Movies - TV
Prior To Casting Gravity Falls Had No Idea Who Their Characters Were
By ADAM WESCOTT
The cult classic animated children’s series, “Gravity Falls,” gave creator Alex Hirsch and his crew a chance to tell a complex story that carefully hid connections between its episodes. However, Hirsch soon discovered the challenges associated with serialized storytelling and how things can move in their own direction once the production of a project begins.
Hirsch said, “No matter how many grand plans you have in your head, everything changes when you sit down to write.” The animators and writers began “Gravity Falls” with a rough idea of who the characters were; however, these ideas could change, with Hirsch explaining for one character, “We didn’t really know who Ford was, from a personality perspective, until we sat down to write him.”
By the time Ford appeared in Season 2, his character had transformed from a plot device to an actual character, thanks in no small part to J.K. Simmons, who Hirsch claimed had “changed how we thought about the character.” The creators also needed to make personality adjustments like for Dipper, who became a more positive character “in order to make the story happen,” according to Hirsch.
While “Gravity Falls” didn’t have an in-depth, point-by-point plan for the series, the writers could predict what would happen based on each involved character’s personality. Ensuring that the characters were true to themselves in each scene was hard work, but Hirsch said, “Figuring out how it all fits together in the writer’s room … that is the fun part of writing.”