The negative side of the cool viral marketing that the studios is doing is what people the Alternate Reality Gaming world call Gamejacks. The Cloverfield craze saw the emergence of Evan Haas and a few other sites which attempted to capitalize on the hype behind JJ Abrams’ mysterious monster flick. I’m usually hesitant to report on such new sites, especially due to the studio’s unwillingness to confirm such sites as official or “Out of game”.
Today I received an email from a /Film Reader named Sam R, about a site first mentioned in a Cloverfield comment thread by a user named titmouse. The site, 27.com was first believed to be related to Cloverfield. The website features the weird math equation shown in the photo above, followed by the text:
you can live there if you want to but I’m not going near it
Sam noticed that there was a small HTML tag for an unused photo in the website source - www.27.com/ro.jpg, which brings you to the previously released Watchmen still of Rorshach holding the ever-famous smiley. But if this is an official viral site, who wouldn’t Warner Bros use a new still to confirm this fact to fans? It’s also worth noting that the image is in an extremely high resolution (3884 x 1810) than I’ve ever seen it prior (but this could just be a high def enlargement).
What has me interested in this website, is the domain name. It’s a two number/letter domain, which many of you probably know, isn’t cheap. Unless you had a domain like this locked up for a long while, it isn’t something you could easily get your hands on without some big bankroll. The site first showed up in June, and many people believed it to be part of Bungie’s online viral game for the Halo video game series.
So I’m hoping that someone reading this speculative post will be able to prove or debunk this site as part of a new Watchmen viral effort. Anyone up for the task?
January 12th, 2008 at 6:49 am
The background image is part of a bigger picture, blown up (is it a page from the comic, perhaps?) - it contains musical notes. The picture is also called “ItsATrap” - which seems to be a reference to Star Wars?
However, it’s still registered to Matt Asher, who’s well known with regards to Bungie Studios - I reckon either they’re going to make a Watchmen game, or this is a total red herring.
January 12th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
It looks like the two red things are the letters D and I, written in a diner style font. Could it be a really blown up picture of the Gunga Diner? Granted, it doesn’t match what I’ve seen so far, but it could be possible.
January 12th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
about that Rorshach picture - its been around for quite a while in that resolution. It showed up on some guys blog soon after that 300 trailer. he got it from snyder himself or smth..
January 12th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
the domain was registered in 1998 to Matt Asher and the page was last updated in July. So my guess is that this is nothing really
January 12th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
I believe Zach Snyder hid that one still within a 300 trailer, if I remember correctly. It’s about a year old or so.
January 12th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Well…looks like this might be a dud.
titmouse from the Cloverfield blog put up another photo that he/she found on the site, which can be viewed at 27.com/ar.jpg.
Haven’t we seen this photo before? Was it from the Ethan Haas ARG or the Halo one? Someone help me with this one. Either way, this looks to be just a fansite, IMO.
January 12th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Hoult: That confirms what I thought. The image from my last posting was used on the 27.com site before to fan the viral flames around Halo 3.
So, if it’s a red herring, Asher (or someone who has his login information) might’ve had the Snyder “Rorschach” image around for “shits and giggles”.
I’m undecided on the intent of this site right now, but I’m not keeping my hopes high. :)
January 12th, 2008 at 6:04 pm
http://27.com yeilds this instead of the 27 calculations:
27.com
You are dead.
I am not.
January 12th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
Yeah Sam, I started getting into the investigation bit of it, and then discovered that all of the ground has already been covered by the Halo 3 ARGers.
hays - he probably didn’t register it, he (or Bungie) probably bought it in June 2007, as prior to that there was a “Buy this domain”/search site. Before that, the only content was an Under Construction page.
January 13th, 2008 at 3:44 am
That Rorshach image was put into a split-second frame within the last 300 trailer that was let loose on the net.
What was more impressive is that a fan managed to spot it. When news broke out about the Rorshach shot, Snyder released that high-res version you see.
January 13th, 2008 at 10:48 am
According to someone who has been in contact with WB, that site is in no way related to Watchmen viral marketing.