I had the great pleasure of speaking with Paranormal Witness series producer Mark Lewis on Monday, August 6, 2012. He was in London and graciously chatted with me about the upcoming second season which premieres Wednesday, Aug 8th.
His enthusiasm and excitement for the new season thrilled me and made me even more anxious for the season to begin.
Below is the transcription of the call (Part 1). I’m still finishing the transcription for the remainder of our call, which includes details about one of their more famous cases this season, “The Dybbuk Box.” :
TRANSCRIPTION – PART 1:
Phone Interview with Mark Lewis, series producer of Syfy’s Paranormal Witness
Interview date: Monday, August 6, 2012 12PM PST
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Paranormal Witness is one of the scariest paranormal shows on television. I was thrilled to get a chance to interview Mark and get some insight into how they collect these fantastic stories and put it all together into some terrifying episodes.
Note: Mark refers to the episodes as “film” or “films” at times.
We start off with a brief introduction by the moderator and Mark asks me the first question:
Mark: Judy, did you watch season one?
Judy: Yes, I did. It was very…spooky. I am usually very versed in paranormal shows; I’m a huge paranormal fan and this was the only show that I had to watch with the lights on.
Mark: Oh great! That sounds good. Well listen, Judy, if you thought Paranormal Witness season one was spooky, you, uh, you really better invite the entire family and all your friends around because we’ve really ratcheted it up several notches this time ‘round. I can honestly say, with my hand on my heart, uh, this season is way more scary than the first. The stories that we found this time, you know, are extraordinary. We learned so many lessons from the first season. We had such an overwhelming response from fans and you from across the Internet. Lots of people were writing in saying what they really, really enjoyed and what they wanted to see more of. So we’ve really responded to that. And these shows are absolutely designed to scare you witless.
Judy: Yes! I’m looking forward to it. Were you surprised at all with the success of season one or were you anticipating a good response?
Mark: I have to say it completely overwhelmed us at the time. We’re a London based production company. We make a lot of different shows for American broadcasters and I don’t think ever, in the history of our filmmaking, have we met with such a response to than we did to Paranormal Witness. I mean, the Internet chatter about the show was just extraordinary. And the Twitter feeds, and Facebook feeds, and Tumblr feeds, and all sorts of things where viewers were writing in to say, not just how much they enjoy the show, how they were having horror parties watching them and how, as they say, similarly to you, it was one show they couldn’t watch with the lights off. How this is the one show they were pleased there were commercial breaks because, they themselves, needed a bit of a break (laughter) from the tension. So, I guess we were overwhelmed by the response and very, very grateful for it. But, it’s made us—it’s really invigorated us as filmmakers and we could see very clearly, you know, what people responded to and how they were really wanting to see very credible witnesses. They were wanting to be convinced. Obviously, the audience wanted to watch compelling stories and be entertained, you know; that’s what television does, but more than that, with this show, they wanted to be convinced. They wanted the contributors, the interviewees, the paranormal witnesses themselves, to be convincing, so we’ve really gone out of our way to find those convincing but compelling stories.
Judy: Yes. The stories are absolutely gripping. I mean, when you see these people doing reenactments—the reenactments are spectacular, like mini-movie productions for each episode.
Mark: That’s been another focus for this season. I mean, we were delighted with the quality of the drama from last year, but I think we realized that we cater to lots of different audiences. We cater to the paranormal community, the people that are interested in science fiction and the paranormal, but we also cater to people who just like a darn good sort of horror film, like a good thriller film, a good psychological thriller, and those cinema movie-goers and it was that kind of audience that flocked to Paranormal Witness. You know, I think people appreciated that this was a show that was very different from other paranormal shows or paranormal reality shows, or even paranormal dramas that are out there. They wanted it to kind of be a cinematic experience so we’ve changed things up, we’ve changed the way that we film the drama, so the quality, the production value of the drama has really, really increased—the special effects that we use, CGI, the scale of the stunts and thing within the film (episode) and within the stories, you know. We’re making sure that they really blow your mind. I mean, the stories that we have come across, as I say, are so compelling, the things that are described by our contributors—people flying through the air, people disappearing into the darkness, spirits peeping over their heads, entire ceilings crashing down on people’s heads—all of these things, some of those things that we would shy away from last season, now we’re thinking no, no, no, we absolutely want to realize those kinds of things dramatically. So, I think the paranormal community will love this season but film goers, cinema buffs, horror film buffs will really, really enjoy this second season of Paranormal Witness.
Judy: Yes, I’m so looking forward to it. Now, how do you decide on the stories? Do you have a team that watches many of the video submissions; how do you choose the stories that you’re gonna do?
Mark: We have quite a big story team and the story team that we use are incredibly experienced journalists; they know how to hunt the stories across the United States and we scour everywhere for these stories. It’s actually a very difficult process because we reject a whole lot of stories on the ground that they’re not compelling enough or the interviewees aren’t credible enough, that the story doesn’t sustain long enough, that it doesn’t have enough scares or dramatic incidents within it. You know, we’ve got to have—we want a real story, a story that really happened to a credible witness that sustains over a television hour and that’s quite a lot to ask of any story. So, it means we really sort of have to search high and low for the very best stories. We are in contact with hundreds of paranormal groups across the states who have been absolutely invaluable people to us, you know, sharing their stories. We comb newspaper articles, books, paranormal websites, all manner of avenues to try and get the very best stories. So, it’s a very exhaustive and exhausting process to find the very best stories.
Judy: Well, your team has done a fantastic job because the stories you have so far have been absolutely amazing. Now, with you being in London, how complicated is it producing this show from abroad and do you think there will be any stories from across the pond that will be featured?
