A Thousand Pages

←The Science of Fear

A Thousand Pages

The Score→

A Thousand Pages is the fourth segment featured in Until Dawn’s Bonus Content. It displays and tells the progress of the collaboration between the two screenwriters of the game – sound designer, writer and director Graham Reznick, and producer, writer and director Larry Fessenden – as they constructed and composed the script for Until Dawn.

Preview

Reznick starts off by going into detail about the background story of Until Dawn. Fessenden here adds that they tried to take genre tropes and ‘’refresh’’ them. Horror film influences played a big part in the development of the game. Subverting expectations of established notions and preconceptions about the roles of the players in these horror movies into the game was their goal. They took classic stock characters and tried to give them some shape, reflected in the stereotypical persona each character demonstrates.

Transcript

[Graham Reznick] Hi, Larry.

[Larry Fessenden] Hey, Graham.

[Graham Reznick] Hi, my name is Graham Reznick. I'm a filmmaker, writer, director, sound designer. And I started working with Larry Fessenden about 10, 15 years ago through my friend Ty West, who I grew up with. And I've done a lot of sound design with on his films. And he was producing Ty's films at the time. And Ty introduced me to Larry. Larry produced my first feature. And we've written together on several projects.

[Larry Fessenden] My name is Larry Fessenden. I'm a filmmaker. I run Glass Eye Picks, which is an independent production company out of New York. We make indie movies, a lot of scary movies as well. And I got a call to audition to write this video game. And I called my pal Graham Reznick because Graham is a gamer. And while I thought I could offer something to the idea of writing this multi-branching story, I knew that I would want Graham's expertise as a lover of gameplay since I guess games were started.

[Graham Reznick] And just as a lover.

[Larry Fessenden] And as a lover, yes. Which is why there's so many sex jokes in the game.

[Graham Reznick] There was one Italian website that did say Larry Fessenden and Graham Reznick, the two lovers behind Until Dawn.

[Jessica] Come here. Maybe I know how to handle you too. [Mike] I am definitely ready to be handled.

[Larry Fessenden] So I wanted Graham by my side.

[Graham Reznick] Yeah, and we got the gig and it's been an amazing ride.

[Mike] Oh, hell yeah.

[Jessica] Oh my God, she's taking her shirt off.

[Hannah] What? Oh my God. Matt, what are you doing here?

[Mike] Hannah. I'm sorry, Hannah. This all got out of hand, but...

[Sam] Hannah, Hannah, hey, don't, it's just a... stupid prank.

[Graham Reznick] So in the game, the basic setup is that a year prior to the game's start, all these kids had gone up to a ski lodge that was owned by the parents of one of the kids, or a couple of the kids. And some of the teenagers played a prank on some of the other teenagers and a terrible tragedy occurred when a few of them, two sisters, ran out into a blizzard and were never seen from again.

And so now, a year later, this has kind of torn apart this group of friends. They've gone through some trials and tribulations in the past year. The brother of the two girls has had a lot of psychological issues and to kind of help him cope and help them all get over it, they all returned to the lodge a year later, back up on the mountain. And the idea is to get over it, but...

[Larry Fessenden] The healing does not begin.

[Graham Reznick] And these kids are all trying to find themselves. They've been through a trauma, but in general, they're just teenagers trying to figure out who they are. So they're all kind of falling into the patterns, the stereotypes, the characters they see on TV and in the movies.

[Larry Fessenden] I think we were very interested in taking genre tropes and kind of making them, sort of refresh them.

[Beth] Hey, did you see that? Dad said it'd just be us this weekend.

[Graham Reznick] We're familiar with how slasher movies work. You know, most people have seen some horror movies and we have established notions and preconceptions about the roles of the players in horror movies and how they talk and how they get killed and how they have sex. And to bring you into a game that way and then subvert a lot of those expectations was kind of our goal.

[Larry Fessenden] They're haunted by some incident that happened in their past, which I think you pretty much figure out that that's going to have a role in their interaction. Yeah, so I think what was fun was we take some sort of stock characters and we try to give them some shape, but at least at the beginning they're recognizable in the way of groups of friends. There's, you know, the jock and the bitchy girl and the rivalries between everyone.

[Graham Reznick] Oh my gosh. And really fun characters too. We just had so much fun living in the minds of these characters through writing the script.

[Matt] What do you think-

[Mike] Aaaaahhhh!

[Emily] Jesus!

[Larry Fessenden] You know, it was fun. I think we were looking to get that kind of banter that you see both in movies but also that you absolutely have with friends and sort of those inside jokes. And of course, as writers and as friends ourselves, we sort of developed little tracks and we tried to give the characters that kind of vibe.

Video

Until Dawn "A Thousand Pages" (Bonus Content) Writer Director Graham Reznik Larry Fessenden