Yes, please.

Yeah, I can break it down if you'd like.

I, I don't know, um...

Okay, so just, like, the, uh...

And, and stop me if you've heard this before, or maybe this is good for the audience.

Uh, it originated in a very unconventional way, this idea of the Backrooms, where it, it initially started as basically somebody, uh, took a photo of really just what looked like...

I mean, uh, many of you have probably seen the original Backrooms photo.

I'm sorry.

Maybe in brief for people who haven't followed the kind of lore of Back Rooms, could you just kind of catch us up with the kind of creepypasta of the Back Rooms, like how you encountered the original post, what it was, where this all comes from?

Yeah, so back in May of 2019, there was a 4chan post that circulated, which was really the conjoining of two separate posts.

But since it's all anonymous, it's essentially impossible to trace who really did what and where it was sourced.

But there was a photo of a dingy sort of off yellow.

It was unclear whether it was an office space or eventually over the years, just in 2024, people figured out it was a furniture store or an extra store.

Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah, I think.

Yeah.

I think without being, I don't think that was ever the driving factor.

It was never built as an analogy for it.

It definitely became more relevant the longer the project went on, and I think the comparisons sort of come to a head with literally these still-life character designs where they have too many fingers.

So it's very evocative of some early generative models, like around 2021 and whatnot.

I think generally the whole project is speaking more to the broader, I think, unspecific trends that obviously have produced where we're at now, but have been going on, you could say, forever.

I mean, in a journalist's view, it has been going.

And I wonder, are you ever, as someone who has spent a lot of time online has gone deep down many uh rabbit holes obviously are you ever afraid of your own curiosity in the places you want to explore

But someone posted this and if some- it was a thing called Backrooms.

Yeah.

Uh, so the nature of 4chan is that this was an anonymous caption that went along with a photo that no one could ID, uh, for the longest time, until 2024.

Uh, it appears to be some kind of, you know, office space, something nebulous and very generic that I think a lot of people can find familiarity in.

Um, and you know, the, the text sets up this idea that just outside of reality kind of lurks this infinite mega structure.

It's obviously, obviously a supernatural sort of fun concept to play with, but it's like if you fall out of reality, you'll end up there, this drab sort of mono yellow drop ceiling hellscape, uh, that goes on in all directions.

Yeah.

And in my interpretation, I took like a sci-fi spin on it.

And then we'll be back with our thoughts very shortly.

There was technically, like, a moment where I get to go on there for the first time and all the furniture and props are in and the lights are on correctly, and-

Mm

... it's finished now.

Um, but I think, like, I think it's such a gradual experience that, that any point along the way I could walk through there with, like, my eyes closed and I'm very, very familiar with the set at this point, obviously.

Tell us what you were doing when you started doing this.

Yeah, I mean, for a number of years, I've been teaching myself VFX software, just, you know, by any means necessary, sort of, since I would say, like, middle school.

And, like, you know, hand-me-down laptop that I would kind of, like, upgrade over time.

And it was during the beginning of the pandemic.

excuse me, the pandemic that I started teaching myself the program Blender, which is this free open source 3D software.

And that's the tool that I use to this day.

And I just started creating a lot of these like found footage style vignettes where, you know, human work like having like a human in front of a virtual 3D camera is so much A CG human, you'll run into the Uncanny Valley fast.

inspiration?

Why do you think, other than the, the fact that this was a very clear artistic vision from you, what, what about this process with the producers and the studio worked best?

See, I do, I, I do personally have a lot of gratitude for the ways in which they did lean into and support the, the ways I like to, you know, uh, conduct my pipeline on my own terms, on my own time.

Uh, you know, prepping the script was, was, was largely...

You know, it, it, it was a collaboration between myself and, and, and Will Sudik, the, the writer, um, where, you know, I had the world information and, and so I was able to calibrate a lot, and we had, like, a general outline.

Like, we blocked out the, the story before we went and, and wrote it.

But, like, once we were actually getting into prep, I was just using Blender to, to pre-vis and, and do, um, you know, uh, lookbooks for everything and, and be really, really specific about what I wanted the people who were on board this project to, to be seeing, and thinking about, and, and considering while we're, like, going day by day.

Um, so I, I think, you know, the openness around kind of going with, with the flow, whatever that means, with, with my Blender shenanigans and pre-vis work was pretty fun.

Mm-hmm

Maybe it was like a summer, like a holiday break for them, but I get it.

Yeah, well, that's where it sort of started to spiral online.

