Generational Shifts in Digital Filmmaking

This message comes from Capeppella University. That spark you feel? That's your drive for more Cappella University's Flex Path Learning format lets you earn your degree at your pace without putting life on pause. Learn more at cappella. edu Rooms is a horror movie about some of the creepiest places imaginable, the nond descript beige carpeted rooms that populate countless office spaces and discount furniture warehouses. If you've ever worked in a rundown office park or shopped for a cheap mattress, the vibe will be instantly familiar. Dingy, claustrophobic, maybe with cheerful music pip through tinny speakers and alwaysas with the unsettling flickering hum of fluorescent lights. That setting forms the central concept of back rooms, which doesn't have a plot so much as a deeply unnerving sense of place. It's a surreal and unsettling bit of horror based on a popular YouTube series. I'm Stephven Thompson today we are talking about Back Rooms on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR This message is from AT and T with your summer essential, the iPhone seventeen Pro. Its center stage front camera auto adjusts the frame to fit everyone into group selfies. Right now at AT andT, ask how you can get iPhone seventeen Pro on them with eligible trade in. Requires eligible plan, terms and restrictions apply subject to change Visit at. com slash iPhone for details This message comes from Progressive inssurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it at progressive. com. Progressive casualty inssurance Company and Affiliates. Potential savings will vary, not available in all states Support for NPR and the following message come from FX's The Lowown From acclaimed reservation doogs creator Stterlin Harjo, comes FX's The Lowown, starring five time Oscar nominee Ethan Haogke. The series follows a Tulsa trruth storian whose obsession with the facts always leads to trouble, named an AFI program of the Year And hailed as a gloriously off kilter noir, the lowdown is Emmy eligible in all comedy categories. Stream it now on Hulu and Disney Plus Joining me today is Jordan Cruciola. She's a writer and producer and the host of the podcast Feeling Scene on Maximum funun, Hey, Jordan. Hello, Thankk you so much for having me back. It is a pleasure. Also with us is freelance music and culture journalist Rihanna Cruz, Hey Rhanna. Hey Stehven, happy to be here. Great to have you. So in backrooms, Chuateel Edggiaort plays the manager of a pirate themed discount furniture store called Capain Clark's Ottoman Empire As he discusses with his therapist, played by Renata Reinzva, his life is falling apart. He's getting a divorce, he drinks too much, and he's carrying around the massive weight of ambient stress. And to make matters worse, while living in the store, he discovers a secret labyrinth of backrooms. Each has a strange and unsettling design, tiny doors with three knobs, narrow passageways piles of strangely familiar laundry, masses of junky furniture stacked ominously. The disorienting effect of backackrooms is magnified through the film's use of found footage, as we view some of the rooms via fuzzy images shot on vintage camcorders. Backrooms' origin is what's known as a creepy pasta for those who don't know That's a catchall phrase used to describe pieces of horror folklore that spread on the internet Caine Parsons made a popular Backrooms web series for YouTube when he was a teenager. This is his debut feature. He's only twenty. Backrooms is in theaters. Now, Rihanna Cruz, I'm going to start with you What you think of back rooms? I think I like it more the more I think about it to be honest there's bunch of things going for it. You know, it's technically stunning. The production design, I find incredible. The choices that Kim Parsons is making as a director feel very beyond his years. You know, they feel super seasoned And I think the best parts of the movie are when it commits to this analog aesthetic and the vintage horr style that you find in the YouTube series. I don't necessarily think it functions the best it could outside of YouTube, to be honest. but I think that's intentional, right? Like I don't really find rooms the movie scary And I don't think it really functions well as a horror movie But as like a conceptual project with weird Darming elements and lots to say about the nature of memory and the reproduction of thought I found that fascinating. And I like generally how it feels in direct opposition to the class of tell don't show horror movies that we're in right now, especially like YouTuber horror movies, you know, thinking of obsession, thinking of Shelby Oaks, things like that. It's refreshing to watch something that feels new and exciting and doesn't feel like I'm being spoonfed horror, you know?ure. And I love that. This movie is very light on lore and very heavy on just showing you things that will creep you out. Yeah, and I really, really dig that. and I think like I love a horror movie that makes you sit and think about why you're uncomfortable. The things that were the least successful for me in backrooms were, you know, the overtly horror elements. I think the unsettling vibe was really compelling to me. I enjoyed that overall. Hey, how about you, Jordan? I really liked this. Like I like anything, I'll watch anything. I'm a straightforward person kind of first and foremost. I don't necessarily need to be like no one told me anything and I had an amazing time I liked that I was just like existing in this place. Like it worked for me a lot better than I think a movie like this typically would as my my wife and I discussed on the way out. L it like the cell. different, but really captured that feeling of being in a nightmare, the illogical nature of it, the endless nature of it, the imprisoning nature of that in a world that only can be conjured by your dreams because real tangible life could not accommodate such strangeness. It really, really does that. An excellent use of period peieace. This being set in the nineties and it made a surreality of true things about the nineties that made the sense of place feel like a character too. Like that furniture store can still exist somewhere, but it really existed then, whichich means you could have ended up in any manner of iterations of it and kind of the sterility of and everything around you and like the quietness of it is such a great contrast for the raw emotional performance that she would tell