Step into the Backrooms with director Kane Parsons and legendary horror director and producer James Wan.
Topics covered include: Kane's parents keeping him off the internet until age eight, pirating way too much software, the origin of the Backrooms, the purgatories we build for ourselves, meeting your heroes after early virality, building 30,000 sq. ft. of sets on a soundstage, Kane accidentally calling his film a "product" and immediately wanting to flee to the woods, shotlisting an entire feature in Blender, renting out a Vancouver theater to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey during prep, James Wan's hopeful advice for young filmmakers, Renate's spiritual curiosity, control variables, and bringing the family together for the theatrical premiere of Backrooms.
James Wan: Hello there. I am James Wan.
Kane Parsons: And I'm Kane Parsons.
James Wan: And you're listening to the A24 podcast. Kane, buddy, how are you, man?
Kane Parsons: I'm doing well. How are you doing, James?
James Wan: Yeah, good, good. I'm well as well. So we're here to talk about all things Backrooms and everything related to it and yourself, obviously.
Kane Parsons: Yeah. I have a lot I can say. It's been pretty all-consuming like four-ish years or so now.
James Wan: It's been a pretty long journey for you from, I guess, from where you started with the shorts, right?
Kane Parsons: Yeah.
James Wan: The first short, all the way to now, the full-on proper feature film version of it.
Kane Parsons: Yep. Yeah.
James Wan: It's been quite the journey.
Kane Parsons: It has changed in ways that I definitely did not expect when I initially posted that short. And I mean, you were present at the very beginning of that. I think, if I'm not mistaken, the first time we met, it was over Zoom, and I think you were in post on Aquaman 2.
James Wan: Right. That sounds right.
Kane Parsons: And you walked in and you were eating a salad and you said, "Hello." And we talked for one or two minutes, and you stepped out. But I think that was the first time we met.
James Wan: That was the first time we met via Zoom.
Kane Parsons: Yes.
James Wan: And I was eating a salad, or whatever.
Kane Parsons: It’s seared into my brain.
James Wan: That's funny.
Kane Parsons: It's forever my-
James Wan: That's cool. But then we met in person when you came out to LA to visit us on the set of Night Swim.
Kane Parsons: Yeah.
James Wan: I can't remember what year was that.
Kane Parsons: It was 2023.
James Wan: 2023. Okay.
Kane Parsons: 2023. So just three years ago, exactly today.
James Wan: Three years ago. And how old were you when you came to visit us?
Kane Parsons: I would've been 17.
James Wan: 17. Wow.
Kane Parsons: 17, yeah.
James Wan: Amazing. So I definitely have a lot of questions I want to ask you. And I guess the best place to possibly start is let's go all the way back. Take us back. I would actually go back beyond what you were doing that led you to your interest in making shorts, in filmmaking in general. So I'd love to hear a little bit about your history there, your passion and what kind of got you into all of this.
Kane Parsons: Yeah. I mean, I try my best to trace it. So I'm sure there's some things that are like results of random subconscious, of course. There's going to be some noise to it that I can't quite pick up, but I know that I've always had a tendency or a bias since childhood to go towards something, a version of creativity in some way. And I've had an upbringing that did not directly disable that desire. It was like I was able to find ways to do it mostly through... I was drawing growing up quite a bit. That was a big thing I would spend a lot of time doing and that would turn into like ... I eventually got an old digicam camera and I would go and do a little stop-motion animation with Lego. And I don't think it was a particularly unique start in that way. It's a pretty common, I guess, activity as a kid when you want to go in that direction. I remember probably by around the time I was like nine or so, I had... The term filmmaker was a thing, or director was in my brain enough that I was like, "Yeah, I like movies. I want to make movies. That's cool." I didn't have a lot of access to the internet until I was around like eight or nine or so.
James Wan: Right. Because your parents were keeping you away from the internet?
Kane Parsons: Yeah, they were smart.
James Wan: Okay. But it sounds to me like they were very supportive of the kind of things that you were into, right?
Kane Parsons: Yeah.
James Wan: Yeah. And the fact, like you said, that they didn't hold you back and they just kind of let you experiment and play and basically just explore your creativity. So it sounds to me like you were drawn to things that were of the visual arts. You were definitely attracted to visual things-
Kane Parsons: Yeah, visuals, my brain is very strictly visual most of the time. Usually, words are visuals in my head rather than actual sounds and stuff. So it's usually very, just visuals-
James Wan: So you see things in your head.
Kane Parsons: Very, very clearly. But I can't-
James Wan: And you try to get it out somehow.
Kane Parsons: For some reason, I can't do written language in my head, but I can only do visuals. So I kind of have a lot of that.
James Wan: I totally get it.
Kane Parsons: Quite a bit.
James Wan: Yeah. That's super cool.
Kane Parsons: Yeah. So I know that around that time I had PlayStation 3 and I was very into... I got into Minecraft for my friends, and there was this game, LittleBigPlanet. These are sandbox games where you can have a lot of create functions. And so I was exploring what it's like to create something under the guise of technically a 3D program, even though it's inside of a game engine, and it's like oriented as a game. I was sort of like getting the feeling for like, "Oh, look, I can make a thing and then other people come in and interact with this thing and then I can kind of upscale the feeling of like, I want to curate this experience more and more." And nothing about this was grand or hyper compelling because I was like 9 and 10 and none of this was-
James Wan: Wow. Okay. So you were doing all this around 9 or 10-ish years old.
Kane Parsons: Yeah. But I guess what I like is it's no different than what I think most of my peers were doing. Even people who don't have a desire to go into art fields, it was like building stuff in Minecraft Creative Mode was very like…
James Wan: It was just playing for you guys. You were just playing basically, right?
Kane Parsons: It was playing, and I would take it a little more seriously, probably where I would come up with super contrived rules for some random sub-game we wanted to play or something. And then it was simultaneously watching a lot of VFX-driven work on YouTube, like independent YouTubers, like Corridor Crew sort of stuff, encouraging people to just like, "Hey, anyone can kind of..." With the right software—you don't even need good hardware for it—and just like a simple camera, you can do rudimentary VFX work. And I kind of got a bit of an appetite for that. And then I pirated way too much software and got a bunch of viruses, and technically doing some filmmaking stuff on my parents' phone. And it was kind of like game-oriented largely. I was really into-
James Wan: You know what? This is actually good to talk about because what it does show is your journey to become a filmmaker actually went down two paths, right? You were shooting stuff, you were making little things on the side, but also like you were saying, your brain of being into the technical, the computing side of things, that then also informs the way you make your little shorts, right?
Kane Parsons: Yeah.
James Wan: Yeah. So you understand the computing aspect of filmmaker of just storytelling in general and how you would use that to inform the kind of stuff that you would make. And so that became a big part of what you did, right? A big part of like all that sort of computer language and programming and understanding that you have that and sort of using that as the visual effects sort of backbones to what you were making your shorts with. And so I think that's really interesting that you didn't actually necessarily go down the path of, "Hey, I want to be a video game maker." But you sort of stuck to storytelling, filmmaking, but using the craft that you had, the passion and you had learned, acquired to kind of assist you in your filmmaking.
