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Inside the Mind of Anthony Zuiker for Level 26: Dark Origins
by Troy Rogers
 After
creating one of the most forensically innovative
television franchises in history with C.S.I.,
C.S.I. Miami, and C.S.I. New York, writer Anthony
Zuiker recently jumped ahead of the literary curve
with his gripping, serial killer based digi-novel,
Level 26: Dark Origins, which is now available
at the App Store on iPhone and iPod touch or at
www.itunes.com/appstore/.
The first digi-novel in a trilogy, which blends traditional book format with the web and video, Level 26: Dark Origins tells the riveting and thrilling tale of a forensic proof serial killer so terrifying that his very existence has been concealed from the public. With all three C.S.I. series recently coming together as one for a landmark TV trilogy event, Anthony Zuiker is looking ahead into the literary future to pave new ground in the same visual manner as C.S.I.
With Level 26: Dark Origins now available to fans everywhere, we snapped up a few Dark Origins minutes with Anthony Zuiker to learn more about the challenges of bringing Level 26 to life, the impact of Level 26 storytelling between three mediums, and how Zuiker struck a balance between the horrific in Level 26 and its aggressive Dark Origins.
THE DEADBOLT: Can you talk about some of the challenges of the storytelling between video, the web, and the pages? What does each one provide you as a storyteller?
ANTHONY ZUIKER: Well, the specific challenge is to get everything to synch up properly. It's also challenging to convince the traditional book reader of stopping what you're doing, logging in and watching a video. Doing that twenty times per book is very challenging. We've had very, very mixed reviews on this concept, people either love it or hate it.
 They
love it for the fact that they get excited about
watching a piece of visual footage and see the
characters come alive visually and how that
colors the reading experience. So it's kind
of like watching the movie as you're reading
the book, people love that. They also love the
iTouch, iPhone experience, because it's all
in the palm of their hand on the subway, on
the tube, on the airplane. Everyday people just
love the fact that it's all right there in the
palm of their hand. That's the good news.
The bad news, a lot of people see the sort of bridges as unnecessary, that it takes away from the imagination, that it's too cumbersome to read the book, log in, watch a bit and go back to the book. You have to watch the videos on your computer, so there [are] some negatives to that too. But overall, because it's the first of its kind in terms of a digi-novel, people like myself, we're movers and shakers and we come out and do something different and try to shake things up a little bit. You know, take some chances and create something from scratch and see if it works and learn from that.
THE DEADBOLT: Did you find you lost impact with either medium?
ZUIKER: In terms of storytelling?
THE DEADBOLT: Yes, exactly.
 ZUIKER:
I'm not sure. I mean, I'm not sure if it lost
impact. There are people who love it and hate
it. I think some people like to have the visuals
and some people don't. I tried to bulletproof
that by making sure that it was very clear in
the media that the book can be read from cover
to cover like a James Patterson novel and it
won't miss a beat. But if you want the deeper
visual experience, you can do that. So I think
it's just a choice at this point in terms of
what people want.
THE DEADBOLT: You mentioned there will be two other books. How do you think the books will change with new mediums like the iTablet?
ZUIKER: Well, I don't know what the iTablet is. I know what it is, but I don't know what it actually looks like or how it functions. But we believe that the digi-novel fits seamlessly and beautifully with the iTablet. I assume the iTablet will have a bigger screen and a little bit of interactivity there. That's very exciting for us to bring book two to the iTablet if it all corresponds the proper way. So we're pretty excited about that. I think by book three there may be some different level of interactivity that will be kind of an evolution, like a 2.0 version of the digi-novel.
The challenge for me is that the things I can do on the iTablet don't necessarily match the things I can do when people read the book and log into a computer. So I have to be careful not to be creating four or five different experiences, for example, if the iTablet has a chance to move your fingers and make things bigger or smaller.
So let's say, for example, one of the bridges
was a still photograph of a gash on a guy's
head. If I wanted to take my fingers and open
the gash up and look inside and see a red hair
follicle, that would be a little different if
I had it on a computer. And even more like take
your mouse and click it and open it up and click
it again and now you're deeper. Therefore I'm
paying for two or three different things in
one bridge. It gets very very expensive. So
it's going to be an interesting bob-and-weave
over the next couple of books, creatively.
THE DEADBOLT: For the serial killer, a character without restraints, how did you know how far was too far in terms of the horrific?
 ZUIKER:
[laughs] I didn't. I mean, I actually peeled
it back considerably. The intent of the digi-novel
before all of my team got involved and the publisher
piped in, it was going to be XXX. It was going
to be really, really X-rated. Not in terms of
nudity, but in terms of aggressiveness. But
then we wanted to be responsible to the Boarders
and Wal-Mart, so we really peeled it back to
be as it is now, which I find it to be a little
out there, a little edgy. But it was going to
be a much, much more [aggressive] ...just because
I wanted to make sure that people who read the
book and saw the bridges could never say that
the style was typical television. So I was really
like [wanting] to push the envelope.
We ended up shooting a lot of the final bridges with nudes. We have a lot of nude footage and we have a lot more aggressive violent footage that never quite aired, because there's no rationale to do that. But we have it in the can for probably some future DVD thing. At the end of the day, if "10" was rated X, we brought it back down to a "6" towards the commercial public. And the commercial public finds it very edgy, so I guess I got my edge check in check.
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