Trivia: Home

In the last post, we discussed the filmmaking that went into episode 1 of Midwest Angelica. In this post, we'll discuss the inspirations and some extra information about this episode as well as trivia that applies to the rest of the series. 

First, let's start off with HOME itself, an acronym that stands for the Division of Heavenly Operations and Material Examination. The name is a pun in reference to Earth being our home, and the episode "Home" is about AZ-001 coming to Earth. This all plays into the tagline of the series, "In the year 1999, a corpse descends from the cosmos, right into your backyard..." (Backyard = The back of your home). So yes, the name HOME is just a play on words in reference to the tagline! We heard another popular analog horror series on YouTube seems to have drawn inspiration from this name and used it for their own series' shady organization. They seem to have totally missed our pun, though!

Speaking of HOME, the logo is hiding a secret. Of course, it is supposed to resemble a constellation. However, the true meaning becomes apparent if you tilt your head. It's supposed to be an hourglass tipped over! What does this symbolize? That should be pretty obvious considering the predicament humanity has found themselves in. Oh, and of course, the countdown to the year 1999 as AZ-001 draws ever closer. 

You may have noticed that the organization of the videos is done in a particular way. If you look at the description, this episode is titled "MIDWEST ANGELICA 001". But if you look at the next video, "ATTENTION", the description reads "MIDWEST ANGELICA 001(S)". That's because the videos are split up into two types: main videos, and supplementary videos, which is what the 'S' stands for. Each video comes in pairs, with the main episode coming first before the supplementary video. The main videos have lowercase styling for the title while the supplementary videos have all caps. The supplementary videos are short and usually elaborate on a concept from the main video or bridge the gap between two main episodes.

In reference to the supplementary video for this episode, "ATTENTION", originally we had the number listed as "1-800-555-4663". If you type the last four digits, you get "HOME". What we didn't realize at the time was that 555 digits are valid for 1-800 numbers! Whoops! To try and deter people from calling the number, we changed the video to say HOME to make it look more obvious that it's supposed to be a fake number. We couldn't change the number completely because we had already paid for the voice actor. So it ended up being a bit of a concern for us at the time. 

"ATTENTION" is an interesting video and very few people have picked up on the lore meaning of it. We implore you to think about it a little more; it definitely has some disturbing implications that could lead you to the truth behind AZ-001. 

Let's quickly talk about color theory. As you may have noticed, Midwest Angelica follows a strict color code that uses mostly orange, blue, black/white/gray, and some teal. These colors were inspired by the lights on the UFOs from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." Maybe a little bit of "Blade Runner" too. Point is, these colors appeared a lot in sci-fi of the 80s. The orange is representative of something otherworldly like the light of a star from outer space. 

Well that's all for now. Next post, we'll discuss the making of episode 2 of Midwest Angelica.