00:00Hi, nice to meet you.
00:01Hey, it's good to meet you.
00:02First of all, congratulations on this movie.
00:09Hello?
00:15Anyone there?
00:17We know you're the youngest director in the studio,
00:20so what does that mean to you
00:23to be at the helm of a production like this at your age?
00:26I think...
00:28I think I'm probably not qualified to speak on the broader industry trends
00:32that this might be implying or reflecting,
00:35but I know from my experience that I've spent my whole life in a position where,
00:40or most of my life ever since I started getting online around the time I was 10 or so,
00:45where I was constantly seeing independent filmmakers,
00:49like just people putting stuff out on YouTube.
00:51It doesn't even need to be like high production value,
00:53just like anything with any kind of digital camera
00:55and like finding stories to tell even with limited resources.
00:59And I think that like, you know, that spoke to me and I did what I could for as long
01:05as I could,
01:06which I think I could just keep going with forever.
01:08I love making stuff online, but I started like going down the path of visual effects driven filmmaking
01:14and started, you know, I found some maybe non-legitimate ways to get a hold of some VFX software when
01:20I was younger.
01:21And I started like teaching myself like After Effects.
01:23And then when the pandemic hit, I had a chance to learn Blender.
01:28And I think that like, it was just a slow progression of making things that just were creatively fulfilling and
01:35didn't need to go farther,
01:36but theoretically could for a while.
01:38Like I get full creative fulfillment from the little things I do just solo online.
01:42And then I think it just so happened that Backrooms happens to have enough scope as an IP that there's
01:47room
01:48and there's obviously an audience for it to, you know, speak to the property in some like, you know,
01:56go a little bit bigger and a little more personal with it.
01:59And I think that really it was kind of already a tested concept in a way.
02:03So I think practically it was, you know, all sorts of things that I learned while, you know, transitioning from
02:10working solo to working with all these people.
02:12It was a few years of it from from like pre pre production to pre production to production to post
02:18production.
02:19It's been like probably a million different things I learned every day and was around a lot of really great
02:23people who, you know,
02:24helped me learn those lessons and helped, you know, bring this film together.
02:28So I think it's it's been a lot of very fortunate like alignments of right people being in the right
02:33place at the right time.
02:34And I just think I think we made a cool movie and I, you know, I'm excited to share it
02:39with people.
02:39I think. Yeah.
02:40But as you were saying, it's also your passion for filmmaking and your passion for showing the world all of
02:47these things that happens in your head
02:48when you're thinking about all this stuff.
02:51Yeah.
02:51And your work is has a very unique approach to horror, especially how you build this atmosphere and tension between
02:59the story.
03:01So how would you describe your own style in cinema and how it is shown in the film?
03:07All right. You feel me?
03:09Yeah.
03:10Follow my lead.
03:11What is this?
03:12It's what I'm trying to figure out.
03:14I've been here every night since I found the place and I still barely scratched the surface.
03:18I just take it slow.
03:21I would say if I had to like summarize it, it would probably be grounded, reflective and like trying to
03:31emphasize a sort of like visceral strangeness or like maybe that's not the best way to put it.
03:36But like a sort of leaning into like really emphasizing strange visual visceral experiences, either like auditorily or like trying
03:45to, you know, through sound.
03:47Sound is such a big part of this, I would say, like really giving time and space in on screen
03:52and in the soundscape to what would maybe be maybe more mundane details of an average world and sort of
04:00like recalibrate the audience's attention to focus on stuff they might not usually so that, you know, when we do
04:08want to break that pattern or go larger than that.
04:11But I think it's maybe a little more destabilizing as we've sort of like set a lower tempo or set
04:17a more curious tempo that we're able to kind of derail when we want.
04:21Yeah.
04:23These rooms, this place builds them.
04:29It's like a maze, it just goes on and on.
04:33And also, where did the need to combine the psychological drama with all the backroom lore came from?
04:42Was this always an idea for the movie?
04:44I think it's always been inherent to backrooms in general.
04:47I think from the very first time that original post was made,
04:51I think it inherently plays on fears around sensory deprivation and isolation.
04:56There's so many different reads you can get from it,
04:58but I think all of them kind of just come down to the fear of what happens if you are
05:04put in a room alone forever.
05:07And that's all you have.
05:08And all you have is the stuff that's in your brain, and there's nothing to preoccupy yourself with.
05:12And, you know, it's kind of, I think, at its most central core,
05:16that is the physical experience that people are scared of when they think of the backrooms.
05:20And then everything else is kind of either an elaboration on that or maybe a subversion of that in some
05:27ways.
05:50Yeah, it sounds really scary, and then when you saw it, it feels more real also.
05:56And we know that the backrooms fandom is very passionate also about this series,
06:01and they have their own theories and their own vision of this universe.
06:06So what can you tell them about this adaptation, and why give it a chance on the big screen?
06:11Yeah, I think there's a lot of different approaches and interpretations of the backrooms,
06:15and there always have been.
06:17The version that this film follows is the one that's consistent with the body of work that I've put forward
06:22so far.
06:23But I think this film in particular, it was really our priority to make a version that works for people
06:30who are familiar with my body of work.
06:33And that gives them more to think about, more to chew on people who've never heard of the backrooms,
06:37and also people who follow other interpretations,
06:40where I think we're approaching the backrooms in such a way that you can't definitively say for sure
06:46that those other interpretations aren't included there.
06:49I think it really goes with a few little suspensions of creative interpretation.
06:55I think it's pretty consistent with the original post, where it all came from.
06:58So I think it's really just going back to trying to recall why the backrooms works for people in the
07:03first place,
07:04why the idea that caught on, why anyone talks about it,
07:06why anyone took the time to make any interpretations of this idea,
07:09and really try to go back to that place.
07:12And I think fundamentally in the DNA, it does feel quite aligned with the purest form of the backrooms.
07:21Yeah. Well, I think they will be very, very excited about this.
07:26And thank you so much for your time, and congratulations again.
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