Kane Parsons: Yeah. I mean, I definitely ... It was around the beginning of middle school that's when I was getting the software and trying out After Effects for the first time and was doing a bunch of tutorials. And it was mostly like project-based where I would get excited about a scene or a visual or a moment in my head that I wanted to see exist, but there was nothing surrounding it, supporting that moment. So it was like, "Okay, so now I've got to learn how to do these things so I can make that moment. So I got to learn this software, and also like I need to learn how to edit it properly so I can put the right kind of reverb on this music that I'm hearing. And now I'm going to need to build a whole little short film around this moment, just so it makes sense in a context." And then that was kind of like, not accidentally, but I kind of just went through the process a few times with a few different short films when I was ... Again, these things are not on YouTube for a reason. I've privated them. But I was definitely pretty active doing stuff in any free time I could get. It was like the only thing I would do starting in like end of elementary school, it just became a pretty laser-focused sort of obsession. And I think once I really felt like I was getting the hang of After Effects and like the 3D tools available to me in there and taking advantage of some student licenses and stuff, then that just kind of became an addiction. And I was like, only using-
James Wan: But you enjoy it, right?
Kane Parsons: Oh, yeah.
James Wan: You enjoy using these programs.
Kane Parsons: It's so much fun.
James Wan: It's so funny because I started using After Effects in high school, and I started using it because it was part of my school program and stuff like that, but I kind of got bored of it. I enjoyed the technical stuff of filmmaking and doing stuff like this, but I got to a certain point where I'm like, "This is just too much for me. I just want to get out there. I just want to get out there and just shoot from the hip and just become a bit more running gun." I found the process a little bit too, the technical side sometimes a little bit too limiting, at least for me, but clearly you enjoyed it, and you embraced it.
Kane Parsons: Yeah. It's because I think I have a hard time with uncontrollable variables and whatnot. So I think that, for me, I enjoy a certain level of run-and-gun, but I think I am the kind of person who needs to know every single thing about the thing I'm making before...
James Wan: Fair enough.
Kane Parsons: ... any other people are even involved with it or before anything else even... before there's a chance for something to get away from me.
James Wan: You know what, that's a really good trait for a director to have, to be well-prepared.
Kane Parsons: Yeah, of course. But I think, because I was a kid in middle school, I was doing filmmaking, but it wasn't, like, serious. It was inherently there was a joke component to what I was doing, but it was like-
James Wan: Yeah, you're just playing around.
Kane Parsons: I was playing around.
James Wan: It wasn't a career path yet at that point, right?
Kane Parsons: Correct. I wasn't thinking about it in that way. I did a few local level film festivals around that time and so part of my brain was definitely thinking about it in that way, but I was still thinking like, "Okay, time to go through high school and then I'll go to college for film school and then I don't know what happens after that, but I'll probably make movies," like some vague notion of that.
James Wan: So let's talk about that. How in your journey did all of that, what you just stated there, lead you to your very first short with Backrooms? I'm sure you made a lot of other stuff before that, but how did all this lead to Backrooms?
Kane Parsons: It was the beginning of the pandemic. I got into Blender. I started teaching myself Blender. I was fortunate enough to have a situation where I was just locked at home, and I was doing Zoom classes, and I was able to sort of-
James Wan: So this was 2020?
Kane Parsons: 2020.
James Wan: And how old were you?
Kane Parsons: I was 14.
James Wan: Okay.
Kane Parsons: I was getting into Blender. Maybe I didn't mention it earlier. I'm a big fan of the Valve properties like Portal and Half-Life, and those majorly informed a lot of my creative sensibilities, I think, growing up. And that was around the time Half-Life: Alyx was coming out, and I was wanting to do fan art for that, and that got me really motivated to figure some stuff out in Blender. And then I did some things, and then I was like, "Wait a minute, now I just kind of know how to use Blender." And so I could start...Within like two weeks or so, Blender's really intuitive. When you're young and near software, you're able to kind of pick it up through osmosis kind of like quickly, but I do think it's just genuinely, they've streamlined the software in such a way that it is like very accessible. But I started doing that. I made a few films again that year, but then by 2021, I had gotten back into Attack on Titan, which is obviously a pretty big property around the world. And I was basically adapting set pieces from that into found footage, but it was in like 1930s, 1940s war film footage of like set pieces inside that world. And that was when my channel actually took off.
James Wan: Okay, wait, hang on. You were creating images for that, but just inventing, making them up through Blender or whatever program you were using.
Kane Parsons: Yeah. What I was doing is, because it's an anime and manga...
James Wan: And so this was like a fan kind of like short or whatever.
Kane Parsons: A fan project. So it was an anime and manga, and what I was doing was like a series of these videos. Well, I did one thinking it was going to be one, but then people lost their minds over it. So I started doing more, but it was like basically, what would an actual honest perspective into that world look like if it was somehow real? So just like what does a scarier, more realistic approach of just viewing this thing look like. And so that's what I put out using Blender. So it's all things from the series, but just through a slightly different lens.
James Wan: But was it still animation, like 2D animation?
Kane Parsons: All animation, Blender.
James Wan: 2D.
Kane Parsons: Lots of compositing. So it looked roughly, I mean, hoping you see past the VFX flaws, the goal being it looks like real, authentic.
James Wan: But real world-
Kane Parsons: From the '30s or '40s.
James Wan: Live action.
Kane Parsons: Yeah, black and white, live action, totally trying to look photo-real. And so like that, I never had any kind of engagement like that before. It was like the first one did like 10 million views, and like the next one did like another 10 million.
James Wan: Wow.
Kane Parsons: It kept like going big, and my channel, I think got 200,000 subscribers from that. But I did that for all of 2021 and I was riding a high with it. That was really exciting. It was great having-
James Wan: You were getting validation from basically fans out there.
Kane Parsons: Yeah. It was like motivation to like every week they wanted to do things. So I was constantly churning stuff out and that was just fun.
James Wan: That's cool, especially during the lockdown when you didn't really have much to do.
Kane Parsons: Yeah. I certainly found a lot to do during that time, but then I got fatigued by it and because I used up all the plot points in the series that I could adapt, but people wanted more still. And I was kind of like, "Okay, well, I kind of want to do other things now." That winter in 2021, I guess for a preamble, I have to do a preamble about like what the Backrooms are, I would assume probably.
James Wan: Give us a little bit of history of where all that comes from.
