Gavin Booth Lays Out Clues for $100K Reward Tied to Dreamcrusher Series

We’ve all sat on our couches and thought, given the chance, that we could figure out the mystery of the television show or movie we’re watching. Dreamcrusher, the first installment of the Reward Anthology series, gives the viewer the chance to become the at-home detective they’ve always dreamed of being. The series is centered on Gwyn (Brittany Charlotte Smith), a rising pop star, in the final hours before she is murdered. It’s the viewer’s job to figure out who is responsible. If someone is able to put the pieces together, one lucky viewer will take home a $100,000 reward.

Gavin Booth, the showrunner for Dreamcrusher, is no stranger to testing the limits of the art of filmmaking. A writer/director who graduated from the school of Blumhouse, Booth has woven quite the tangled web for viewers to parse through. After the premiere of Episode 1 of Dreamcrusher, Gavin Booth sat down with TV Obsessive’s Tina Kakadelis to talk gimmicks vs. boundary-pushing, the return of TV that begs for the audience’s full attention, and offers a clue to unlock part of the investigation.

TV Obsessive: You are no stranger to film and TV that has really interesting filmmaking concepts behind it, like Last Call and the live horror short on Periscope. Do you find it’s the plot or the new boundary-pushing filmmaking idea that comes first?

Gavin Booth: Always plot because everything without a good story is a gimmick. That’s not to say that sometimes I don’t come up with the idea first, and then think, okay, this is a new piece of technology. This is a new way of telling a story or a way of telling a story that very few people do. What could I do that’s interesting and would serve the characters?

For example, you mentioned Last Call, which is our single-take, split-screen movie. Single takes are awesome because they can hold emotion. The whole world is obsessed with Adolescence right now on Netflix, as am I. One episode to go! It’s compelling because of the emotional story they’re telling, and they’re putting the audience in the place of the action. The less you break away, cut, or fade to the next day, you’re keeping the audience living in that tension.

It becomes a problem when suddenly someone has to drive somewhere for ten minutes. They have nothing to do and you’re just playing score while you’re in real time, waiting for them to get to their destination. The technology and the concept you’re trying to do have to serve the story, or else it just becomes a gimmick.

The gimmick thing is fun for, say, a one-take on a music video. If you’re OK Go, your whole thing is the gimmick. The gimmick is what makes us want to keep watching.

Are you also really interested in technology? I’m curious about the boundary-pushing side of filmmaking, beyond just being a storyteller the way that interests you.

I’m always fascinated when I see somebody come up with a new camera or a new methodology of doing something. Giant breakthroughs like CGI and what it did in Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park. Any time that I can put my hands on it, I’m excited.

We did something years ago when the iPhone 4 came out. It was the first one that had FaceTime, so we shot a music video over FaceTime using one camera to go to another camera, and we were filming that camera. It’s kind of fun because often the technology is restricting you in some way, and it forces you to really channel your creativity. If we’re going to use this, how are we going to use it?

I have filmmaker friends, and it’s this camera versus this camera, where you get this many pixels in this one, and that one has the better color resolution. None of that matters. It’s your script, your cast, and your execution. Those are the only things that matter. Nobody ever leaves the $200-million blockbuster and goes, oh wow, at least they shot on this camera. I’ll forgive all the story problems I have with this movie because it was shot on this camera.

For Dreamcrusher, did the tech come first?

Reward, which is the parent name for the series. If you think like American Horror Story, each season has their own name under the main title of American Horror Story. Reward is the main title and each season will have its subtitle that contains the story.

Reward was invented by William Cheverie and Joseph Avino. They had a core concept of a mystery television series where somebody could win a detective prize playing at home. Then it was sort of like, would I be interested in joining this? They’d seen an interactive project I’d done with Blumhouse, and it was kind of off to the races from there for me. It was definitely like, here’s the core idea and then it was, oh, how do we do this?

There are a few things I can’t talk about until the season is over, but there are some things I had to break tradition with in the way a murder mystery normally plays out. This had to do with how the audience is looking at suspects and what would be most compelling to keep as many guesses and theories possible through the duration of the series.

