A few weeks ago, I wrote an article about the many YouTube series about the Slender Man. Recently, I was able to sit down and talk to the creator of TribeTwelve, one of the more popular Slender Man series out there.
The series is great because it has a highly relatable main character. Noah, a normal college student, is mourning his cousin Milo’s death.
He collects the tapes he recorded from the last time they were together and as he watched the footage, he saw some highly disturbing occurrences.
While at his funeral, Noah’s grandfather gives him cryptic advice to avoid digging into the occurances.
After the funeral, Noah starts recording himself sleeping because he had been hearing strange noises at night.
During one of the recordings, Noah finds a package containing strange objects. One noteable object was a broken cell phone.
From here, he is thrown into a fight for survival as he tries to figure out what is going on.
In the interview I asked Adam Rosner, the creator of the series, what his inspiration was for TribeTwelve.
He reported that it all started when he found the original Marble Hornets videos on a popular forum site.
He watched the videos closely and they inspired him. When he started the series, Rosner had no idea it was going to be such a success.
He said that it was actually supposed to be something for fun and that he didn’t expect anything over a hundred views, but he was proved wrong.
Although Noah is a fictional character, Rosner stated that his main inspiration was himself. He wanted to create a character that could be a real person down the street.
“[Noah], is just an over exaggeration of how I was in high school.” Rosner stated.
Throughout the series, Rosner is known for creating often disturbing images or videos that seem to take over his YouTube channel.
One entity in particular, the Observer, is known to completely take over livestreams or Noah’s twitter account.
When asked about the inspiration behind these takeovers he only stated that it seemed like a logical step forward, but that he didn’t expect much out of the Observer character.
In one of the most famous takeovers, there is a panoramic view of what is called the Collective.
“I had it planned since day one.” He said, “I had a panoramic video of a bunch of random masks on people [and] I wanted to make the history of each person out of the mask they wore.”
TribeTwelve is known for having crossovers with the other Slender Man series that plague YouTube.
Rosner reported that it wasn’t planned out in the beginning. Through Facebook, he started talking to other creators and as they interacted, they decided to meet up.
After a while Rosner collaborated with the others on a few episodes, including the latest two.
Rosner also gave out some advice for people who are looking to making a Slender Man series of their own.
He urges writers to make a series that would stand out from the rest.
Since most popular series are wrapping up their plots, it’s difficult to jump on the bandwagon.
One of the best pieces of advice he gave was to have fun with it and not let any harsh criticisms get you down.
“You have to be original,” he states. “Create your own monsters. Be completely original with your cast.”
Kristen Mabry
Features Editor