Kane Parsons: Yeah in 2019, there was this 4chan post, which is totally anonymous. Anything posted there, or at least in this context is not really traceable, and we can't at this point in time determine who posted any of this, which has been a big defining part of the Backrooms. It's weird. But basically, there was an image posted of an off-yellow sort of dingy ... It was unclear if it was an office space or the back of a furniture store or what. With just a caption, like a single paragraph caption, basically setting up a concept of if you're not careful, and you no clip out of reality in the wrong areas, and no clip is like a video game term for phasing through a solid surface like out of the world. If you fall out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in the Backrooms, which is an essentially endless array of like kind of not quite repeating, but you could think of it as like procedurally generated or just like you could keep going, walking in any direction and you'll just be stuck in this world of drop ceiling, this yellow wallpaper that's just kind of like sulfur looking and-
James Wan: So it's a maze-like world that just keeps going forever.
Kane Parsons: It's a maze-like world that doesn't have an inherent point to it. And I think the idea, what I always appreciated, is that it's just described like it's a natural phenomenon. There's nothing like spiritual or like, there's no morality to it. So it's not like it's a divine judgment. If you've done wrong, if you've got guilt harbored, it'll take you away or something. It's just like-
James Wan: It's not hell.
Kane Parsons: It's not hell. It's not even quite purgatory because you don't do anything to end up there. It just randomly happens, and you can't really do anything to get out. It's just like-
James Wan: Just like you said, a procedural dungeon run.
Kane Parsons: Yeah. It's just a hypothetical... It's playing into the feeling of glitching and getting stuck in a video game, basically.
James Wan: Exactly, right.
Kane Parsons: There's no fairness in it. It's just like, "That really sucks if that happens to you." And so that's why it kind of caught on as like a, "Man, that's like a pretty abysmal..." Can you imagine that? It's like, imagine being in that monotonous... It's like such a mundane, mediocre sort of environment that could be in any place basically.
James Wan: Yeah, because visually it's not that sexy, right? It's not like a dark, creepy place, but the creep comes from just the mundaneness of it, just like how bland it looks, right?
Kane Parsons: I've seen-
James Wan: And so it started with a picture, that one picture, but then people started building upon it, right? They started adding stories to it, so they're adding myth and law to it. Is that how it started?
Kane Parsons: So that picture was posted, someone else saved it. I mean, that picture had been floating around since the early 2000s. It's from a furniture store in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. But basically, yeah, they posted it with a caption, and that became a screenshot. And then that screenshot floated around everywhere as a meme around May of 2019. And I saw it. I was in middle school. I was aware of it. I didn't see it and immediately go, "Whoa, I need to make a series and a movie."
James Wan: Right.
Kane Parsons: That wouldn't have ever crossed my mind. It was more of this is a random thing on the internet that is weirdly intriguing. And I can tell why people are interested in this and I want more of it, but there's nothing more to get because it's just an image and a caption. And then I moved on, and everyone else moved on and we stopped hearing about the Backrooms for the most part. You would get an occasional reference to it here and there. You would get memes, a character falls through the ground out of a TV. Peter Griffin falls through the sidewalk and lands in the Backrooms or something. And the punchline is just, "Wow, he's fucked."
James Wan: Right.
Kane Parsons: Pretty much. And it basically, people I understand now, and I did understand at the time, there were some groups on Wikis and stuff writing, basically doing more with the notion of the Backrooms where it's like what if a game-like level system to it? And again, I don't mean to misrepresent that side of the community, but it's in my understanding that it's more of a community-driven, like the SCP Foundation, if people are aware of that. It's like most anyone can add because there's no direct author, and there's no claim to authorship of this thing. So it's just like the main lore that people would consider outside of my adaptation of Backrooms would be just a miscellaneous collection of little entries that like many different people with many different views of the Backrooms have put together.
James Wan: Right, right, right.
Kane Parsons: But it's somehow viewed as one coherent thing, even though it's definitely not.
James Wan: Got it. So then you came into it, and then tell us your contribution to the world.
Kane Parsons: I just wanted to... In my mind, I wasn't thinking, like, “These people are not getting the Backrooms, I'm going to step in and show them how it's done.” It was not like that. I was just into... I was getting back into these-
James Wan: Like all great things in life, it's a discovery process, right? And you discovered it.
Kane Parsons: I was getting back into these liminal space photo compilations and stuff and I was like, "Man, I want to scratch this itch. I want to see what comes with this." And I went into Blender, and I made environments that felt true to what the Backrooms wanted to be and were trying to be. And I just moved the camera through and was like this is just a fun, relaxing project where I tried to evoke the feeling of this place, but in a video format rather than imagery. The opening thing was just like a thing I filmed after I did everything else, when I was like, okay, well, to make this a proper film, what's a way in? What's a quick, easy way in that just gets us out of the real world and into the rest of the short. And I just got my friends at school one day just to stand around and they didn't really know what it was for exactly. And I was doing it on my phone and I ran the whole thing through the VCR. So it doesn't look like iPhone footage really. And then just like at the end of it, just make the camera go to the ground and they're like, "What was that? Why did you do that?" And it's like, "I'll show you in a few days."
James Wan: Show you in a few days.
Kane Parsons: Then it got posted, and it didn't do great for the first two days. And then somehow, I guess some shadow figure behind the scenes pulled a lever or something because it suddenly started getting in the inboxes of, or sorry, in the feeds of certain reaction YouTubers, and they started watching it. And then that made it like go nuts.
James Wan: Wow.
Kane Parsons: And it went nuts, but pretty much immediately within the same day. Because I'm neglecting to mention one important part of this, I think, which is that I had had this other story and as you do, just another random story that I had in my head...
James Wan: Right.
Kane Parsons: ... for a little bit at the time. It wasn't defined exactly, but it was like enough of an engine there that was like I knew I wanted to explore it, didn't know how, what the opportunity would be. And I realized, Backrooms, these two things could melt together. And then boom, there's like a very specific plot and structure that I can just start immediately. And I did. And so within like a day of that first short, I started teasing this element with like the Async Research Institute, which makes it more of a worn-down, like a mystery techno thriller with supernatural elements underneath. I'm not great with genre labels, but I would say that's what it's become.
James Wan: Right, right, right. So obviously it started very innocently, but then as you progress and the ideas came to you like, "Oh, maybe I can put a supernatural spin to this."
Kane Parsons: Yeah. Well, I think it's inherently supernatural. My version is supernatural. I personally am really drawn to any... I need my supernatural to feel like hard sci-fi usually.
James Wan: Got it.
Kane Parsons: I like things to feel like nature. Like I was talking about with the Backrooms. I think I personally, as a creative, struggle with things that promote an overly human view of existence and of life. And usually, I'm biased towards things that feel like humans are incidental to nature in some way, rather than being like a driving factor to the world that you live in. And letting the laws of the universe be more factors that resulted in our consciousness being the way it is and perceiving a sense of importance, being like derived from just happenstance and being essential to existing and living and procreating and stuff. So anyway, I feel like what I was excited about with that concept was being able to get past the initial like, okay, we have a short about someone falling into the Backrooms and it is a scary place. And I think it's like more intriguing than people give it credit for. I think people do miss the mark sometimes with their own Backrooms projects when they go for a space where the lights get too dark, it gets too green, it's like scary, scary. If it's trying to be like a dark haunted house or a dungeon, it just falls apart because that's not-
James Wan: Right, right, right.
