I Love Bees

Tech notes:

In order for the world to sound more real and to portray an action adventure story with sound, many of the main scenes were first sketched out and the actions blocked, much like in a film production.

Each actor and each sound were recorded to give them specific spatial locations in their scenes.

Pirates | First Light | I Love Bees

I Love Bees

Halo 2 meets War of the Worlds (Nov. 7, 2004)

Using traditional storytelling to reach an Internet audience, Microsoft sponsored a radio broadcast based on the mythological world of Halo 2. Distributed through a web-based game, the story unfolds over 3 months and builds excitement up to Halo 2's launch on November 7th.

It begins with an actual website for a honey farm in Napa Valley, www.ilovebees.com, which is invaded by an artificial intelligence being who is accidentally sent here from a future time - just before the Covenant attacks of Halo 2's storyline. The "I Love Bees" website is corrupted by strange messages, which gamers work to unlock. As the story reveals itself, bit by bit with each audio clip, we are thrust into a Halo world of Spartan warriors and alien enemies.

The campaign was the brain child of creative director Elan Lee and science fiction author Sean Stewart of 4orty2wo Entertainment. Together, they created the compelling story and an intricate ARG (alternate reality game) to unlock the episodes.

Earlybird was hired by 4orty2wo Entertainment to work with Elan and Sean to build this imaginary world with sound, and supervise the audio and SFX production at Mix Magic, a Hollywood sound design studio.