remember to look behind you

Behind The Scenes Notes

A place for me to keep some notes taken on several 'Behind the Scenes'-esque footage, such as the Director's commentary, Twitch streams, or interviews with the cast. They won't be transcripts or anything that detailed, just some points or details that I found interesting! If there are public links to the original content, I'll make sure to link them through so you can check it out yourself!!


Season One DVD Commentary

  • The idea for Marble Hornets was originally inspired by the SomethingAwful forum's Create Paranormal Images thread - since no one had created anything using video format, Troy thought it would be an interesting experiment.
  • There wasn't a lot of story planned out for season one - the original 'plot' was planned out on about 34/35 notecards that mostly consisted of ideas for camera shots and "Alex doing weird stuff". They organized the cards in two different chronological orders - one timeline for Alex's original filming of the tapes, and a second for Jay's uploads of those videos.
  • Some of the audio distortions are so crazy loud because when Troy was doing the audio editing for the series, he could only hear out of one ear.
  • Alex 'Shooting the Behind the Scenes footage before he films any of the actual scenes' sums up his character well, according to Joseph
  • A lot of the scenes in Alex's house were filmed in Troy's mom's house
  • Troy didn't tell Joseph about the totheark video ahead of time, it was done on impulse!
  • The audio featured in the OPERATOR totheark video is the missing audio from the previous entry
    • A lot of the totheark content from season one was meant to be filling in missing pieces from Alex/Jay's content
    • A lot of the footage was also filmed off the cuff and Troy had to figure out what to do with it later on
  • Alex's room in Entry #14 was filmed in Brian's room - they would rarely let him know ahead of time they were planning to film in there
  • Audience input did not affect the majority of Marble Hornets' writing, but Tim's fidgeting in his interview with Jay caused a lot of suspicion in the viewers, which was a big influence on the writers deciding to take his story where they did.
  • Most of the "Marble Hornets" film scripts that are featured in the entries are the actual scripts the actors were referencing during filming
  • The "S" symbol in Advocate was a symbol for "Stigma/Stigmata", which was a prevalent plot line in season one that was dropped for the later seasons
  • One of Troy and Joseph's friends got a set-design credit for helping to tear up the townhouse for Jay's first exploration into Brian's house.
    • In this same entry, Joseph was wandering around the house making the ambient/startling noises as Jay explores
    • The bullet casing from this entry was found in Brian's couch - no one knows where it came from lol
  • "If you ever see a pocket knife with a flashlight attachment and wonder who would buy that - Brian is the person that would buy that." - Tim
  • 19.5 was the entry around the time that the project started to grow significantly and they realized they had to start pulling the entries into an actually coherent storyline
  • Brian's painting in Entry#20 that they tease the character for is an actual painting that actual Brian owned (and apparently still does)
  • The Marble Hornets writers did not scratch in the Operator symbol on the Red Tower in Entry#21 - it was probably a fan who had visited the location after its first apperance in Entry#5
    • Joseph was the one filming as Jay climbs the tower in this entry; Troy takes over again once Jay is back on the ground
  • The basement in Entry#22 was filmed in a very well known 'Haunted' location in the area
    • They weren't the ones who put the 'blood' on the walls either, this was also a result of grafitti that other visitors to the location left that the cast decided to take advantage of.
    • The 'face' in the visual distortion effects from this Entry was a very filtered, very close up shot of Joseph's nose
  • Troy was the one in the Mask during the WARNING tta video
  • The Jay's apartment location featured in Season one was filmed in Tim's apartment
    • When they filmed there in Entry#19, they accidentally left Tim's bass guitar in frame for some of the shots. Tim's bass guitar was Brian's bass guitar that he gifted to Tim
  • In ###### Tim was reading the voice over through a gas mask. The gas mask was originally going to be the mask of another prominent character for the series, but it was uncomfortable to wear and they thought it looked Not Great, so they opted against it.
  • All the brief clips of footage from the box's tape in Entry #26 was just leftover footage Troy repurposed.
  • Joseph was typing out the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme on the computer in the scene where Amy films Alex.

Season Two DVD Commentary

  • All of the Hotel scenes in season 2 were filmed over the course of one day (and briefly the next morning)
  • Joseph was frequently crawling around and behind furniture in order to help manipulate the scenes - making noises, bumping things, etc. - while still 'scuttling away' out of frame before Jay could get closer
  • The all-caps 'KEY' was not intentional, Troy simply didn't notice it
  • The actress Jessica being named Jessica was not intentional - as was the case for Brian, Tim, and Seth. They'd named the character Jessica before she auditioned and it was pure coincidence
  • The bloody shirt left in the Tunnel was - as of the commentary track's recording - Still in the tunnel; they didn't take it with them when they were done filming
  • There's a shadow shape placed behind Jessica's shoulder (towards the left side of the frame) in Entry #30 that the cast made out of paper and boxes. They later stuck it in their own window at home, but took it down at the request of their roommate - who kept forgetting it was there and got startled by it
  • The stranger Jay acts strangely around in Entry #31 was played by Troy and Joseph's roommate
  • Troy initially thought the Masked Man deliberately wrapping his fingers around the edge of the door in Entry #33 looked silly, but eventually they decided they really liked it (Thankfully LOL, that's SUCH an iconic bit of Masked-Tim's character)
  • In Entry #34, the abandoned building that Jay goes to was 'anti-graffiti'd' by Troy and his roommate - all of the black spraypaint was their effort to censor the existing graffiti
  • While shooting the fight scene in Entry #35, Tim offered to try a shot where Alex would slam his head into a door. They filmed it, but the shot never got used.
  • It was Extremely cold during the filming of this season, but the actors had to keep wearing t-shirts and shorts because the Project was set during the spring. Some entries had to be re-done several times due to shivering and shaking being too obvious
  • Entry #37 had to be briefly taken down because one of the kids in the shot was wearing a Spongebob T-shirt, which was a major time-continuity error
    • The footage itself was donated to the project
  • The story Alex tells in Entry #38 had no plot relevance, it was just meant to be an example of him being kind of a creep and a little unstable.
  • The chimney structure in Entry #40 was filled with bees
  • Joseph actually broke part of his car's dashboard while shooting the scene where Alex angrily throws his phone in Entry #42
  • The text from the totheark upload INQUIRY literally came to Troy in a dream
  • The cast did get the police called on them once while filming Jay breaking into Alex's place this season
  • During the confrontation between Alex and the masked men in entry #45, Tim appears to attempt hitting Alex in the head with a rock. Tim says this isn't strictly the case - it was meant to be him showing Alex the rock before attacking him, as a reminder to the time when Alex broke his leg with a similar rock.
  • Brian had to stand perfectly still against the wall in the 56-42 tape for roughly 20 minutes, and did so successfully. This was because the shot of the Operator rushing at the camera was originally going to be done with stop-motion, but it didn't work out.
  • The filming of Entry #52 took place almost a year after the filming done for the first part of the season - they returned to the same hotel, but it had been rennovated a Lot during that time, so they had to be very careful with the framing

Season Three DVD Commentary

WIP