Kane Parsons: The original image is very bright, and it's very like low contrast and faded looking.
James Wan: Got it, right. So you're saying try... The key here is to not make it look like a horror movie.
Kane Parsons: Yeah. No, I think-
James Wan: Just the blandness, the simplicity. The fact that it feels like everyday life is what makes it terrifying.
Kane Parsons: It's the context and the way it extrapolates pretty much infinitely. That's where the horror lies. It can't be in the inherent visual. It's the context that does it.
James Wan: Right.
Kane Parsons: Though the visual is off-putting.
James Wan: And can I ask you, so philosophically, do you think there is this concept of the fear of technology? Or obviously that's not the case, because you're obviously embracing technology in such a big way. But is that what you're speaking to some degree here when you said you're leaning to more the hard signs of where a lot of the scary stuff is coming from?
Kane Parsons: Yeah. So I would say that the Backrooms is a thing in the first place because... Well, I would say one of the main anxieties it's reacting to, if not the main anxiety, is the pervasive, I don't want to use the word anxiety again. The pervasive fear that with all the resources that we, I guess, at least in this part of the world, where we have the resources, and we have the connection of the internet, are feeling like we have more information than ever. It's starting to mean less and less the more we get. Information is starting to get put through a blender and fed back to us in a way where the human race is now starting to role-play as itself. It almost starts to seem a little bit-
James Wan: We’re trapped in The Matrix.
Kane Parsons: A little bit, but I think that gradually, and this is not new, and I'm not saying anything profound about this because I think we've known this for a while, but we've been trending for a few centuries into a spiral of industrialism that's causing... And it's not like malice. It's not malicious by any means. Yes, there are individual people that you could name and say they are malicious, and that's easy to do, but it's the fact that it's a natural phenomenon that arises in every culture. And it's a systemic thing that is almost impossible to root out of our species. And so there's these obviously patterns beyond us that I try to engage with in a sympathetic way. And I think that the Backrooms is reacting to the fear of like, okay, we're getting stuck in this monoculture, literally even in an architectural context where you are everywhere you go, like a drop ceiling is maybe not the most prevalent... It's not like everywhere in the world, but at least in this part of the world, drop ceilings are a symbol of uniformity, or I guess efficiency. They're pretty effective at what they do. They're not bad. I'm not criticizing the drop ceiling, but-
James Wan: Yeah, they have functionality to them, but they're not the most interesting of forms.
Kane Parsons: It's the idea of spending all of existence in that place. In that non-space, basically, of that industrial environment that's-
James Wan: It is purgatory to some degree, isn't it?
Kane Parsons: It is, it is. It's a purgatory that we built. It's not like a purgatory beyond humanity, it's like one that we're clearly pushing ourselves towards, but-
James Wan: We're building prisons for ourselves. That's essentially what it is. We're building prisons for our souls, if you will.
Kane Parsons: Yeah. It's again, it's like getting us further and further from what the human nervous system evolved to basically thrive on. And we're getting past a place where we evolved into our environments and then we changed the environments and now we're... I wouldn't be surprised if that's doing something to a lot of the subconscious and just the general energy and health of people I know.
James Wan: So, can I ask you then, so a lot of these themes that you have in your head, did you feel like the Backrooms, that was a good platform for you to explore other ideas that you have? So what led to subsequent other shorts that came along in the Backrooms world? Did you start going, "I want to explore other elements within this world." And then basically what led you down the series of them?
Kane Parsons: Yeah. I wanted to largely express what I was just talking about a little bit. It was like a lot of it for me is just exploring these ideas myself, and I want a way to check myself and test myself. And if I can find a way to wrap up these academic ideas in a creative package, then I can get creatively excited about it. And it's like medicine with the sugar, where I'm internalizing these things and testing myself on these things. And this is not comparable at all to an actual school experience. It's not what I'm trying to say with that, but for me, just as someone who enjoys learning and enjoys just knowing more about literally anything. It's what the film is about in some ways: that part of the brain that forces human beings into a state of curiosity.
James Wan: So, did you find when you started making the series of these shorts that there were many people out there that shared the same interests as you, that people were fascinated about what you were doing, and that wanted to see more of it? Is that what forced you down that path? Or not forced, but made you want to go down and continue?
Kane Parsons: I think I was very aware that those people existed, and it was the audience that I was... The audience that I speak to is the audience that I'm also a part of, which I think is maybe why I've had a decent rhythm with them for as long as I have. Which is like, I grew up watching web series and ARGs and consuming that stuff. And not necessarily when I say watching, it's, I guess just following because sometimes it's not even something to watch. Sometimes, it's visiting a webpage, and you're looking at the metadata of files shared on that page, and you get story information from that. Or you're, a lot of the time, you're actually paying attention to a YouTuber who's talking about and summarizing a series because sometimes these series get so dense and complex and hard to follow that the real story, like a more entertaining story, is in the recap of it.
James Wan: Right, right.
Kane Parsons: So I engineered my stuff to work on a recap level, I think, and a lot of the stuff on YouTube has been exactly that. And I was amazed... I was losing my mind when the shorts first caught on because it was like all the people I looked up to online were suddenly talking about it, and for obvious reasons, that would be exciting, I think, for anyone in that position. But it was like-
James Wan: Can you mention who were some of these people?
Kane Parsons: Yeah, just like YouTube channels, like random people, Nexpo, Night Mind. I think this was like... I forget the full list, but it was like Film Theory.
James Wan: That's so cool, right? It must have been validating.
Kane Parsons: It was cool. It felt like...it was very weird. It was bizarre, it was bizarre. It was validating, but also like-
James Wan: Is this real?
Kane Parsons: Yeah, but I guess it was just getting it through my teenage head that the world that I watch on a screen, and I know this is so obvious, and I knew it, but I didn't feel it was like... I guess when I was younger, so many of the things that I looked up to artistically, above in some way, there's some inaccessible barrier there where it's like...
James Wan: Right.
Kane Parsons: ... you could never meet these people. You could never interact with this brand or this fictional world in any meaningful way.
James Wan: That felt like it's in a different world.
Kane Parsons: You can do fan art, but you don't get up there, and it's like-
James Wan: So here with this, you actually have the opportunity to break through and that's what you did.
Kane Parsons: And it happened in a very casual way with no fanfare. It was exciting, but it's very simple. And I was like, " Oh, this is what it is. This is how it feels.”
James Wan: That's usually how it always works. When you least expect it, that's when good stuff happens, right? You just do what you do, be passionate about what you want to do. And like I've always said, I say that to young filmmakers like yourself and anyone out there who asks me for advice. I just say, "Just make your movies, just do it." And if you do something great, people will discover it. Especially with technology that we have today, like YouTube, there's so many platforms out there that you can just put it out there. Go shoot something for no money. You don't need money. You can shoot anything with your phone these days, right? You don’t need special cameras like I had to have when I was growing up making these little shorts. So just go make something and put it out there. It can be anything, and you're bound to find fans and that fandom could... It doesn't matter how small they are or how big they are. It helps to flame the creativity in you, and it makes you want to do more.
