Making Of (Believe)

Making Of est un documentaire, sorti le 14 septembre^[2], lié à la campagne publicitaire Believe. Il mélange réalité et fiction en présentant des images tirées de la réalisation du John-117 Monument, tout en prodiguant en voix off des détails liés à l'histoire fictionnelle du diorama.

La vidéo s'ouvre sur un extrait du poème The Next War, puis explique que le monument est le premier à commémorer la survie de l'espèce humaine entière et non d'une seule nation. Elle indique que le diorama a été construit entre 2607 et 2610 avec une attention particulière aux détails : les visages des soldats représentés sont issus des induction scans datant de leur entraînement, fournis par l'UNSC, et tous, morts comme survivants, ont été représentés. Le terrain lui-même est basé sur une carte topographique d'époque pour les environnements naturels, ainsi que sur les plans d'origine de la ville retrouvés par des méta-archéologues dans les archives locales après les combats.

Toutes les figurines de soldats humains ont été modelées et peintes à la main, sans assistance mécanique en mémoire des soldats ayant combattu. Les figurines de Covenants sont basées sur des cadavres récupérés sur le champ de bataille, et leurs armes et armures sont également basées sur des modèles réels.

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Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!
We laughed, knowing that better men would come,
And greater wars: when each proud fighter brags
He wars on Death, for lives: not men, for flags.

The Next War

The Museum of Humanity

Narrateur : Nations have always built monuments to their heroes. Tributes to the defense against, or conquest of, other nations. But the monument here doesn't favor one nation over another. It is the first of its kind to commemorate the survival of a species: our species. More importantly, it commemorates the man who gave the world faith, who gave humanity a future, who made mankind believe again. Master Chief Petty Officer John One-Seventeen.

BELIEVE: The John 117 Monument

Narrateur : So it's no surprise that the piece itself is special. Begun three years ago in 2607, the monument is a diorama built entirely by hand. It is a three-dimensional snapshot of the battlefield, and the soldiers who took to it that day. The scene has been reproduced with painstaking attention to detail and authenticity. Only the men and women who were there know it better. Today, we go behind the scenes to see its creation.

To ensure historical accuracy the boot camp induction scans of every Marine involved in the battle were obtained from the United Nations Space Command records. In this way the artists were able to place the right face to the right soldier. After each face is completed, it is matched to a body which has been rendered complete with uniform and body armor, then carved by hand. It was the artists vision for this tribute to humanity, that each piece be shaped by the hand of man, without the aid of robotic model-making systems. Each handmade soldier is posed, painted, and placed on the battlefield; both the victorious, and the fallen.

Based on topographical maps of the day, the artists are able to replicate each hill, each plateau, and each ravine to near exact specifications. But one of the real marvels is in the cityscape itself. After the fighting had ceased, meta-archaeologists unearthed the city's building archives. In them were found perfectly-preserved blueprints of every structure in the city. But the challenge was not to merely rebuild the structures, it was to tear them down as well. Artists worked from the city plans to recreate the destruction caused by the fierce fighting: from each bullet hole, to each piece of exposed rebar.

Finally, our enemies were also rendered with extraordinary detail. Covenant corpses that had been recovered after the battle provided the models for these fearsome recreations. To complete the picture, authentic Covenant weapons and armor specs were accessed to fully outfit the warriors.

Once the Covenant are placed opposite the Marines, a clear image begins to take shape out of the fog of history. We see how we were outnumbered, outgunned, outmatched, and seeing that we realize the importance of the monument. On that day, half a century ago, our species was pushed to the crumbling edge of extinction. And as we teetered on that precipice, staring down into the abyss, a hand reached out, pulled us back from the brink, and gave us hope. The hand of a hero.

BELIEVE

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