to do that, just saying that it isn't very entertaining to watch the events on someones website when you have a rich live action story going on in the future).

[water10]

[thebruce]

I think they can focus on today's era, by making Dana more of a character, at least in the first portion of the movie... really build a connection with her, fill in a lot of the 'gaps' between blogs (like I'm trying to do in Creepy)... really focus on her... basically, I agree with Coffee's summary... it's hard to follow the entire beekeeper community, but merging core personalities and events into a small group of people is much easier to follow... it would be like a movie that's "based on a true story" - the main characters are sometimes composites of a number of real life people, in order to make the movie work.

I'd say even before the first payphone is picked up, jump to the first chapter of 2552, tell that story, introduce the characters... at the end of that 'chapter', do like the matrix zoom away from the phone earpiece back in our time, and focus on one the faces of the beekeepers huddled around the payphone in shock/awe at what they just heard (what we just watched)... then they work on the present day interactions, and follow Dana's story as a scene or two again... Dana would need to be a main recurring character throughout this, and even possibly have more of a role in the movie's fiction than she actually did in ARG itself... more continuity.

As the audio chapters go on, we'd just cut between the scenes just like a regular movie covering two plotlines would do, because we've already set the precedent that the future is happening in parallel... I dunno, the director can find a way to present the two timelines as happening simultaneously...
I dunno, just the structure of ilovebees might make making a movie that's true to the ARG very difficult... it might be better cutting out the whole 'weekly axon hunt' thing, and actually show the two timelines parallel scene by scene, and just show the audience that the beekeepers got their weekly 'report'...
an ILB movie wouldn't be a small undertaking, that's for sure... a lot of creative license would have to be taken with the flow of the story to make the two timelines merge seamlessly...

[Halrandir]

I love the ideas that all of you have thrown out. I don't really have any ideas to add. All of you should work together and write out a script. It could be the next Star Wars.

[kiro]

I think the movie should play out exactly as the story did, but the end of the film should be shown to only a select few people, while the actors and producers remove their make up and step forward to say hello. There should be entertainment laid on too, but the organisation should be really loose so that only 5% of those in attendance actually experience it.

Then, while most of the audience are left baffled, there should be some gifts handed out to a select few people. That should ensure a genuine and palpable jealousy and anger in the theater. When some of the lucky ones try to help others, they should be threatened with legal action and this crappy situation should be left to fester for a few days before anyone steps in to resolve it.

Oooh, then the producers could release some kind of memo that says they are working on a solution for everyone to feel cheery again, but then they should go completely silent and never say anything else about the matter, even when asked directly in a public chat room. That'll be a great twist in the plot that leaves viewers wondering what happened.

Finally, as the credits roll, some of the audience should be clearly seen remaining in their seats, hoping for a third party to help them experience a better ending than the one they got.





Sounds like a fantastic movie.

[krystyn]

/me sits back and watches the performance art.

[Nova]

[Incitatus]

I imagine the movie would be done as told for the story, condensing it of course, so that it would not run 10 hours.
Dana and Aunt Margarett should be key, as well as a few beekeepers to afirm the diversity (as said)

Dreamy-CGI/PERSON scenes to portray the AI fragments, show the pages in the site aswell as how the rest of the world sees the struggle.
SPDR is eliminated, and we switch to beekeeper fix her mode.
We see it go down exactly as it did - any halo refference. basically we try to help Mel. we see keepers at payphones and hear whats going on.

some scenes zooming from WMP audio wavs playing to synced surveilence camera or something then to the real-time footage of the scene would also be cool to transition.


you can incorperate both stories... and you would have to. What made the game was both stories, that of those in the future, and that of those here and now.3 stories: Fractured Mel, Beekeepers/Dana/Aunty, and 2552.
converge them into a 3 hour maximum movie.

I would obviously see it.

[archon]

To be made into a decent movie, I think that the majority of the website content and story would have to be sacrificed in order for the more main tale of the 2552 people to be told. Jan, Jersey, Kamal, Durga, and Rani would have to be the main characters. They should probably introduce Rani earlier on in the story to make the audience connect with her more. Since the main protagonist of the story is Durga/Yasmine, there could be ways of showing visually the half-split that Durga experienced. Time travelling Operator might have to be removed completely due to it getting a bit too complex to fit into a 2 hour movie. The artifact itself would need to be explored more in-depth.

Although I Love Bees is technically part of the Halo universe, the actual connections with the Halo games are still fairly loose. Details such as the Spartans (1.0's and II's) would have to be elaborated on due to their importance in both stories, but arcs such as the Stupid Cop and his mentoring Jan would probably have to be cut. The background on how smart A.I.s are made (as well as the distinction between smart and dumb A.I.s) would have to be highlighted also. Unfortunately, Jersey and Kamal's characters would probably have to be more condensed than Jan, Rani, and Durga's due to their relative importance to the overall plot.

People might hate me for suggesting this, but in my opinion, the role of Herzog and Rani could probably be combined into one character and not lose too much. Maybe the new Rani/Herzog could die in a similar way to how Herzog did, but somehow pass on the super secret base information to the chatter-friendly Kamal. This would change the climax, but not all that much, and that way the audience could focus more on Kamal, Jan, Jersey, and Durga. Think Ocean's Eleven meets Mission Impossible. The modern remakes of both.

Throughout the movie, the threat of the Covenant can be constantly looming just as it was in the game, but the end result has to be more conclusive unless a sequel is guaranteed, because there's nothing I hate worse then cliffhangers. The importance of the Covenant threat has to be made very early on, and the audience has to know that something drastic has to be done to prevent the enemy from reaching Earth, because once they're here, they will kill us all. Of course now that Halo 2 has shown us that deep down they're really just cuddly teddy bears, that might be harder to do.

There is no good way that I can think of off the top of my head to show a bunch of computer nerds running around to telephones and answering online puzzles in movie form. I don't mean that as an insult, because I'm pretty sure when it comes to answering phones, I was king dork... it's just that I can't think of a good way to show it.

Then again, I'm going off the assumption of a standard Hollywood movie, not an indie-style production that would probably get the most appreciation around here.

Edit to fix the all-important guaranteed

[water10]

[WhiteGulls]

You know, I think this could be on of the few movie adaptations that someone could make major changes to, and most of us probably wouldn't care. Couldn't have done that with LotR or any of the others like that. Nope. ILB, you could cut characters, combine them, or even forget to kill them off! Or, just not have them in the first place.

[krystyn]

The phones were part of Melissa's healing - we were the pings on the server, and we were the axons - part of the network that holds her together and helps put her back together again.

The Widow's Story makes less sense without all of us, and the payphones. You'd essentially be discounting (even though you don't mean to) the major portion of why this game was so heady and wild. At least, imho.

[water10]