We spoke with Mary Lambert, director of FEARnet’s upcoming original series The Dark Path Chronicles, about what to expect from the series, the plot, the music, and her influences.  Read on to get the facts straight from the director!

Why ‘Dark Path Chronicles’?  Why tell this story?

Dark Path Chronicles is a story that I’ve been wanting to tell for a long time because I love vampires and I love their dilemma of immortality and what they have to do to stay alive.  They have a very animal nature; they kill because they have to.  They’re not evil the way some monsters are evil…For a long time I’ve wanted to tell a vampire story.

What can you tell us about the plot?

This story is the story of a vampire who was made a vampire at the end of the Third Reich, toward the end of WWII.  So the premise of the story is that war and chaos equals evil and vampires, and that humans create evil through the chaos of war.  So that’s sort of the underlying premise of the story.  And the actual plot is about this vampire, a young male vampire, who wakes up in Los Angeles, having been asleep for 75 years, and he hears the voice of a young girl calling to him.  He knows that he needs her help to understand the situation that he’s in because he’s been asleep for 75 years and he has enmities from the past, with some other vampires who he knows are probably looking for him.  He calls this young girl to him, and there’s this powerful attraction between the two of them, and we’re not really sure what it is because she’s not really autistic but she’s a child who hears voices and she’s very young.  She’s 16, 17, and she doesn’t go to school, she’s home schooled.  She’s an outsider also, she’s never had a date, she doesn’t even have any friends.  Her sister takes care of her and her only friend is the Catholic priest who also turns out to be an awesome vampire fighter.  That’s the set-up for the webisodes.

How is the series going to be presented, structurally?

I really like the non-linear structure of the piece and the way it’s set out in webisodes of five minutes.  They’re like, and all stories are like this really, they’re a big puzzle and the pieces can be moved around depending on what part of the story is important to you.  The audience moves those pieces around to enjoy or appreciate the pieces of the puzzle that they like best.  With this you can tune in and watch the particular part you like the best.  If you like the love scene, you can watch the love scene if that’s what’s most important to you.  If you like the fight scenes than you can watch the fight scenes, if that’s the heart of the story.  I really like non-linear story telling and I think that’s reflected a lot in my films and in my music videos.

What was the most challenging aspect of making Dark Path Chronicles.

The most challenging thing was that it’s not just a horror movie.  There’s a very human story underneath it.  So that aspect of the story was very important to me…then also we had the special effects, we had prosthetic make up, we had fights, and that’s very hard for continuity.  You can’t just buzz through it.  It’s not like two people in a room talking.

Why did you set the film in Los Angeles?

I really wanted Los Angeles to be a character in the city, and we had so many locations – we went to Griffith Park, we went to Hollywood Boulevard, we went downtown, we really went all over, so that was a big deal on a project with a small budget like this one.

I really wanted the vampire to wake up in Griffith Park.  I love Griffith Park.  I’ve spent a lot of time there, and it kind of watches over the city of Los Angeles like an animal, like an elemental force.  It’s huge…it’s much bigger than Central Park, and it has canyons, and mountaintops and valleys.  It’s just an extraordinary place, and I wanted the vampire to wake up there.  I thought that was a place he could hide for 75 years, and when he woke up I wanted him to really have that view over the city and be able to see and hear that city from that vantage point.  It’s also kind of extraordinary because Griffith Park burned last year, a horrible, horrible fire.  And it looks very eerie right now because there’s a lot of dead trees that are, in fact, coming back to life, but it feels very eerie and supernatural.

What can you tell us about the music in the series?

We have some of the best rising stars from heavy metal on the soundtrack.  I don’t want to name names because some of the deals aren’t closed yet, but we really do have some great music.  Some really atmospheric music, some really thrash, kill stuff.  I’ve always wanted to do that in a horror film, use real music.  We also have a composed score that will augment that.  Music’s going to be really important…it’s always important.

What inspired this series? Are you a vampire fan?

The original Dracula movie [Nosferatu] is one of my favorite black-and-white films – where Dracula’s like a little bat.  He’s very peculiar.  I love that movie.  And I love Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula.  It’s a really great piece of 19th century literature.  I love 19th century literature, that’s one of my favorite things to read when I’m just relaxing.  Of course Anne Rice’s Vampire Trilogy, I owe a huge debt to that.  Because I’ve read those novels three or four times, and Anne and I had a friendship for a while when I spent some time in New Orleans.  I think she’s an amazing person and the whole world she’s created, of vampires… no one can tell a vampire story without some sort of homage or debt of gratitude to her.

If you were a vampire who would you bite?

That raises a host of other questions.  Am I going to be punishing this person that I sink my teeth into?  Am I going to kill them or am I going to create another vampire to be my consort for all eternity?  Or am I simply going to be revenging myself on someone who’s given me a particularly bad time?  I don’t think I can honestly answer that question.  I’ve pretty much at this point in my life tried to forgive all the people I ever wanted to murder in cold blood [laughs].  I think I’ve tried to work through that and I’ve been successful.  So everyone out there who’s worried, don’t worry-I’m not going to come after you!