Stories have always been the heart of Halo. From the games to the novels to the broader extended universe, the threads all weave a rich tapestry together. Waypoint Chronicles are an addition to that landscape that further fleshes out characters and situations. Combining that with Halo’s 25th Anniversary year just made sense and we partnered with community powerhouse JumperScape Media to bring a special three-part chronicle to life.

We sat down with Austin Murphy and James Paulis of the group to get to know them a bit more and touch on Still Midnight – the special Waypoint Chronicle dropping later this week.

Sam: Hey Austin & James, thanks for taking time to sit with me! Let's start at the beginning... How did 'JumperScape' originate?

Austin: When Halo 4 first launched, I started getting curious about making YouTube content using my favorite franchise as a source of inspiration. As the years went by, I started looping in some of my pals (James, Shane, Connor) into the content I was working on as a way for us to connect and have fun together watching the videos back in person. We made your typical funny gameplay highlight videos, the occasional machinima (many lost to deletion off YouTube, still hoping for a workaround to get those back someday), and some random meme content. I actually made my first big impact as a Halo content creator by posting daily to a certain Instagram account with a little bit of a cheeky name. If you've seen the Hershey's Elite jingle bell meme, you'll know what I'm talking about.

What this became was a desire to climb the content ladder. Why focus on making specifically social media content when we have the skills we gained from our careers and education to pursue both fun YouTube stuff and professional media production? With my background in media communications and brand marketing, I was able to kick off JumperScape's first-ever legit project, inspired by other works that I listened to when I was growing up, "Tarkov: A Halo Story." This fan-made project initially began as a way for me to insert fan storytelling into the Halo canon, but quickly my focus became more fixated on bridging gaps between people who would end up contributing to the project. I fell in love with pulling in writers, artists, voice actors, composers, and doing all the things necessary to make our fan-made project feel as legitimate as possible. A passion was born for being a producer and setting the pieces into place to make something truly special.

With that pursuit coming and going, I wanted to reprioritize towards adding to the Halo conversation, which led to the most successful and fun project on our resume, "The Library: Halo Lorecast," where those same 4 friends who started all of this back in 2012 continue to have fun talking about their favorite franchise.

Sam: Was there a goal in mind when you guys were teaming up?

James: I think fun? If that's a valid reason?

Sam: It totally is!

James: At the beginning, we didn't have any expectations for what we were working on. We made things that entertained ourselves to make our usual late nights spent in Austin's living room growing up more fun, and our attitude towards telling stories and bringing opportunity remains that way. In fact, when we started working on The Library, we only planned to do 25 episodes just to expand upon the deeper lore elements we wrote into Tarkov: A Halo Story, but the Halo community really got invested in our friendship and how much Halo meant to us. I think we're about to hit season 7, nearing the fifth anniversary of the show now.

Sam: Wow! Y'all have been doing this a long time now. What keeps you going?

Austin: It's the same thing that got us interested in taking up more producer-esque roles and telling more stories. We have such a unique position in the Halo community where, while the community at large may not know of us, a vast majority of the content creators, voice actors, artists, modders, and many others out there have heard of us and want to work with us. We get to enable so many creative ideas and help them come to life; that alone is enough to keep us going for decades in any community we get welcomed into. This has even applied to some of our local talent/small business friends here in Ohio.

Sam: And now you're working with Halo Studios on a brand-new Waypoint Chronicle as part of this year's 25th anniversary celebration! What has it been like collaborating with the studio on this project?

James: The best way to put how it felt to enter that first meeting is "respected." From my time in our meetings, it felt extremely collaborative. The team always made me feel like our ideas were being heard. It was refreshing to bounce ideas back and forth to sharpen a specific character or bring more to a scene. It never felt like ideas we came up with were immediately shot down or disregarded.

Austin: As strong Halo fans, stepping into that writing room was extremely intimidating. That being said, the franchise team is made up of some of the most generous and welcoming people I've seen in creative storytelling. I've experienced defensiveness and protectiveness when you start to try to insert new ideas or even dare to bring up a fan theory or two in a writing room, but those we got to spend time with were accommodating and unafraid to tell us their honest perspectives. Being a fan at the same time as a storyteller, there was room to freak out about being able to include particular ideas into our story and to ask if there was more that could be added.

Sam: We have been publishing Waypoint Chronicles for a while now (enough to even have a whole book for the first set!). What makes Still Midnight special?

Austin: This story hits me and my own life on a personal level. Without getting too deep into spoiler territory, this Chronicle touches on some things we learned about in Halo 4: Spartan Ops and expands upon a lot of what was being presented there. I was excited about all the other things we were permitted to include in this story, but one particular aspect had me grinning from ear-to-ear. One of my highlight memories of the 343-era of Halo will always be playing through Spartans Ops as it was releasing back in the day for the first time with our buddy Shane. We still play it from time to time over a late-night chat and some drinks.

James: I think this one being the first-ever three-parter opens a lot of opportunities for this type of storytelling. The Waypoint Chronicles are much more slice-of-life in a way that the stories in Fractures and Evolutions aren't; they give a window into the universe that expands tiny things that give a surprising amount of expansion or closure to other Halo stories. The fact we get an entire arc with these characters, each one representing something that any listener could relate to, could be a sign of bigger expansions to come.

Sam: As an established group, you obviously have your set ways for your content. How did the process for the Chronicle differ from your usual?

