For those who are interested, I will provide some context here into how I create these episodes and why they end up taking so long!
The original idea
When I was first led to create Mystery Paper, I was imagining producing a few short animations to help demonstrate visually the mechanisms which are conveyed in a very confusing manner (by design) in the UCC and Bills of Exchange acts. I noticed that the same questions would keep coming up during the Inpower Movement Q+A calls and I recalled having had very similar confusions previously myself. On these calls, Cal Washington would do his best to explain on a high level what was going on (or supposed to be going on) but since the whole negotiable instrument system is so convoluted and innately ‘backwards’ from our natural instincts (e.g. people are exchanging debt obligations on paper.. not what they ordinarily consider as tokens of ‘value’ or ‘money’) I could tell people would struggle to process what Cal was saying in real time, from their current level of understanding. I had the instinct (and persistent thought) to create a kind of animated visual aid to help people wrap their head around this elaborate magic trick. While it sounds a little weird grammatically, I liked the idea of calling it Mystery Paper (as in Mystery Babylon) to reflect the mysterious papers which surround our daily lives. I asked Cal if he thought it would be a useful project, he agreed, and so I got to work.
The goal was to help people keep all of these different terms (drawer, drawee, payor, payee, bearer etc) clear in their minds while being able to watch transactions in progress. This way they could follow visually what was actually occurring or being exchanged (and what wasn’t!), and make some sense of the original intentions behind these customs and practices.
In other words, to understand how someone is cheating, you first need to understand how a system is supposed to work in the first place (even if only ostensibly). If you want to understand why and how someone is cheating at soccer – or badminton or chess, or whatever – you first need to understand the rules of that game.
The context loop
Of course, as these initial animations were completed, I realised that I should provide some context as to why we should even be paying attention to these mechanisms in the first place. That context then required more context and before I knew it I had plotted out a 20 episode series outline to really convey all the aspects that I wanted to go eventually into. As you may have noticed, these episodes had a tendency to end up longer than I anticipated as I felt led to use metaphors and various examples to help explain these concepts in more relateable ways.
Along with other factors, this expansion has resulted in some episodes doubling in length and needing to be split into two (sometimes multiple times) and at this point I would not even bother trying to say what the total number of episodes I have planned for the series. My goal is always for this content to be as engaging as possible – not always easy given the density of the subject matter – and for each episode to stand on its own as being accessible and watchable to anyone who has the ‘ears to hear’. As such, a lot of effort goes into making each episode ‘flow’ as well as possible in a self-contained piece of content that can be watched in a single sitting, whether it be 20 minutes long or 50.
Necessary ‘deviation’
While it may appear that some recent episode content (e.g. British monarchs, oaths and so on) are a deviation from the original series conceit of negotiable instruments, I would suggest that this whole ‘money’ system scam does not exist in a vacuum, nor did it arise spontaneously or ‘by accident’. For us to understand the broader purpose of this system and the higher-level rules which govern it, we need to look above the ‘money’ system itself.
As you can probably imagine, these episodes take many, many man-hours to produce and unfortunately I am just one man. While I begin each episode’s research with some ideas of what I want to explore and demonstrate (often arising from things I have previously heard from Cal or others), as the cliche goes there is often a big gap between knowing something instinctively, and being able to (in any convincing way) prove it to others.
There’s what you know, and what you can prove
To take just one example: after (several years ago) hearing Cal talk about the British Monarchs still holding power over the world system and merely pretending to hand over the reigns to ‘constitutional monarchies’, it struck me intuitively as a fascinating example of the ‘real power’ being disguised, and yet hiding in plain sight – something that most people would acknowledge is a recurring pattern in our world. In order to test and prove this assertion, however, in specific, plausible ways (both to myself and others) there is a huge amount of reading and research required.
My go-to approach these days is to take the long, boring, official documents put out by organisations and institutions, copy them to my digital tablet, and sit down for hours on end marking up the PDFs (in Foxit PDF reader) just looking out for anything that sounds suspicious or doesn’t quite make sense. Like with all PR (propaganda), there’s the headline version, and then there’s what the 100+ page document actually says when you read it – something that very few people (understandably) bother to do.
In the case of the Commonwealth Declarations document – if you read it with a critical eye – these countries are clearly bound by very oppressive regulations and the organisation is not the happy, consensual voluntary association of nations that it is presented as. Of course to read, mark up, sift, arrange, script and present this information in a logical and engaging progression takes time and effort, and that’s before I even think about music or graphics or animation.
In this way, I might read 5 documents or articles to understand the ‘official’ gist of a particular point, then read a few 50-100 page documents in detail to find the suspicious elements, then read another half-dozen documents to find out if I’m barking up the wrong tree or misunderstanding, then consult a couple of people to get their take, look down some more rabbitholes, and in the end take away a sentence or two to use in the final edit. You get the idea.
For Episode 5 which I am currently producing, I have read and annotated dozens of House of Commons Parliamentary briefing documents (which run from 50 to 150 pages at a time on all sorts of topics related to Royal and Governmental process) just to try and get to grips with the kinds of things which don’t seem to match up to the way they are presented in the mainstream. Each page here has footnotes and references which lead me off to curious articles, legislation, old treaties and so on.