Kane Parsons: Yeah.
James Wan: And I think that's basically what happened for you, right?
Kane Parsons: Yeah. I continued doing, I did a few different series on YouTube, and I've been doing YouTube all the way up until things became hot enough on this film that we were good to go, and I was able to jump over the full time on this.
James Wan: Can I ask you how many shorts did you make of the Backrooms series?
Kane Parsons: I don't know the number. It's like three hours or so currently. So there's like a bit where it's like... Async has an arc, and then there's like three videos that aren't from that perspective, but are like the first short where-
James Wan: So then, okay, I need to ask this. At what point during any of this process did you eventually say to yourself or thought to yourself, “Hey, one day I could potentially turn this into a feature film?”
Kane Parsons: Well, I put out those shorts in January of 2022, or I started doing it. The first short went out on January 7th. It was like less than a month later that I started getting my first emails from anyone in the industry. I had no interaction with anyone in the industry ever prior to that point. So I was definitely... I was caught off guard. I was very cautious and paranoid. Because I was like, I'd grown up seeing just like so many beloved IPs just get torn to shreds by random suits in the industry who grab an IP, take it, pulverize it by giving it to some writer who knows nothing about the property and then boom, it's dead, and everyone hates the movie. And it was not maybe a worthwhile venture. So I was cautious of that. I had that in my head, and I was assuming, okay, if I don't find something really helpful, that's what it's going to be. So I met with a lot of people and it was like it turned into like no meetings ever and then suddenly in February, I think every single day, every weekday had like three meetings, like generals with-
James Wan: So it really happened that quickly?
Kane Parsons: Almost instantly. It was like a binary, like it switched on suddenly.
James Wan: That's incredible.
Kane Parsons: And Atomic Monster was one of the first, or it was like within the first... I think it was like the second week of that, probably.
James Wan: Right.
Kane Parsons: And then I met with 21 Laps as well. And I remember...
James Wan: Right.
Kane Parsons: And then I met with 21 Laps as well. I remember being conflicted. And I forget the exact order of things, but then you guys came together.
James Wan: Together, yeah.
Kane Parsons: And then I talked to all of you guys together. And that was sort of like, oh, you guys solved the conundrum I was having, because I liked Atomic and I liked 21. And then boom, they decided they wanted to do the thing together.
James Wan: I mean, credit to you, because we saw the potential in it, and we felt like we wanted to work with you. We saw the kind of brain that you had, the kind of creativity that you have. And we definitely saw the potential that you have to take this project and make it something bigger. Break it into the feature world. And so, between us at Atomic Monster and 21 Labs, we're like, let's collaborate. And the more the merrier.
Kane Parsons: Thanks for doing that.
James Wan: And see what we can do with this. Yeah. So, I'm glad to hear from your perspective how that came together.
Kane Parsons: I mean, basically, I was thinking under the terms of just there are unknown unknowns everywhere, so I'm just going to make sure I don't do anything without quadruple-checking it. And so, I was very thorough about beginning a process with you guys. And I mean, I felt it was very positive, and I felt like it was what I was looking for.
James Wan: That's cool.
Kane Parsons: And what I was looking for and was really like... Backrooms on YouTube is very creatively fulfilling for me. And I will do more in the future. And I'm not leaving YouTube by any means.
James Wan: No, no. That's great.
Kane Parsons: But it is limited. It came about because, I guess what you were saying a moment ago with the accessibility of YouTube and filmmaking and whatnot. Maybe what I would advise, although I don't feel like I'm quite at a place to give advice yet. I maybe should let this film come out and then wait a year or two before I start saying anything.
James Wan: No, man, you can always give advice. I feel like in the short period of time, you've experienced a lot. You can speak to your own experience.
Kane Parsons: I can give anecdotes, and I can give my experience.
James Wan: Exactly. And then people can kind of like latch onto whatever fits.
Kane Parsons: Because almost the first thing I would say is the thing I've learned the most is like what worked for one person, don't expect it to work for you in a way, unless it's like a universal truth or something. It feels like the most simple thing you do have to follow is... I think what I managed to do, whether or not I realized it with the Backrooms stuff and with what I was doing on YouTube is like, I found a rough thing that I could achieve. It's like, what can I do with free software on a laptop in Blender and a bit of After Effects touch-up? What can I do there with no extra anything, no live action shooting, no actors, and just me behind a microphone? What can I do there? And then if I just keep working on that, refining that until it becomes like the best version of itself, it becomes like a unique product that– Oh, I just had to cut that. I just said “product.” Oh, my God.
James Wan: Dude. No. No.
Kane Parsons: This is what happens when I go to LA. I absorb the language.
James Wan: This is how it starts, my friend.
Kane Parsons: I know. I know.
James Wan: You've been in this business for one movie and now... No, I'm kidding.
Kane Parsons: This is why I'm going to the woods after I'd say it.
James Wan: But this is all great stuff to have, to speak about.
Kane Parsons: Because I have to take it to market and we had to make this movie, so objectively it is a product. It's an item. It's an item that has-
James Wan: Listen, when there's so much money involved... Listen, as artistic as we want to be, as much of an artist as we want to be, we have to think about the studios that are financing our movies, the investors that are financing our movies. And we do have to treat it to some degree with that respect. And the key here is, for someone like myself who's been doing this for a while now, is like, how do you somewhat appease what the investors are looking for, but yet making it your own? So, every movie that you make should be personal to you. It doesn't matter how commercial it is. The big filmmakers that I truly respect or small filmmakers as well, but from the likes of your Steven Spielbergs to Tim Burton, to whomever. They're able to play in that commercial world, but yet every movie is super, super personal to them. And that is how I approach all my movies. And I think that's who you are as well. I feel like whatever movies you make here onwards, everything would be highly important for you. Every film you make will speak to you on some level that you want to talk about. That's good to have. So, you just got to be mindful. As a director now making these kinds of movies, you have to wear two hats, right?
Kane Parsons: Yeah. What I feel is like, again, going back to– Because I do get full creative satisfaction of doing stuff on YouTube as equal to what I do here. There's almost no difference. It's a bit of a different process and I socialize a lot more when working, like I just did on Backrooms. But in terms of fulfillment, it's identical. And I do make a living off of YouTube. I don't need much. I have a desk and I have a laptop.
James Wan: That's amazing.
Kane Parsons: I stand in an empty room at my desk.
James Wan: There's something I want to ask before we get further down here, because this is so great to talk about the history and how you started all this. Obviously, you started very young doing all this stuff. Your parents, what do they think about all of this? When you were just starting out and then eventually now you're making your first feature film in Hollywood, how do they feel? They must be super proud and they must feel like... I don't know. It must be surreal for them as well to see the trajectory and the journey that their son has taken.