Austin: This is where I get all in my head about how much thought Halo put into bringing us into this project, because it's almost the exact same. Take out the added steps of paperwork and getting all the lore nerd questions for the Franchise Team out of the way, what you're left with is exactly what we do for Stories From Waypoint. Writer's room, casting calls, cold reads, long recording sessions, even longer sound design sessions – it’s all there.

James: We always have fun in the recording booth no matter what we get to work on. I still think fondly of the time we couldn't get Austin to make a very good "pained grunting" sound effect, so I had to punch him in the gut for real to get the sound right. Call it what you want; I call it dedication. (He's fine, by the way!) Benefits of working with your childhood friends.

Sam: What was the table read experience like for you all?

Austin: Hilarious! I don't think anyone was expecting how much fun it was going to be. You get much more relaxed into a character you're playing when you're able to flub a line in front of the writers and director and immediately ask what needs to be fixed.

James: Jeff's voices were perfect; nothing needed fixing there.

Sam: Through this process, is there any creative moment, concept, or “thing” you are most proud of?

Austin: There was a moment where I had an epiphany surrounding a particular aspect of the story. I wasn't able to even shut my eyes to sleep that night over it. It was extremely last minute, we had reached the end of production; script had essentially been all but wrapped, and we had already shipped the first draft of the final chapter. On a whim, I hit up the Halo team trying to see if there was anything that could be done to adjust this one particular thing that I didn't know if they would even agree was worth correcting. Woke up the next morning to an entire new set of pages in the script. Did I give myself an extra week's worth of work? Yes. Was it worth it? Hearing the final product…also yes.

James: The character Ersu 'Kybol originally was a bit more multi-layered and conflicted in his perspective on humans from what I remember, but I pitched the concept of splitting this perspective between two Elites rather than just the one. After a little back and forth in that call, Varo was born, and we got an entire side-narrative built around the prejudices they can have for humans, in contrast to the prejudice we typically see on the flip side.

Sam: I've mentioned it a couple times now but this is all being done as part of the broader 25^th year anniversary Halo and the celebrations we’ve been doing all year long. Are there any themes in the story that echo the themes we've been touching on?

Austin:

The importance that each person has in this community, insofar as their contribution to the ongoing personal Halo story that every fan has experienced. There's one character in particular we bring to life in Still Midnight that reminds me of a friend I had back when MCC first came out. We were pals for a good long while and we had to go separate ways years later, but I still think about those times we had together over sessions of Halo. I think there will be people listening to this Chronicle that will experience a good amount of retrospection like that, if they think carefully about what these characters represent.

James: From a meta-narrative standpoint, collaboration. Halo's community has been a dedicated bunch of creative geniuses that can't help but group up and make amazing things. Some people started with Halo 3’s Forge and are now making custom modded maps or are even full-on working on the Halo franchise as employees now. Our characters in Still Midnight don't seem like they fit together on the surface, much like many of our random friends we made online back in the day, but they're friends, nevertheless. I think that's impactful to see it acknowledged in the storytelling. 

Sam: It's clear this has been an ambitious project! Along with the two of you, how many people did it take to pull this whole thing together?

Austin: If we include every single person who contributed even the slightest bit to this project, I counted close to twenty people. Each one of them was essential for getting this project together, and I couldn't be more thankful than that.

James: It's always fun to see how each aspect of the story had little tidbits that add up to the final story. Austin did all the sound design by himself, as he often does. I'm sure he'd say I gave valuable insight and that I was essential to getting the feedback he needed.

Sam: Past Chronicles have been largely in the written medium, with audio narration being a bonus addition. Still Midnight is intended to be an audio-first experience, so what is one thing you want folks to pay attention to when they tune in?

Austin: The choices of music. There's an excellent original piece or two in there that you may not have heard before, but we were also very particular about the music we used from the existing Halo library. The most difficult challenge when using Halo game soundtracks is that they're game soundtracks. Using a soundtrack that isn't built as a cinematic score means you have to be much more particular and do a whole lotta editing, but the reward for that effort is apparent when you listen back to it.

James: The little details. We were thrilled to be able to include a bunch of fun cameos, sound references, and a bunch of other little tidbits. I would give you hints, but what fun would that be? From my last time test-listening, I think there were well over two-dozen secrets and references thrown into the scenes to give attentive Halo fans a little reward for their attention.

Sam: As people listen to Still Midnight in the near future, what are you hoping they take away from the entire Waypoint Chronicle experience?

Austin: I've had a goal for a good long while now to prove that the term "fan-made" isn't a tag of low-quality. I want people to experience this story, replay it over and over again to catch new details and learn new things, and to hear over and over what made our team worthy of such an amazing opportunity that Halo Studios has given us. I wanted to make a story that makes someone think deeper than the narrative, and I think we accomplished that.

James: That there is still room for Halo to develop new stories and new characters in a way that keeps the main plot moving forward. We've been honored to bring this new cast to life, and we'd be honored to do it again at some point in the future if we were given the opportunity, but the bottom-line is that they now exist and can be directed by the franchise however they're needed. I see a lot of connections between this story and the style of the UNSC Archives ad campaign; there is importance in the simplest of humanity.

Sam: Thank you both for taking the time to chat with me!

As you can see, this is most definitely a passion project, and we are so excited for you all to get your first listen when the first episode drops later this week.

This isn’t the last we’ve heard from JumperScape (and if you want to learn more about them, be sure to check here)– we’ll be back to wrap up the series with the rest of the crew involved in pulling this together. We’ll chat with the story’s voice actors, musicians, and more.