It was around 2019, that original, well, it was 2019, that original post, circulated as a meme, but then it started to obviously like scratch an itch for certain people, for most people, that sort of led into like the whole liminal space photography movement, if you want to call it that, in 2020, where it is what you were just describing.

It's like largely dependent on or factoring in like these you know, feelings that you had around, like, the relationship with the space in the world you lived in as a child and how those memories have obviously sort of, you know, overemphasized certain details and de-emphasized others.

So you kind of have, like, an empty world that no one else lives in anymore that only exists in your brain.

So there's a little bit of that.

Like, I think a lot of the visual aesthetic language of Backrooms and, uh...

Yeah.

So what, what do you think makes YouTube such a breeding ground for this, this new talent?

So my perspective is, is, before anything else, is that I have not been doing this long enough to have a full, final, academic, wise, the true perspective.

I, I have guesses and I have, you know, my own personal thoughts, of course.

And, and what I think and, and, and feel is largely, I, I think YouTube, I think it's a bit incidental.

Um, I, I think that...

And again, I can only speak for myselfBut I feel as though there's sort of an inevitable aspect to people of a certain age bracket who have not yet been able to enter the industry, who are like, you know, hoping to get in there, uh, in some form, who just enjoy creating film in whatever media.

Like, you know, film is a spectrum.

... h- so how do you, uh, what, how do you make sense of that?

Like an old mall

... what's the right term? Not even-- Well, yes, yes, I-- That is one version.

But also, like, there's something about a well-maintained, very active, lively office building where it's still not one person in that building is sentimental about the space itself.

It feels like the building is there to fulfill a job, and it has no friends whatsoever.

Uh, it will be moved out of and, and, and no one will ever think about that space again.

And there's something about that that, again, this is very-- I can't quite put my finger on why [chuckles] my brain has decided to attribute human emotions to inanimate buildings.

But, uh, I've got a bit of that.

Yeah, that's, that's scary no matter who you are.

Mm-hmm.

Um, I mean, Star Wars, all, you know, everything that was out at the time in, like, 2007 I ingested.

Although I, I wouldn't, like...

You know, I think those had a...

I wouldn't consider myself, like, a longstanding, like, huge, huge Star Wars fan.

But, like, you know, growing up I think that definitely was probably one of the early influences of science fiction.

Um, like, ma- materially I start getting, like, really outwardly excited about stuff.

Yeah.

But he's staying humble at the center of all this hype.

I think I gave shape to something that was already there, so it's very nice.

I can appreciate how it is fun to be, like, kind of at, like, the tip of that sort of vector.

[laughs]

They just helped me, you know, like, figure out, sort of find a rhythm for on an individual level what sort of transfer of information is most helpful beyond my default of just going towards mechanical, overly scientific explanations of psychology and stuff.

Finding the right balance of, um, when you need to be really concise.

Like, sometimes she would need, like, one word, uh, emotions to go with.

They really helped me figure out how to exercise discretion in the right moment.

Is that where it comes from?

I, I, I think it definitely planted the seed.

Uh, I think in gen- general, I'm, I'm a very, like, um-I get very attached to setting and to locations, and I, I, uh, you know, I, I feel the character of places pretty strongly, and I, um, you know, most of my life I've spent either trying to, you know, either draw places, never really people.

I can't draw or represent people in a, in a physical form.

I still can't model humans either.

But so, like, artistically, when rendering these things, it's always been an emphasis on, uh, the spaces for a long time.

And so, uh, I think Backrooms just really appealed to, like, when...

... is that you don't... you can never quite explain it.

Yeah.

Um, and letting like the laws of the universe be, uh, more, more, you know, uh, factors that, that, that resulted in our consciousness being the way it is and perceiving a sort of sense of importance, being like derived from just happenstance and being essential to existing and living and procreating and stuff.

So anyway, uh, I feel like what I was excited about with, with that concept was being able to sort of get past like the initial like, okay, we have a short about someone falling into the Backrooms, and it's a scary pl- it is a scary place, and I think it's like more intriguing than people give it credit for.

Like, I think people do miss the mark sometimes with their own Backrooms projects when they go for like a space where the lights get too dark, it gets too green.

It's like scary, scary.

Like, if it's trying to be like a dark haunted house or a dungeon it just falls apart 'cause that's not-

Mm-hmm.

But what I wanted to be able to do was be able to have stuff that got out of that and was more human-centric and more getting into, uh, the character work that could be portrayed by actual human actors who, who, you know, like were there for that.