Kane Parsons: Yeah. I don't want to speak for them, but they are proud. I mean, my parents are both really great people and have obviously-
James Wan: Been very supportive.
Kane Parsons: They've been so supportive at every point in my life. And have always helped this come about in a way by not doing it. Just by not being in the way. I think you can be two hands on and you can be too hands off. And I think they were just like-
James Wan: They found the right balance.
Kane Parsons: They found the right balance. Yeah. And they get what's going on. And they're not in the industry, so it's not like they get it, get it.
James Wan: Where do you live? Where do they live?
Kane Parsons: Me and all of them, we live in Northern California, like Sonoma County.
James Wan: Oh, okay. All right. That's where you're from.
Kane Parsons: Yeah. Sonoma Marin. And they get it. And I talk to them once a week or so. I'll call them individually and talk to my parents and try to talk to my younger brother. And it's been hard on this film just because of how busy it's been to stay in contact with everyone in my life.
James Wan: When you're making a movie, you're pretty much isolated from the rest of the world from whatever happens.
Kane Parsons: Which I don't mind. I usually am this way, so it's fine.
James Wan: Yeah. For people like us, it's actually not a bad thing.
Kane Parsons: No, it works quite well. It's been like 10% more than I'm maybe used to, so it's been a little more on the intense side. But again, I'm here for that. But I try to loop them in. And they're going to be coming to the premiere when we do that next week. And it's going to be a whole lot of fun on that front.
James Wan: It's exciting.
Kane Parsons: And they're familiar with the film. I was showing them everything we were doing as we were building up to this. And my dad's always on YouTube looking at reaction videos to my stuff. And he's constantly like, he knows everything about it.
James Wan: That's what they should be doing as parents.
Kane Parsons: Yeah.
James Wan: So, okay. I want to talk about your feature film experience. So, you've transitioned from these shorts into the process, into making a feature film through this pretty big infrastructure of making this feature with a proper film crew. Up until now, you've pretty much done everything yourself, right?
Kane Parsons: Yeah, mostly.
James Wan: And your actors are your friends. But now you're moving into the super big world and into the big league, so to speak. And you're working with professional crew, professional cast and actors. What was that like? What was it like for you at the very start of that initial process? Was it overwhelming or did you fully embrace it or was it a little bit of everything?
Kane Parsons: So, unlike some things that I've mentioned in our conversation, that wasn't abrupt. There was a very gentle lead into that that made sense over a good period. And so, I went up to Vancouver to do a test shoot in April, so that would've just happened over a year ago. And that was my first time working with a crew that is not like my personal friends from high school or something. And so, I think I had questions in my head, but I think it was easy enough because it was a skeleton crew. It was pretty small and we were doing a very minimal lean test shoot. And I think there was something I found, which was like, I had it in my head, wondering all these notions of what a director has to be and what I have to be facilitating. What do I not know? I'm assuming there's a million things I do not know, and I'm thinking of all the ways that could poison the process.
James Wan: What you don't know could be a good thing, right? Or you don't know what you don't know.
Kane Parsons: Yeah, exactly. I don't know what I don't know, so I'm doing what I can't. And I'm realizing, as I get in there and we're starting and it's like, wait, that's all anyone can do. That's literally what... I go here, I know what I want. I don't know why I'm overthinking that part. I just need to tell the people around me what I want in a concise manner and explain why we want it, so they can also be personally motivated to achieve that thing. And then we're just doing that in a few different ways. And then the day's done and we got what we wanted and boom, and then we do it again. And I guess, I think I did overthink it upfront. And again, that was just the test shoot. So, it was a bit of a... I guess I'll jump to when we were going to day one. It was the same kind of thoughts coming back again. It was like, okay, that was small before. It's going to be so many people now that I haven't met. During pre-production, I got to work with all these department heads. And you're saying how working with all the actors and my friends before, I would say everyone that I worked with at that point by the time we went to camera were my friends now.
James Wan: Right, that's great. It's cool.
Kane Parsons: The cast and crew and everyone is like, it was a very friendly vibe across the board.
James Wan: Good. So, it was a collaborative experience for you. So, you felt like what you were asking for, people step up and help to deliver the vision of what you were going after, right?
Kane Parsons: So, when I went up to Vancouver and we got green lit a few days into... We had like a few days of prep and then we needed to get green lit before we could continue. But when that was happening, I was meeting all the heads of all the departments and we had met before a little bit. They all know each other and they're all friends. And it's part of a great group that sort of ... Chris, the producer up in Vancouver, who I work closely with and has sort of like really helped bring together over a good period of time. And so, they're all very tightly-knit and it's pretty great up there.
James Wan: Just to clarify, you found the pre-production process of planning the movie, and laying it out, and talking to the crew, and talking to producers, and locations, and sets and stuff like that, you found all that pretty smoothly, the actual process?
Kane Parsons: It was smooth. I mean, it wasn't easy, but it was smooth and we were getting-
James Wan: Nothing is easy making films.
Kane Parsons: Yeah. It was time-consuming and used all my brain power each day. But we got through it and I enjoyed it.
James Wan: Did you find that at any time that the bigger machination of filmmaking that went against how you used to do things?
Kane Parsons: No.
James Wan: No? Okay, good.
Kane Parsons: No. It felt like identical scaling of what I normally do.
James Wan: That's great.
Kane Parsons: The sets, when I get there, I mean, I brought my computer with me, my laptop. And all the sets that we built, because our production office was on the sound stage or right outside of it. And so, we had these four big stages that we could build on. And we were working out our construction budget at the time and everything. And the script, we were iterating on the script as we were going through prep and stuff, so some things were changing. And so, everything was changing a little bit and it's too hard to describe the exact order in which things changed. One change would retroactively affect the thing that changed that change and whatnot. But the sets are all... I made them all in Blender. I designed all the sets. And it's pretty much one for one for what we have in the movie. Those all exist in the Blender files. And I would cross reference and talk with Jeremy Cox, the VP I worked with, who's great. And I was showing him how to use a bit of Blender so we could send files back and forth if he wanted to tweak a few things on the day.
James Wan: That's really cool.
Kane Parsons: Build the sets to accommodate for shots that we wanted, because we were shot listing in Blender as well.
James Wan: So, basically, you were doing that like previs, right?
Kane Parsons: Yeah. it was previs on everything.
James Wan: Yeah. That's fantastic. So, you pretty much prevised the whole movie.
Kane Parsons: That's what I mean when I say I need the variable control upfront, so I like knowing every single bit of what we're going to do and let everything be deliberate.
James Wan: Your process and the way your mind works, where you need to be in control, you need to be prepared, really helps with, as you can see, the filmmaking process. There's nothing worse for a director on a film set, or there's nothing worse for a film crew and a production, is a director that is not prepared. It's horrible. If they don't know what they want, don't know how to achieve it, that's really draining on a production. And so, someone like you, it's a breath of fresh air to come in so prepared, knowing exactly the world, what they want, what they want the characters to be, what they want the shot, the scenes to feel like. That goes a long way. And I think that helps with why the transition for you was pretty smooth going.
