As many have figured out, these are pre-generated mp4 files. There's no 'magic' in the video files themselves (i.e. the video is not generated on the fly)<p>In <a href="https://thechoiceisyours.whatisthematrix.com/_nuxt/commons/app.js" rel="nofollow">https://thechoiceisyours.whatisthematrix.com/_nuxt/commons/a...</a><p>The client side generates an unobfuscated string such as:<p>red-a-b1-c1435-d-e2-f-g3-h2-i<p>where 1435 is the current local time (search for `key: "teaserSrcProps"` in the code to find the relevant function)<p>Then "17" is prepended to that string ("BOND_OBFUSCATION_SALT" in the source code), and then the video file name is simply the MD5 of the string.<p>To find the video URL:<p><pre><code> // change 1435 for any HHMM time
timeStr = "red-a-b1-c1435-d-e2-f-g3-h2-i"
videoFile = MD5("17" + timeStr) + ".mp4"
url = "https://thechoiceisyours.whatisthematrix.com/generated/v7/high/" + videoFile
</code></pre>
:-)<p>---<p>All 1440 red pill video URLs (tested all of them in bulk without downloading any using `wget --spider -i allurls.txt` — spider is a cool option!):<p><a href="https://gist.github.com/gregsadetsky/cb4754d123f0ea1eae26820d5aefdde1" rel="nofollow">https://gist.github.com/gregsadetsky/cb4754d123f0ea1eae26820...</a>
I'm reading here various conspiracy theories about how the current time was inserted by one technical trick or another. We should at least consider the possibility that this was simply a preview of the matrix we all live in, and to prepare us for waking up in a vat of mucus.
people on reddit have noticed that different clips are played each time you view either pill. ive clicked the pills maybe 20 times so far and theres at least one new clip each time. it looks like they pre-rendered for each time and spread out a ton of clips across all those times. so the computers that are serving this just have a ton of videos and change which ones they are giving out once per minute, compensating for time-zones. pretty simple. but a great result. i feel like this is the most compelling advertising ive seen in my adult life.<p>i think its interesting that they chose the pre-rendered approach to this. pre-rendered and FMV is a very interesting space right now. there seems to be a revival stirring. take for example "at dead of night." its a horror game thats pre-rendered and uses FMV and does it perfectly to stunning effect. people liked it, markipliers lets play got something like 7M views IIRC. and the previous game by that same person was a full FMV murder mystery game and it is very compelling indeed. nobody has seen these concepts fleshed out in the modern world where storage is dirt cheap and video games are taken seriously. new life is going to be breathed into these concepts and i think it will be very exciting.
Who had the Matrix screen saver back in the day?<p>I was in an open plan office at the time of about 30 desks. Every single one of the machines had this screen saver running.
For folks who are having problems or are in a scenario where you can't see this (issue on mobile, text only browser, always reads the comments first, don't want to click on a thing that says "trailer"), here's what the link portrays:<p>Overall, the page is an ad for the new Matrix movies, a teaser for some upcoming trailer. It's a white screen showing a red pill on the left and a blue pill on the right. You click on one of the pills and a video starts streaming with a voice over, a-la one of Morpheus' speeches from the original. As you see the green "matrix digital rain" falling, you'll hear the same voice over per-pill each time, with both indicating something along the lines of "are you sure about what you know?" and <i>right after</i> that opening voice line the video will show the current time (very seamlessly, so it seems like it's always been a part of the video) and the actor doing the voice-over says the time right then.<p>In my case it was 10:59am when I played the video, so the overall effect was like this:<p><pre><code> "Are you sure you know what you know?" ( <- paraphrasing)
Cut to large swooshing graphic of
the numbers "10:59" as the voice
actor says "ten fifty nine a.m."
Then the rest of the teaser plays.
</code></pre>
No matter which you click on you get effectively the same thing, but with a different script and voice per pill color.
so they can bring back reeves but not fishburne? fishburne says they never even called him. imagine being fishburne and not even getting a text message and the matrix 4 is filming.
Each segment of the trailer is a different MP4. They are all hosted on the AWS CloudFront CDN. My guess is, like somebody stated, they pre-rendered many videos, and use a lambda at the edge to decode a GUID in the URL into a S3 path.
Found a teaser (possibly testing one?) with WB Marketing watermarks:<p><a href="https://thechoiceisyours.whatisthematrix.com/_nuxt/videos/qualities/7000k/blue-a-b3-c0000-d-e3-f-g3-h3-i.mp4?fb8175c501d69c240c592fd3bb2664b5" rel="nofollow">https://thechoiceisyours.whatisthematrix.com/_nuxt/videos/qu...</a>
R/GA owns a company, Imposium[1], that does dynamic video. Wonder it they did this.<p>[1]- <a href="https://imposium.com/" rel="nofollow">https://imposium.com/</a><p>Their previous work: <a href="https://www.rga.com/work/case-studies/dupont-a-better-now" rel="nofollow">https://www.rga.com/work/case-studies/dupont-a-better-now</a>
Perhaps a bit meta, but between a new Matrix reboot, this weekend's Rick & Morty finale, and previously even Midnight Gospel among quite a number of other cultural themes about meaning, reality, good & evil, nihilism, I'm feeling a little metaversed out and wondering whether this kind of entertainment is a healthy thing to indulge in.<p>The idea that it is good to be unmoored from our senses and experiences in favour of filtering them through this flavour of intellectual dissociation seems unhealthy. When I think of the artists behind it, if you are invested in someone's happiness, "red-pilling" them is not generous or sharing, it's self interested and adding company to misery, and I am doubting that this is art by people actuated by the wellbeing of others.
Is it just me or does this feel kind of hamfisted? I think it would be a cool side detail to have (i.e. an analogue or digital clock shown somewhere in the trailer with the time), but it was kind of jarring and out of place to loudly hear the current time.
this is kinda nice. you see guys, there is no need to look at the correct time and go and use "AI" to generate the speech and text in real time using the latest and greatest in tech.
you can just as simply pre record all time 1 to 59 and then join them. much easier and i dare say, much more elegant
I just created a little tool to aid in the reverse engineering of the system that generates the URLs for each custom video segment. The filenames of each video are the result of hashing an "options" string plus a pepper value; this tool takes care of the hashing.<p>Tool: <a href="https://agmm.xyz/matrix" rel="nofollow">https://agmm.xyz/matrix</a>
I just created a straightforward node script to generate the video URL given the time and the pill color.<p>There are a lot of more variations than these, but is enough for what it is<p><a href="https://gist.github.com/gil0mendes/398550cba7c96cb291b76cc416b32504" rel="nofollow">https://gist.github.com/gil0mendes/398550cba7c96cb291b76cc41...</a>
Huge Matrix fan but ... gah ... this is not something I want. Spin offs, sure, but another Neo story? Nope. Don't care.<p>(Not to mention the simple fact that neither Wachowski has made anything good since the first Matrix.)
I just found out that there is a new Matrix movie and I am honestly a little bit horrified. I have zero confidence that the downhill progression in movie quality will somehow be turned around given the current state of Hollywood.