Edggie four is always going to bring you. He is such a raw emotional performer. and I thought him set against the All of his surroundings and environments was a really great contrast and also a great comparison to the Scandinavian stoicism of Runata Reinzva Well chosen select cast as they went further and further into this place and we've heard about how they really practically designed this gargantuan location that people were actually kind of getting lost and on set. Oh gosh, I can only imagine. I'm so happy they dove into the whole world. They built it, they let this kid see it through as a feature and it just feels unlikely in so many ways. And I'm super excited that it exists highly recommend. Yeah, I mean, I agree with most of what both of you are saying. I definitely want to shout out support ior production design. This is a really, really Well built set that gives you just this sense of kind of Kafka que horror Also, it's tapping into several different deeply unsettling things about society, which is what the best horror stuff does, right? Like You're taking something mundane and making it terrifying. And what is more mundane than these beige fluorescent lit that like piped in cheer the voice that is like welcoming you in a bunch of different languages. It's supposed to be pulling you in, but it's absolutely pushing you away. L those effects, I think were so smartly leveraged here. and amm surprised we have gone this far into this film when we're talking about what this film is commenting on. without mentioning AI Because this film, I mean, it's set in the early nineties, notot only is it pre AI, it is pre internet. It's pre cell phones. Interesting. ye. Rihanna, you referred to the kind of dream logic that is going on in a lot of these rooms, but there is also this uncanny valley of AI imagery and how creepy and unsettling it can be When you see a figure that is supposed to look like a human, but it has too many fingers. The denizens of the backrooms are definitely like early jinned up AI creations. Is that nine v Absolutely. and it's done in a surprisingly subtle way It's not underlining that for you in any way, shape or form but you were sitting there like Why am I having the same creeped out unnerved feeling that I get when I look at bad AI Totally. And I think it's really using that in such strong ways, no matter how much it's intending to be commenting on it It is to me unmistakable. I will say, I yearned for a smaller screen. First of all, it is very interior. And I think the smaller a screen you watch it on it, the more interior it will feel and the more unsettling it will feel. Yeah, I agree with you, Stephen. I am also a person who gets motion sickness from shaky cam I almost had to walk out of Blair Witch Project all the many years ago when I saw it in theaters like everybody else Not because it was too scary, but because I wanted to vomit. Yeah, that was the hidden headline when people like peopleople are walking out of Blur Witch proroject thing up. it's like it's becausecause they're sick. Right It wasn't because they were so scared. They were scared, but it was because they were motion sick. Right. And this film does if you are somebody who is very sensitive to that, it's worth being warned that it has a bunch of shaky cam stuff. It opens with enough shaky cam stuff where I was I was fully sitting there thinking Can I gut this entire movie out? Or am I going to have to go get a popcorn bucket So A I gonna have to go get a giant deer Spielberg Disclosure day popcorn bucket right now? Am I To hold my backrooms vomit So you know, that's a me thing. That's not most people. But I did find like as I was thinking about it, I'm like, man, I think this would be really good even maybe even more powerful on headphones watching on a laptop. Yeah. I agree with you, Stehven. I'm not sure if this works not on YouTube to be honest, because That's the creepy pasta element of it all. you know, like part of what makes the backroom scary is that you feel like you're like stumbling upon something That is real, it's out there, you know, you're not supposed to see this. And when you frame a narrative around it, as somebody that watched the original Backrooms clips on YouTube, like when you frame a narrative, round vibe of analogue horror. a lot of the power of the images are lost, you know, you lose that kind of uncanny valley feeling because you know, it's blown up and there's clearly a budget. And I don't know, it loses a little bit. in that regard. And my least favorite parts of the movie were when it feels like a traditional movie. You know, where you have a plot, you have a narrative, you have these characters best parts of the film are when it shies away from this and you get the I wish there was more analog horror stuff, but I also say this as somebody that liked the movie Skinamarink a lot, which ex Liminal space horror person a liminal person. I really like that movie and I do think there's similarities between like the quiet analogue liminality of that film and backrooms And I just wish it leaned into that a little bit more. Everything with Renada the therapist character I was kind of tapped out for it. I did not like her casting. I thought it was out of place. Yeah. and I think maybe it was just I was wanting more of that sit backack let it wash over you feeling. And I think her character serves a lot to explain how we should be feeling. And I didnid't enjoy that as much as I could have. I think occasionally taking the film out of those back rooms and into the real world situate how unsettling those worlds were. I certainly appreciated having a little bit of solid ground to stand on every once in a while. I also just I'm a Renata Rinzwa stan. The Qeen of Cann, Renatta Rinsva. I just love Renata Rinzwa and everything I see her in. and so anytime she turns up in anything, I'm like, oh boy So I don't necessarily I'm not sure I'm capable of thinking she's misscast. Well, I wonder if because like what you're saying, if like the message kind of is the medium with this for you, like does I wonder for the big screen, does the concept like as you experienceced it on YouTube, like do we like literally need these inserted moments of grounded reality for that big screen for that four K experience that is going to be in the theater Does the low fi analog over the course of like a theatrical runtime, do you start losing people? Is it like, I'm in a theater just kind of wandering and like do you need that