Kane Parsons: Yeah. I would also then just sing the praises of all the people we worked with, because everyone in all of the departments are genuinely incredibly nice, really productive and really focused people.
James Wan: That's amazing. That's great.
Kane Parsons: I obviously would give them infinite credit on this. Really, the sets, I made them in Blender. But even the construction crew who... They were tirelessly going at this thing because it's like 30,000 square feet of back rooms we built for it.
James Wan: It's incredible. The set looks amazing. Yeah.
Kane Parsons: It looked really cool.
James Wan: But again, the crew really wants to help you bring your vision to life. And so, we trusted you because this movie is an auteur driven film. And so, it's great that everyone trusted you and wants to help you bring all that to fruition. And it looks amazing.
Kane Parsons: It was very generous of you guys.
James Wan: Hey, man. No, seriously. We take our lead from someone like yourself. And I want to talk about what it was like collaborating with Osgood?
Kane Parsons: Oh, he's great.
James Wan: Yeah. How was working with him on this?
Kane Parsons: Yeah. So, it was after the test shoot, it was before we went to get greenlit, before we went up to Vancouver for the long stay, for the long haul. Because Chris works closely with Oz and Oz is basically at every step of the way...
James Wan: Oz is a producer, just to explain.
Kane Parsons: Yeah. He's a producer.
James Wan: Osgood Perkins is a producer. He's a director in his own right as well, but he's a producer here on the film with us.
Kane Parsons: Yeah. He was writing his next film while we were in prep on this, and so he'd be just hovering around the entire time, just like hanging out.
James Wan: Like a big brother, to some degree, right?
Kane Parsons: Yeah. And he's great.
James Wan: Yeah. He's awesome.
Kane Parsons: I know when I first got there, every Friday we would just go to a little theater and watch a movie that would help for the film. I remember that when we first got there, we just went and rented out a theater and just watched 2001 on a big screen-
James Wan: That's amazing.
Kane Parsons: ... which was a lot of fun. But then basically, he was very helpful because there's a certain level of change and iteration that went on with the script and getting it right for the project that I've put out online over the years and people are so specific about. I think maybe that's not always taken into account. Actually, I know it's not taken into account because it's been something I've had to sort of fight for a little bit along the way. In a healthy manner, it's reasonable why it wouldn't be considered because it's a bit insane when I say it out loud. But because it's not just a fan base thing, it's not my fan base. It's not a group of people. It's kind of a prevalent mindset that has come from, I think, my generation who has grown up with the internet, a lot of the same YouTubers and a lot of the same mentalities around media deconstruction. And there's been this notion that when it comes to internet-driven horror especially, horror is the main target for this, but anything that's mysterious or horror driven and comes from the internet is like, okay, so that means it's got to be riddled with Easter eggs and those Easter eggs are crucial to the plot. And the true story is lying under the surface. There's a meta level to this thing, you can zoom in all these things. The expectation is there's a lot of rich, really specific information. And I knew that because I'm a part of that group of people who think that, and I'm used to projects that give me that level of engagement and depth and growing up with that. So when I'm making the Backrooms web series, I'm designing it as such. And when an object or a light switch or a pillar or something moves over a few feet to the right, it's not because, oh, we had to move it there because of some logistical thing or we had to rebuild the set and there was a pillar there, so we had to account for a slight shift. No, it has to be because of the narrative reason, because the building shifted in some way. And that means something that will get addressed later on. So people can kind of catch things like that.
James Wan: Right.
Kane Parsons: It's not a mistake, I love it to death, but it's like I made the deliberate decision to let audiences know that those little things aren't random and that they can expect anything they catch. It puts them on guard that there could be a lot of things they don't know are important until later.
James Wan: Right. And sometimes you need multiple viewings to catch little Easter eggs here and there.
Kane Parsons: Yeah, the stuff I make on YouTube is built to be, and I would say even the movie, it's built to be paused and analyzed. It's inherently made for that.
James Wan: That is nuts.
Kane Parsons: And I think that trying to bring that to this level involves asking for a lot of things that seem unproductive to people who aren't-
James Wan: Also not trivial or weird even, right?
Kane Parsons: Yeah.
James Wan: It's like, "Why is he doing that?"
Kane Parsons: And we didn't win every battle because it's impossible, because we don't have the resources to paint out every tiny cable and conduit that aren't exactly from 1990 and the fire sprinkler models aren't exactly the model that would've been used in this type of piping in this year and stuff. And this is what I mean is, come on, guys. Give the film some slack, but I know my audience will go nuts over it.
James Wan: Your ITV page, you need to give the goof section something for them to write about, right?
Kane Parsons: Yeah, yeah. But anyway, I love them to death. And I think that synchronizing everyone on that took a minute just to explain why we had to do it, but then we did a lot. We got a lot of mileage in that area.
James Wan: Yeah. Can I ask, knowing you have to service a lot of that kind of thinking and partially because that's who you are as well, was that a fine balance between that and a more traditional storytelling script that you guys had to write to get it out there? Because this is not just little vignettes of moments, right? You have to tell a pretty straightforward narrative to some degree, that has a start at zero mark and has to add an hour and a half or two hours into the movie, right? Was that a bit of a process for you?
Kane Parsons: No. I think the YouTube series knew what it was and it wasn't meant to be a substitute for something structurally similar to a feature film.
James Wan: So you're saying as a feature, you approach it differently to how you approach your show?
Kane Parsons: Yeah, definitely, definitely. I think the shorts have their arcs. They're very vignette driven, like you said, where you get a lot of these pieces that, for people online, it makes sense to put these things together and then the story comes through repeated viewing and stuff. Or even one viewing you'll get it, but it's maybe not appreciated to its fullest degree because it's sort of like, I guess a more concept-driven version of the perspective into the story where it's not quite– The hope, I think I meant to say this earlier, but did I want to do a film with Backrooms? It was like, yes, and the goal would have been to sort of get the foot in the door to get audiences who are not up to speed on my version of the Backrooms. I think the idea would have been to make something that worked for my audience, that had direct continuity with what I've made-
James Wan: And new people-
Kane Parsons: People who have never heard of it.
James Wan: Yeah, have no idea what it is.
Kane Parsons: And so it could be a first step that kind of does the same thing that first short did in terms of sort of opening the door to it. And then the real thing-
James Wan: Literally.
Kane Parsons: Exactly. When I talk about having something, like the ending that I want to reverse engineer from or have that moment I really want to get to, there's so much stuff. I love every step along the way, but this is all driving in a direction where I would say the material that is planned and is written out, it goes outside the confines of the YouTube series and it goes outside the confines of the film. These things lay inside a broader, I guess, tree of the narrative.
James Wan: Right, right. Which leads me to your cast, right? This is the first set of, I would say, professional actors that you've worked with. And so, what was it like working with Chiwatel and Renate?