Mark: This season, all the stories are from the United States. I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility that we would consider stories from this side of the pond, from Britain. I mean, of course, you know, um, (laughter) Great Britain is probably the home of the haunted and of course there are hundreds of homes and hundreds of stories that we could attack over here. I mean, our focus has been, because you know Syfy is, broadly speaking, an American broadcaster, choosing American stories and believe me, there are no shortages of stories out there in the states. We very much want to do more because there are still many, many more stories to tell.
It actually hasn’t been difficult to produce from over here. We produce a lot of shows in the states. We obviously film all of our interviewees, so, I myself and the team are constantly in the states filming. And of course, we have a very big American camera team that we use and we film all the drama actually in Canada, in Toronto, so we have a Canadian team filming the dramatic components of the stories. So, it’s actually not difficult because we’re always there; we’re always filming stories, and at a drop of a hat, we will fly to California or Arizona or the East Coast—New York or wherever the stories are. We will track them down and we will follow the stories to where they are. So, it’s actually not difficult, I mean, I think that the—when we’re sourcing these stories, when we’re finally getting in contact with the contributors over the phone, it’s really important that we speak to our contributors, literally hours on end. We want our stories to be incredibly well researched, to be meticulously realized, so our story team will speak hours on end to our contributors to both learn a story and to understand exactly the finer points of the story, exactly the moments that were important and impactful to our witnesses, but equally to gain their trust. There are many people who feature in this series for whom the stories they describe are incredibly traumatic events. Many people have literally lived through not only just the haunting of their home but a complete upturning of their lives and their families’ lives and reliving that can be very painful for those people. So, it’s important that our story team speak to those people for hours on end to gain their trust so that our contributors understand that we will treat them with respect and their story with respect and that we will help them tell their story in the best possible way. You’ll see that, in the show, there is no commentary or narration. There’s no, like in a current affairs film or news film or any other documentary where it says, “And then Judy went out and then she went up the stairs and then she saw this.” There’s none of that at all. It’s just the witnesses telling their story in the very best possible way, in a better way than they managed to tell it to anyone before so that’s very much the aim of the game.
Judy: Well, I just wanted to ask one final question. This season, it looks like there’s gonna be some pretty famous cases and I was just wondering, there is one in particular that stood out for me which is the alien abduction case in Arizona. Most people think of UFO stories as more science fiction rather than paranormal. So what was the deciding factor to include this UFO story?
Mark: Ok, well, we actually had done UFO stories last season—the Trumbull County UFO and the story of a police helicopter in Kentucky that was chased by a UFO—so we have absolutely tackled these kinds of stories before. I think what’s most amazing about the Travis Walton abduction, as we call it—The Abduction of Travis Walton—is, um, you’re right; it is one of the most famous UFO cases ever. But, the reason it’s as famous as it is, is because the abduction itself was witnessed by so many people. Travis Walton was a logger working in a state forest in Arizona. When he was abducted, his entire team of loggers—the guys that were cutting the forest down with him were present to see it. They saw him being hit by a—what look like bolt of lightning coming from a UFO. They all saw the UFO and interestingly, when there were all polygraphed, they all passed the polygraph test.
So I think what really attracted us to that story was just how many witnesses there were, how corroborated Travis Walton’s story was. And when you find out what he claimed happened to him aboard the UFO, I mean, it really is just a staggering tale.
The thing that really attracted us, or the reason that we really wanted to do with the story which has not been done before is collect every single voice that we possibly could for this film (episode). So, all of the loggers, Travis Walton and all of the loggers, the sheriff and his deputy, and they man who conducted the polygraph, and the doctors who treated Travis Walton, all are included in this film (episode). So, never before, I think, have they assembled the entire collection of witnesses to Travis Walton’s story and that’s what makes this story completely stand out. I mean, I think when, whenever you hear, “Oh someone was abducted by an alien,” there’s no doubt, myself included, you put your skeptic on and go, “Come on, really? Really, do I believe that?” But when you see these guys, when you listen to these witnesses, to these, older gentleman now, when you listen to them and see how traumatized they were by what they saw and how much it has affected their lives, but the very fact that they have not wavered from their stories in over 30 years, you will really, any audience member will really, really question their own beliefs.
Every time I watch that film (episode), every time I watch part of that film (episode), I just look at these guys and think, “They are not lying.” They absolutely saw something and it really does challenge your belief system. I think that’s what really attracted us to that film (story). It’s an absolutely smashing film (episode). It’s incredibly cinematic, directed absolutely beautifully by Steven Kemp, one of our lead directors, and it will really, really knock your socks off.
Judy: Well, I’m so looking forward to this season. As I said before, I’m a huge paranormal fan. I actually host a paranormal blog on our website and I also have one investigation under my belt. I’m still trying to find some more people to go out on an investigation with me because Los Angeles is very haunted.
Mark: Do you know, weirdly, even though I’ve been making this series for two years now, in fact, actually, all my team laugh at me because, um, you know, I’m first to be cowering behind the sofa when a horror film is on and even though I’ve worked on all these stories; I’ve conducted a high proportion of the interviews within both seasons, I’ve been involved in every script and shoot for both seasons, I know when every scare is coming whenever I sit in the edit suite; this season (laughing) still made me jump out of my skin. And I know when the scares are coming, so believe me, if it happens to me, it will happen to everyone else out there.
Judy: Yeah, and like I said, I’m so looking forward to this season. I cannot wait!
Stay tuned. I’ll post Part 2 of the interview tomorrow.
Paranormal Witness – Season Two Premiere Airs TONIGHT – Wednesday August 8th 10/9c only on Syfy.
For more on the show, go to http://www.syfy.com/paranormalwitness/
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Photos: ©2012 Syfy, a division of NBC Universal. All Rights Reserved.
Judy Manning
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