It’s been very interesting, because you’ve not only got to write a compelling TV show that can stand on its own, that anybody could just watch, but then there has to be all this layered material. There’s a lot of sort of bonus footage and extra reading to do around the series online, and that all has to serve the story, but also be these clues that can unlock the prize. And then also not take away from the fact that if you haven’t read or seen all of this, you’re not somehow lost or not getting the most out of the TV show.

The guys who make Red Letter Media, one of my favorite YouTube channels, poke fun at some of the Star Wars movies that haven’t worked. They’re like, don’t tell me I need to read some comic book or some novel to understand the backstory of what’s happening in this show. Marvel, to a degree, makes people say wait, I gotta watch these TV shows and the movies just to keep up and understand what’s going on?

It’s a lot of working around, trying to do the best I can to keep those things separate, but connected at the same time.

I imagine at home you had your own murder wall investigation playing out. What is the organization in the pre-production like before you even begin shooting this?

Organization is a very generous word (laughs). Thank you. Everything’s sort of gone digital for me now. There are a few apps that let you do sticky notes all over the desktop of your computer. I should do the murder wall next season though. Put little red red yarn and tie them together.

It’s a lot to keep track of. After Episode 1 premiered we saw the way people are talking very openly on Facebook, and they’re taking to this investigation in ways we couldn’t imagine. In the comment section, I’ve had two people call my cell phone. They found my cell phone number attached to something, and then I had to play dumb and be like what’s this? What are you talking about?

There’s a radio station where we recorded some fictional interviews with Gwyn. People have been emailing the radio station because they figured out whose voice was the radio disc jockey. They’re trying to see if maybe that’s a hint. Maybe I have to email them and ask them for something.

I’m still expanding some of the storytelling and adjusting some of the editing in the later episodes based on the way people are responding, just to add more fun and more misdirection.

That’s fascinating. I saw the first episode, but that’s the only one that’s out, right?

Yeah, they’re released every two weeks, giving viewers and players enough time between episodes to get all the hints and do their investigations. We know that life is busy. There are jobs, families, other responsibilities, and hobbies. We want to make sure nobody feels left behind as they go week to week. April 1 is the next episode, and then every two weeks until the finale.

You wrote the whole script. I feel like the problem with a lot of mystery movies and shows is that the clues aren’t there, and then the filmmakers just pull something out of their hat in the third act. Dreamcrusher is specifically built to be solved. Did you have people try to solve it ahead of time?

What I did after I had a cleaned-up first draft was to send it around to a handful of people, but I didn’t give them the last ten pages. After they read it, I said, who did it? I’ve had people guess all the suspects in one way or another, and that helped me refine the series.

It’s a difficult situation here with NDAs that need to be respected by cast and crew. At some point, you have to tell the cast and crew what’s going on. We don’t have the Dimension or Paramount money where we can shoot four different endings, you know? Or even have the grip shoot a scene where he’s the killer, so nobody knows what’s going on.

It was important for me to keep making sure I was layering it enough and putting enough on each suspect that it remains interesting and plausible that any one of these people could have done it. Typically, people just keep dying in a murder mystery, and then you know it’s either going to be choice A or choice B at the end.

I do think it’s interesting that you’re giving people time to go through everything. With shows like Severance and The White Lotus, we’re seeing people comb over every detail in a way that stopped when streaming series were dropping a full season in one day. Do you feel like the way you’re releasing Dreamcrusher, along with the investigation, is encouraging people to put their phones down and return to television as something that deserves their full attention?

Viewer-engaged content. What a fancy corporate term. It’s exactly what we want to do. I missed that experience. I really missed that. You can watch a movie or a show with a friend and if they’re checking their texts a few times as you watch, they’re like, I don’t really get what’s going on. You’re like, it’s because you weren’t paying attention!

I do miss the days of watching Lost or even 24 having to wait that full week. It’s the talk around the watercooler in the office or school or just among friends, where you get to break things down. What is that smoke monster? What do you think Locke meant when he said this? How did he know that this thing would be here? I love that.