Kane Parsons: I mean, it was-
James Wan: And everyone else in the movie.
Kane Parsons: Yes, and everyone. Yeah, everyone was great across the board. And I was saying earlier about them being my friends, do mean that. They're lovely, lovely people. And I think it was Chiwete when we were casting Clark, I'd seen some of his stuff, the stuff he's directed, and I like his brain. I was very curious about talking to him and-
James Wan: Incredible actor.
Kane Parsons: He's great, they're both great. But I met with him first. He was the first person that we were really going out to. And I mean, he was the first and only person we spoke to about the character because I-
James Wan: That's fantastic.
Kane Parsons: I really got it in my head that after that conversation I had with him and seeing the things he was curious about with the project and with the Backrooms in general. And just the general understanding of culturally, what the Backrooms is, where it comes from and what it needs to achieve to be a meaningful addition to anything. I was just like, "Okay, so he gets it and he got a curiosity." I found this with Renate very much so as well. I like when I can tell the people I'm working with have a personal curiosity they're trying to fulfill with this thing – some reason, something they're trying to find beyond just, "My agent set this up and let's do a horror film." It was very much like there was something almost spiritual or profound about it.
James Wan: Yeah, they're bringing their personal life and story into the character, which is what you always want.
Kane Parsons: That's exactly what you want. And I just found that I enjoyed the conversations we were having. I mean, I guess it's like given the level of interiority needed for some of the stuff with Renate. And I knew they would be fit for the pieces we needed them to fulfill. And then obviously, once we actually went to production, it was mostly the case of they made my job supremely easy, but it was a good case of just, they would hang out behind the camera, they wouldn't go off. They would be around and just chat with people and it was very good natured and fun. And I think it helped, again, having those sets that were there and it wasn't CGI and you could walk through them and not see the blue screens and not see... You could walk through several rooms before you realized you're on a set.
James Wan: That's really cool.
Kane Parsons: I was trying to provide answers to any question they could possibly have and know where the walls are and basically let things still be fluid while very strictly knowing what can and can't happen so that we stay on a very tight course narratively, so we arrive at the right spot.
James Wan: That's really cool, yeah. And you basically use their characters as a way into the world, especially for people that are not familiar with this world. And basically, they play everyday people that get caught in this crazy, surreal backroom, liminal space horror, so to speak. And they really kind of capture the idea that these two guys, two people that are stumbling into this supernatural world and not knowing what is going on and they have to... And the more they dig into it, the more they discover how this particular space reflects themselves, right, their personality?
Kane Parsons: Yep.
James Wan: And I think that's really great between yourself and the screenwriter, what you guys shape and create in terms of a story to try and bring in audiences that are not familiar with this particular world.
Kane Parsons: Yeah, I'm glad it came through in that way. And definitely, that was a pretty huge focus and I think it was kind of crucial to the project. It's definitely more of a scenario where the risk would be putting too much lore and information into a single film, rather than trying to scale up a short that's not built for a feature into something larger. And so I think we trimmed out, or were rather focused on the right, most foundational elements of what made the idea work, the Backrooms as a general idea and found a way in that does not involve or necessitate an understanding of where this YouTube series goes, but it still relates to it in some way.
James Wan: One of the things I do want to talk to you about is your shorts were made for YouTube and so people generally for the most part watched it on their iPhones, on their computer, on the iPads. But now, here you are making a theatrical version of the feature film, right? And so the feature film version for the theatrical big screen experience, how do you feel about that, firstly? And how do you think that would translate from the tiny little screen to freaking IMAX? We all make movies on computers these days. It doesn't matter what the platform is, right?
Kane Parsons: Yeah, there's so much more polish that goes into this. And we do a billion iterations of each shot and constantly refining and all that. But I would say that this film, being able to, and this is what I wanted from the beginning with this whole process, the thing that I hoped to get out of this was being able to– I fulfilled the niche of the found footage work online because that's what I could do by myself. But what I wanted to be able to do is be able to have stuff that got out of that and was more human-centric and more getting into the character work that could be portrayed by actual human actors who were there for that. And in this film, we finally had the resources to attack the concept of the Backrooms through that lens, which has never happened before. And I think we get to see a far more personal and intimate version of this story, which sort of, I would say comes second in the conversation of, people understand the Backrooms enough online at this point that it's like, "And now this." It's like this is the next, or this is the slight advancement of the idea. And we're seeing a slightly more thoughtful and elevated version of that, that gets us to a place where we actually get to have a distinct relationship between individuals and the environment, rather than letting the relationship be largely between, yes, there's a character always behind the camera, but more often than not, audiences come away with a feeling of, "I'm kind of the person behind." They kind of relate to the person behind the camera in a way that is almost more like playing a game or watching a game play through or something, which is not something I deliberately cater to. I just have observed that's something that happens and now they can see the faces. It's so simple, but actually being able to give the time to these characters in a more direct way and let their context in life, in the world, outside of their relationship with the Backrooms, giving that weight, I think will go a long way.
James Wan: And do you feel that what you're saying here now translates to the big screen experience?
Kane Parsons: Oh, yeah. Without a doubt. I mean, it finally gives emotional context. It allows everything that we build with these human beings, like Ben is transposed when they interact with the Backrooms and gives the Backrooms– inherently without the Backrooms having to, it's the same location. That stays pretty much unchanged. That whole element, the complex-
James Wan: But now it's life.
Kane Parsons: Because of the human element, because of how it's framed through the eyes of these people who you can relate to, which you didn't have before.
James Wan: Yeah.
Kane Parsons: And it's also just some cool set pieces, so I'm excited to show those.
James Wan: Some big set pieces that you can kind of like, I guess you know how you were saying, you were talking about just the fans or the people from the world just seeing little details there, details in the world. So I guess when it's blown up so huge - big - you can actually pick up little things that you may not actually experience or have noticed on your phone or on your computer, right?
Kane Parsons: My audience would notice anything and everything. Undoubtedly, there is stuff and it's great because you can't pause it in the theater. So for a select time, you'll maybe have to watch it a couple times to find everything that's in there because there's a lot.
James Wan: That's cool. Well, Kane, this has been amazing, man.
Kane Parsons: It's been amazing.
James Wan: Thank you, dude. Thank you for having a chat with me about this.
Kane Parsons: Likewise.
James Wan: I love the movie. I think you guys all did a fantastic job, the movie is great. And I really think you captured the spirit of what you did with the shorts. And here we have the feature film version. And so you must be excited to have people out there see this movie when it finally comes out.
Kane Parsons: I'm tremendously excited. Thank you so much for just supporting this for the time you have.
James Wan: Of course.
Kane Parsons: And it's like, we're talking about how this happened, but you've been around supporting this since the beginning. Literally the first month that any of this was happening, we came into contact and it's just been a great partnership.
James Wan: This has been awesome.
Kane Parsons: Thank you, man.
James Wan: Thank you, man.
Kane Parsons: This is lovely.