Kane Parsons Breaks Down a Scene from ‘Backrooms’ transcript

I'd go up to it and I'd touch it and be like, "Holy My hand goes through it. What happens if my head goes through it?" Or maybe better I'd get a camera and put that through first. >> [music] >> Hey, I'm Kane Parsons and today I'm going to be breaking down a scene from my new film Backrooms. [music] So, the scene opens with we once again see Clark sleeping inside of his furniture store. We have this lighting setup. We debated what we wanted to do with the the lights for the sort of [music] nighttime look of the film, Jeremy Cox and I, the DP.

We we have like a pretty advanced control system over all of the fluorescent overheads. So, we can sort of, you know, play with those and you can see throughout the film flicker them on and off here and there. But but here we decided for the night look we wanted to sort of let these display lamps be on their own separate power supply that's sort of operating separate of the weirdness that's happening in the building. >> [laughter] >> The man there is watching television.

He gets up again and he is going to go storm down to the basement and [music] and investigate cuz cuz this has been going on too long and and at this point it's just it's just got to stop. I want to say he's at the end of his rope, but but I think he's got more rope to climb. I think he's kind of climbing in a circle. More so, I think he kind of fell into the bottom of a fishbowl and he's not really quite getting out.

He very much lives in the past. He He He points to all these events that could have gone differently for him, all of these, you know, times and places that [music] he believes that he gave what he needed to and it was others or other circumstances that let him down in some way. And so, I think he's very much living in sort of a a state in which he's not quite understanding that he's, you know, this freedom to move outside of where he is right now.

I think he's feeling quite stuck. I think he's in a very stuck position in life and and I think this is unfortunately a pretty average night for him. >> [panting] >> I care greatly about the you know crafting the sonic landscape. I have been doing it for years on YouTube and I want this film to be congruent with that. I co-composed with Ado van Bremen so we would do like most tracks are probably like 50/50 us and then some [music] tracks are all him, some tracks are all me.

I think this particular one was was all him. We were using a lot of these like early 2000s VST synth like like like absinthe and reactor [music] and and you know trying to give them a richness that they don't usually have, you know, take some of these mono sounds and and make them something a little bit more rich and airy. Sort of like a Silent Hill or like Portal sort of quality to it. It's all largely pretty ambient until it doesn't need to be anymore. >> Pieces. >> For me music and sound I think of in the same bucket.

You know, a lot of the music gets altered quite a bit in the mix and and so like, you know, just seeing how we're dipping in and out of these different all these different sonic layers to sort of create a sonic experience [music] that's constantly, you know, I I I think we never wanted to distract from from what we needed [music] to inside the environment itself of when we get to the backrooms. Like here then our emphasis was mostly [music] just on portraying a true to life soundscape to the store but the backrooms is where it gets really specific. >> If you saw that light going through the wall, would you go through into the backroom yourself? >> Yeah, obviously.

If I had not seen if I was like wholly unfamiliar with any of this, I would be a person in a building looking at [music] a building that I'm familiar with. Like if I was in my own home and there was a crack in the wall that's leading to I could see a faint light from a space that should not be in my house. Two things I don't do are either move on with my day and go brush my teeth and go to bed, and I don't leave the house cuz I I maybe that maybe if if you knew you're in a horror film, you would go and do that, but in my case, I'd go up to it and I'd touch it and I'd be like, "Holy, my hand goes through it.

What happens if my head goes through it?" Or maybe better, I'd get a camera and put that through first. We had our reference cameras on either side of the wall viewing the intersection [music] point. So, it's kind of a eyeball reference off of those video elements synced up to the plate footage and then we would, you know, it was just a roto job and it we took a lot of iterations because it's kind of hard to to roto someone passing through a surface in in 3D space, especially when they're moving somewhat delicately and slowly and making sure the lines don't jitter and whatnot.

So, but generally it was we we had the two stages. We had the base Sorry, the two sets. We had the basement and then the first room Clark enters into. They're all in direct continuity to one another. It's all [music] right behind that wall. And we would have a plug that we would remove and and put a blue screen on the other side from one side so we could add the wall back in, and then he would fall through, and then we would do the reverse on the other side, and then as soon as he's not interacting with the wall anymore, the plug goes up and it's an actual wall again.

I think horror is difficult um to put a pin on for me. I I have a lot of inspirations, but but maybe not necessarily ones that I would peg as specifically horror. I know, you know, over the years it's been a lot of stuff from like, you know, the Portal games, like the Valve properties in general, Half-Life included. Um Uh you know, Mr. Robot's been [music] a huge impact and influence on on the way I do things and the way I sort of present these ideas and these this sort of look at loneliness.

And same with [music] the film One Hour Photo, that's a good one. It's interesting because there's a lot of inspirations that went into the YouTube series or the series at large, which leans a little more sci-fi techno-thriller than this film does. And then this film is kind of deferring to the series for a lot of things, so it's it's easy to say what inspired the series, but if I tried to bring that up in reference to the film, it might feel a little >> [music] >> strange or or surprising.

I mean, I like to see it as the continuation of what [music] already exists. And when I started this project in in 2022, narratively I knew what it was going to be, but not knowing exactly like this would happen with it. Um I had hopes, but like, you know, this has been insane. It's been insane. Um you know, from the beginning it's been so important to me to know ending of the story and then you know, to be working backwards from that and and so I guess that's to say that yes, there is a a plan in line narratively for Backrooms and and no, it has not been [music] completed and and uh yes, the story is currently unfinished.

Yeah, at at the risk of feeling like out of touch, I I I always have trouble. I don't feel like I have done enough to um I haven't gotten far enough away from from this project to give proper advice on it yet, I feel, but I think like I can speak to my own experience and just say that like every technical trade I've learned along the way with all the YouTube work was all just through YouTube and and and mostly free software and look around for like student licenses [music] for things and there's all sorts of ways to get programs and stuff and like I I I think I I think if you can identify what your specialty is or like what you're most apt to be able to do well, I suppose.

And I know that may be a hard thing to do cuz like, you know, very common artistic trait is to think it's not well enough ever and I feel the same and I think it's pretty common. Um but but I think if you can identify if you can try to be objective about it, like what is something you can achieve in a you know, with the resources you have, but then achieve it to like the maximum uh potential of that idea. Sort of like how with my Backrooms stuff, I uh can do CG environments, not very good realistic CG humans, but if I put them in hazmat suits, >> [music] >> it makes sense narratively and so the narrative kind of works around that, but also you don't have to deal with the uncanny valley of the faces.

So you kind of just try not to I guess overextend or don't worry about overextending, play to play to what you know you can do, I guess. >> It's beautiful. Am I right? >> Hello? >> [music]