The first time I felt that in more modern times was the return of Twin Peaks. When Season 3 came out, my wife and I would watch it and then we would watch all the theory videos. My wife is an actress. She’s on the show From right now, which is another one of these shows that people are trying to figure out. The number of people writing her and asking, what’s happening? What is your character doing? She’s like, you think they tell us what the end of the series is? No, they’re not going to tell us (laughs).

I do miss and love the idea of having those theories and sharing them with people in person. The two that you mentioned, White Lotus and Severance, I am a massive fan of both. My wife and I watch them every week and then have the same discussions about theories. She ends up watching a lot more TikToks and YouTube videos about it and then cluing me in.

I realized that I don’t think I would win Dreamcrusher if I was just an audience member playing because my wife’s way smarter than me and comes up with more interesting theories than I can.

What I find interesting with Dreamcrusher is people are out there sharing their theories and they’re like, did you notice this? Sort of like a groupthink. I thought with prize money on the line, that it would be much more like a high-stakes poker game, keeping their cards close. Not telling anybody else how to get to the end.

It’s $100,000, right, for the winner? That’s not chump change.

That’s not nothing!

I think it kind of speaks to the whole rise of true crime and the armchair investigators who are working together online. I’m curious as to why you feel like there’s something so addicting and engaging in trying to figure out a crime that’s presented to you, whether it’s real or fiction.

I think we all feel very safe in our armchairs, in the comfort of our homes, when bad things happen to other people. I don’t mean it like, oh, I’m glad it happened to them. It’s more of a, thank God I haven’t had to experience anything like that. It would be terrifying to go through something like that.

It’s a bit of a human nature study of, are there signs and people around me that I’m not catching or should be aware of? Hopefully I never am, but if I was in a situation where I had to be a witness or was brought into an investigation like this, would I know how to do it? It’s human nature to always crane your neck at the car wreck. True crime has always been popular, but it has exploded in the modern age, particularly with podcasts like Serial and Only Murders in the Building. Those all have break-down podcasts and review podcasts that examine them.

It’s also a little bit of getting to play detective. Could I solve the case? I listened to Serial. I was like, oh, I know who did it. Then two episodes later I was like, I have no idea who did it. I think a really good true crime documentary will do that.

It must have gotten into my YouTube feed through writing this show and doing research, but there are a few channels that have real-time police body cam footage when they’re interviewing suspects or out on the investigation. I can’t stop watching. Some of them will be an hour-and-a-half long. I’m more engaged by that than some of the network shows and things that I watch, but it’s really interesting to watch the way they break it down. The whole time you go like, oh, that person, they did it for sure. Then you’re like, wait, what is happening? It just keeps twisting and turning.

I think everybody likes to think that same way. We all think we would be a hero in an action situation and we like to think we’re all a little bit Sherlock Holmes.

Reward is the overarching anthology series. For the next season, do you see it continuing to be in the crime genre? Is there a chance of it being a rom com, where it’s a love triangle and you’re picking out who the final couple is?

There’s no limit to what the mystery is and there’s no shortage of ideas already. We know what season two is. We know where that one goes, but to your question, it could be anything. As long as we can come up with a compelling mystery.

When you look at the breadth of mystery shows out there, there’s Only Murders in the Building, which is about as PG, lighthearted, and funny as you can get, all the way to the darkest of the dark. Even within that specific genre or subgenre, there are different styles, tones, and ways to tell it.

We definitely hope to be able to keep it fresh all the time, but in the same way it all fits Reward as a brand so people want to come back to watch the show, no matter what we do. The challenge with any anthology series is how to start fresh with new characters and new stories every time. You’re sort of making your job as a TV writer ten times harder.

Thank you so much for your time, Gavin.  I was hoping you’d give me a hint so I could have a leg up for the 100K, but I guess not (laughs).

What’s a hint? See, my brain just wants to give you a really bad misdirection, but that would be mean. I don’t know…Gwyn’s a musician. Are people studying that side of her enough?

That’s very interesting. I’m excited to see how this all unfolds!

Thank you. I appreciate this so much. The hardest thing is getting the word out there about a new platform and a new series, so I appreciate you making the time for us.

Watch Dreamcrusher and join the investigation.