Bright Falls, the live-action prequel to the recently released Xbox 360 game Alan Wake, has been extremely popular with both gamers and non-gamers alike. The series has been so successful in large part due to the talent of those involved. Christopher Forsyth, the actor who played main character Jake Fischer in the mini-series, recently spoke with Examiner about his role in Bright Falls.
How much did you know about the overall storyline of Alan Wake before you shot the episodes of Bright Falls?
Very little actually. I remember getting the call from my managers that casting wanted to see me for the lead role of Jake, and to my recollection, there wasn’t a whole lot of information available about the project at that time. Mary Vernieu was casting the series, and she’s a casting heavy-weight in the industry with over a 160 films to her credit (including many award winners), so her name lent the project a lot of credibility right up front. I found out from that the director was going to be Phillip Van (who was also one of the two writers), so I did some digging on him. He’s made some really amazing short films that have won quite a few awards (including at Sundance). But other than that, all I had to work with originally was a few short scenes from the script that they gave me (the script itself was not available at that time). The scenes were of course completely out of context, but were very intriguing and ripe for interpretation.
After meeting with Mary initially, she scheduled a second meeting for me to come back in and meet directly with the Director, writers, and producers of the project. I think at that point I became aware that the project had something to do with Alan Wake. I don’t keep up on the development cycle of games, so I had no idea what Alan Wake was, but it didn’t take much digging to find out about it online. I watched trailers, and read about it online, and that helped confirm my initial interpretation of the scenes I’d been given. During that second meeting, Phil worked on a couple of the scenes with me, and there were some chemistry tests with actresses who were reading for the role of Ellen.
Shortly thereafter, they offered me the role. A few days later I received a copy of the script, and I loved it. It was very well written. Phil Van and Mat Bunnell (co-writers) are exceptionally talented. Anyway, even at that point, I still knew very little about the Alan Wake storyline – beyond what was publicly available on the web. The director and I had some subsequent meetings in pre-production during which he may have shared little tidbits about Alan Wake, but primarily our discussions centered around the vision for Bright Falls the series itself. Phil and Matt certainly crafted the story to be a great tie-in to the game, obviously, and it does that very well. But it was also written to stand entirely on it’s own as a self contained story. Judging by the response from fans, it has done that in spades.
Did you shoot Bright Falls all at once or was filming done chronologically by each episode? Roughly how long did it take to record and wrap up the whole mini-series?
It wasn’t shot chronologically. Most films aren’t. It’s simply more efficient to shoot them based on other factors, primarily location. We shot at Timberline lodge for Dr. Hartman’s scenes for example (where they shot part of The Shining). Moving the entire set and crew to that location necessitated shooting both of the scenes with him (which occur in episodes 2 and 5 I believe) on the same day. Shooting out of sequence can be a challenge from a performance perspective obviously, especially for a character like Jake who is going through such a large character arc, so it’s imperative to always be really aware of where you’re at in the storyline, and that’s where working with a great director like Phil, who always had a strong overall story vision, can come in really handy. As for how long the entire process took, we shot the film in February, and it wasn’t released in it’s entirety until May, so about 3 months in total I think.
The mysterious nature of the plot sometimes made it confusing for viewers to understand what exactly was going on but that's part of what made it so compelling. From an insider's perspective that had read the whole script, was it difficult to grasp what was happening while shooting or were things explained to you along the way by the creative minds to help?
I agree – storytelling that inspires thought and interpretation on the viewer’s part is so much more interesting and engaging than the alternative. I think good writers know that they don’t have to explain everything and be on the nose with every story point – that kind of thing actually insults viewer intelligence. Jake was extremely confused with regards to what was happening to him, and the way Phil and Mat crafted the story allowed the viewer to be a participant in that, and live through that same confusion vicariously through Jake, rather than knowing all the answers and just watching it unfold. To your second question: no, it wasn’t difficult to grasp what was going on – because from Jake’s perspective, not knowing what’s going on is really the whole idea. A large part of what was happening to Jake – and a large part of the character arc for Jake, was confusion, frustration, and the inability to grasp or get his head around what was happening to him. The things that happened to Jake were unexplainable in the “rational” world. The story was very intelligently crafted and very efficient, and the writer’s intent was always pretty clear to me. But if there were, for example, situations where a scene could be interpreted in multiple ways, they were always on set and very available.
Bright Falls has resonated really well with fans. Just on the Machinima Youtube Channel alone it has already received over 2.5 million views. Did you ever expect the series to be so hugely popular when you auditioned for the role of Jake?
No, not at all. It has taken on a life of its own, and has really developed a cult following. I can’t imagine what would happen if they made a TV series out of it. I told the director recently that I figured it would be a very narrow community of people that would see the series – specifically people who were looking at the game Alan Wake. Boy was I wrong. The viewer response has been incredible, and has far exceeded anything I had ever expected. Fan response has included a very broad spectrum of people, including gamers and non-gamers alike. For example, you’d be amazed at the number of emails coming in from people who were huge fans of “Lost”, that say they would love something like Bright Falls to fill that void for them. To even be mentioned in the same sentence as a show that was as successful as Lost has been, is the ultimate compliment. I think there’s a huge hunger for this genre and this type of storytelling. I’m a big fan of it myself. People keep asking, “will there be more?” I’ll simply echo what Phil and Mat have already said – if the fans ask for it – it will likely happen. They just have to keep demanding it, and make their voices heard.
Assassin's Creed II did something similar to Bright Falls with a 35 minute live-action prequel. Do you think that live-action tie-ins/webisodes to games could be an unexplored and potentially successful method of storytelling and/or building up hype for a game?
Well, I’m no expert on the subject, and you’d get a much more informed answer from the people at AgencyTwoFifteen (the group behind Bright Falls). But from my perspective, I’d say that depends on a lot of variables. I think it can indeed be VERY effective...IF it is done right. It’s an art form, and a whole lot of things have to come together just right. It seems from the fan response, that many had very low expectations for this series based on past experiences with similar types of advertising. And I’m not talking about the ACII prequel – I’ve never even seen that, and I have no idea if it was successful or not. I’m talking about these types of tie-ins in general. Ads are, no doubt, a necessary and important part of business, but they’re only successful when watched obviously.
Things have changed drastically in the past decade or two. People have very short attention spans, and things like DVR have made it even more difficult to get and hold eyeballs. To combat that, advertisers are looking for ways to reinvent how they get in front of consumers. The ultimate win is obviously when you can create something that is so compelling that people WANT to watch it. If you can create quality story based / content based advertising methods, with intelligent storytelling that will grab a viewers attention, keep their interest, and leave them wanting more, that at the same time ties in nicely to a product and effectively whets the consumers' appetite for that product, then I think it can be a huge home run.
I think Bright Falls has done just that. Kudos to AgencyTwoFifteen, the agency behind Bright Falls – and more specifically producer Joyce Chen, artistic director Nate Able, and agency writer Mat Bunnell). Judging by the comments I’ve scanned under the Bright Falls episodes themselves on Machinima’s YouTube channel, where there are hundreds viewers repeatedly asking “what is this series”, and the fact that the series in it’s entirety has been viewed more than 2.5 million times there, I think it’s safe to say that Bright Falls has probably generated a great deal of awareness about Alan Wake that didn’t exist prior to Bright Falls. That said, there are a variety of variables. You’ve got to have a really great story, a talented cast, and high production values, all of which, according to the fans, Bright Falls has.
You can see more of Christopher's work, biography, and photo gallery at his official website http://www.christopherforsyth.com/
Click here to read part 2 of this interview.
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