glossy thing for people in theaters to be like, yeah, I'm watching a movie as opposed to like this is a thing I could be watching on YouTube that sets it apart? Like does it become a functional thing do we think as opposed to even like like a horror necessity. Yeah. I mean, I think it's mostly functional but I do think there's even still a juxtaposition between the analog horror sections of the movie where it's very low fi, shaky cam as you mentioned, and the like really stark four K better lid. Sure. And I just think whatever's happening outside the backrooms, I didn't really need. I don't need like the therapy narrative to couch what is happening, you know, I don't need the trauma informed theme. I don't know. and maybe that's my personal taste. It does spend a fair bit of time kind of hinting at more of a backstory for the Renata Reineszva character than it really pays off I kind of expected a little bit more ends to get tied together or a little bit more to be explained. It kind of hints that she has a traumatic childhood that may be informing her perception of what's going on And I don't know that that fully coheres, but I'm also not sure that full coherence is the point of a film like this. Right. I don't think it's supposed to like tell you how to feel and I enjoy that. I was really I was reading Amy Nicholson's review of this for LA Times and she got it she made a point that I thought which is so interesting, which is kid is so young, like and I say kid, it sounds pejorative. I'm forty they're all children. These kids today with that creepy pasta that creepy pastas. Like I'm not the oldest person in the world, but God, twenty seems so young when you're twice that age But Amy pointed out that Kaye Parsons is the same age as YouTube's first videos. L his whole life, like beginning to current, he is fully pickled He is brined in this maelstrom of digital material and processing and interface and to your point, Stephven with the mention of AI, that inevitably comes like part of the brine that we're all stewing in for someone like Caine Parsons, he's never been in another soup. He's this is what he's been in the whole time. So like it was fascinating to watch it and think about like, man, the things your imagination is molded in And the caverns that it goes to has been exclusively defined by this thing where I had like an adolescence under my feet beforefore it started to becoming something I really interfaced with. You know, creative people are everywhere. But like for me personally, it was like, I do think there is a way that this person's mind and his contemporaries, his cohort will be wired that actually my brain doesn't make this particular kind of creativity. It like it's like having a brain that could be a creepy pasta generator as opposed to like figuring out how what a creepy pasta is along the way and getting into it. Yeah too watch this and the way that some of those images are really they are really resonant in comparing like how like AI images looked, especially when we were starting to get those reallyly generated videos This is like, we are watching a creative mind of purely digital conception. I don't know what the guy's universal media diet is like, but like he clearly like platformed himself on YouTube, started making stuff there. was like, dang, like that feels like a true like we have hit a true generational divide between the creators that came before and the ones that came after where it can now be your digital native And as much as that term gets thrown around and we're all used to all these platforms, et cetera, etcetera, we are entering the realm of the ones who are utterly raised within the vacuum of that kind of medium. And I was like, wow, that is wild to me. And it made the movie, I think feel even more intense when I was watching it. I was like, what if this is what Jen Alpha is just dealing with? Is this what they're like all the time? Is this what they're thinking? Like that kind of made it Scarier for me personally. I mean, I think that's a really, really, really excellent and important point. And it's, you know, something that I've certainly thought about. I've watched a lot of like teen coming of age movies that are supposed to be set in the present day, but are clearly through a G X lens. Yeah. The number of coming of age stories that are like kids on bikes in a small town that's very much my experience growing up. I grew up in a small town. I was a kid on a bike, but like the experience of how the internet and how YouTube and how the nature of kind of internet folklore that you can get steeped in, all of these things were comple complete alien to my childhood and to see how that is going to affect art going forward. we talk all the time about how negative it can be and how terrifying things like AI are to any kind of creative enterprise This film hints at a way that it could be deployed extremely thoughtful and intriguing ways. Well Garen, like you were saying, it didn't quite feel right outside of its native environons of Youing. Yeah. Like that's how true it is to the platform that I'm sure largely helped conceive like that this was even possible. L that's sort of how of its medium it feels. As somebody who is younger and whose childhood was fully formed on the internet, right My sense of what art is and what is scary was motivated by me stumbling on random YouTube videos when I was like ten years older than being like, holy. Oh my God. I shouldn't be looking at this, you know? L That's why I feel like the movie to me could have existed without maybe cowtaowing to the old the studio demand. The movie is strongest to me when it leans into its origins and what makes it good and what makes it freaky. That's why I see it with these added, you know narrative structures as less of a horror and more of like a drama with freaky elements. I think it's a really smart movie. you know, Like I walked out of there and I was like, D Caine Parsons read like Heto style theory. like I was like, he's really tapped into like what it means to refract an image, refract a memory, what does it mean when something is broken down to its bare bone parts and then built back together And I thought that was really, really intelligent. And I just wish that maybe he trusted the audience just a slivermore. there without adding what I felt was like an unnecessary kind of umbrella structure. Like yes to this, Yes to a new talent that hasn't proven themselves conventionally necessary because even