No, AI does not help
As I’m sure you have guessed, AI does not (or will not) assist with any of this process. Though I already essentially knew this would be the case, I did at some point experiment with a few AI tools just to demonstrate to the AI-fans who kept telling me that I’d be silly not to leverage these ‘amazing tools.’
The value of Mystery Paper – as I see it – is that I am applying a critical eye to the official presentation of how the money (and broader control) system works and connecting dots that we have all been deliberately conditioned from birth not to connect. AI – in contrast – is designed to curate answers to all questions and effectively ram the official narrative down our throats, providing tailor-made deceptions for each individual user.
When I ask [insert LLM here] “what are the restrictive or oppressive aspects of membership to the Commonwealth?”, it will essentially parrot the party line that “the Commonwealth is a voluntary association of nations which share common values etc”. Worthless. Of course, I could spend time drilling down and demanding it recognise certain things, and might eventually get it to concede ground on certain points, but why bother? Firstly, I’d need to already know the things that I’m trying to force it to acknowledge – so what’s the point – and from there it will still do its best to lie or obfuscate any revealing material which I would want to know, but don’t even know to ask about.
It would be like going to see a doctor who I already know is incentivised to continuously lie to my face, right up until the moment that I beat him in a debate with information that I have sourced myself elsewhere. What is the point of even talking to him in the first place?
Yes, the AI fans will say “oh that’s because you’re not using the right LLM, you need to get a locally-hosted unlocked build etc etc” and sure, this MIGHT be true. Unfortunately, how would I know if it was gatekeeping or withholding content from me, or not? Am I going to read through a million lines of ‘open source’ code? Would I even understand what I’m looking at? Obviously not.
And so, this is where we end up: I browse around, download the long and boring ‘official’ version of whatever is being put out to the public, sit down, and I actually read it. I highlight and annotate anything that sticks out to me as suspicious or nonsensical. I then look elsewhere for plausible explanations for these contradictions to see if they actually make sense, or if I’ve stumbled upon another example of deceptive presentation (put out in plain sight) designed to mask the real workings of the control grid we find ourselves in.
Straight from the system’s mouth
There are many people who basically just hear something online and then rehash or repeat it, without even doing the due diligence to find out where that information came from in the first place. This (likely by design) plays directly into the hands of those practicing controlled opposition or diversionary tactics, and often makes the forwarders of this material look foolish in the eyes of their ‘mainstream’ friends and so on. Many of us have been duped by this practice in the past.
When I quote ‘official’ sources, it’s not because I believe the words they are saying, but rather to make the point that this is THEIR version. This is what the ‘legitimate’ entity is claiming about their own organisation/history/whatever, and so if you would like to believe the official narrative on something, here you go.
From my point of view, it would appear that those steering (or seeming to steer) the large and powerful organisations governing the system we see around us, are obligated (spiritually, karmically, or however you want to see it) to notify us of what is really going on. Whether we take the time to understand this reality is an individual decision – basically, it’s ‘on’ us.
My approach then, is to find and collect these scattered official ‘system notififications’ – ie. where the system ‘confesses’ what it is doing and how – and connect the dots to draw a clearer picture of what I see as going on, while also providing the ‘receipts’ so you don’t need to take my word for it. You can google search and find these documents yourself – from the official entity’s own website – and check to see that what I’m showing is indeed what is being put out for public consumption.
The actual video production
This is a whole other topic which I can go into if people are actually interested, but basically I research, then create a bullet point outline, then write a voiceover script (with intended visuals), then record and lay it down on the timeline in Adobe Premiere, then fill in rough visuals as best I can with placeholder document pages or content, then work out music/pacing/sound effects, then build out proper b-roll sequences, then go back and animate the diagrams and document highlighting in After Effects, then finesse everything – mixing the audio and correcting the colour. There is a whole lot more to each step I could say but that’s the general gist.
The process evolves
My understanding of this subject matter naturally evolves over time – by necessity – as I endeavour to understand and effectively prove the conclusions that I am coming to along the way. Given this, topics that I had not previously considered sometimes arise and end up taking up large chunks of time (both production time, and final on-screen runtime) and so this project will organically meander and go where it needs to go, and at the pace that I can manage.
I have no intention of stopping, but I also can’t say how long it will take for each episode to be produced, and as such I want to be able to put out more regular content – both to preserve my own sanity but also to allow curious viewers to follow along without needing to wait 6 months (or more) between episodes.
I don’t want to just pump out bite-sized chunks of isolated content because I don’t think it would really make sense (or even be interesting) when presented out of proper context, and I also don’t want to ‘blow’ my big plot twists and run the experience of watching the full episodes as they are released.
This blog, then, is my attempt to put out more regular content in whatever form makes sense to keep people in the loop of how things are progressing while also getting some fun tidbits of the research/production process which may (or may not) end up in the final product.
Thanks for reading and please do let me know your thoughts or suggestions!
Alex
