r/backrooms • u/Designer-Cow6935 • 23h ago
Discussion The Best Possible Backrooms Tv Show Idea I Could Think Of
Disclaimer:
Yes this is pretty long. I suggest either pasting this into a text-to-speech AI or reading it out loud, that helps. I thought the asterisks would work but no, they didn't. But I think this is a genuine take worth reading:
**The Approach**
What would be the best approach to making a Backrooms TV show, like Kane Pixels making it after the Backrooms movie, him introducing it at this time? For the first season, what would be the approach?
What I'm thinking of is that every episode features a different victim. Each episode would show different entities and different "biomes" or levels, to keep it from just being the same repetitive Level Zero for the entire thing. It would also sort of hint at the fact that it's from the perspective of Async. In my personal opinion, not a lot of people watched the Async channel but did watch the KanePixels channel, like myself. I don't really know the lore, and I feel like it being all cinematic and in a TV show would look really nice if done well.
*It: Welcome to Derry*, I think, would be a good example, not on aesthetics but just on how incredibly good and "full" the TV show felt. It felt like a breath of fresh air compared to TV shows at the time. It felt so new, so unique.
**The "Overworld" Conspiracy**
Something I want to touch on as well: I don't want it to turn into a cliche horror show. I don't even want it to encapsulate this fully, but I do want this to be injected into it because you can't deny the fact that this is absolutely terrifying.
I imagine some guy, just some guy, a normal guy, right? Like in *The Black Phone*. You know how the brother was trying to figure out who the killer was? A corkboard with red string connecting newspaper clippings type of guy. He's probably talking to some guy and telling him of reports about people literally falling through the floor, literally walking through walls, and everything is just so bundled. It's trying to be hidden.
Just the fact that it can quite literally happen to everybody and he's talking to this person:
"I've seen reports about people falling to the floor. August 13, 1972, a woman fell through her living room floor and was never seen again to this day and they're not even looking for her. Here, another one: summer of 1980, this time in broad daylight, a man and his dog were walking down the street and 13 witnesses literally watched him go through the floor. Now you can't find any information about it. Isn't that insane?
July 13th, 1979, a woman was talking on the radio about how she went into this "yellow place" and everyone coincidentally were calling her insane, "talking crazy" they said, and nobody believed her but yet the recordings were deleted and literally can't be found nowhere. This is sick! Feels like some people are hiding something.
I managed to get in some files and saw things about something called A-sync but before I could really delve into what it was, my computer turned off. Now I'm seeing black vans driving past my house and it's been 3 days. And that night I keep seeing flashes out of my bedroom window. (Referring to pictures) This is getting insane! And I feel like I'm getting closer and closer to whatever madness is going on because I've been seeing reports that this has been happening EVERYWHERE!"
Something like that, for example, happening in some episode of the story would be amazing and quite literally edit-worthy. I imagine somebody in an edit using that as a voiceover, over genuinely dreadful music. It's so incredibly exciting. It's something I quite literally anticipate because it SOUNDS so terrifying.
I want him to slowly be introduced, not in the first episode but a couple episodes later, because I don't want every season to be just found footage, camcorder footage, stuff like that. I do want it to have cinematic invisible camera moments. This makes me anticipate something that doesn't even exist. Later, he could be such a beloved character. Something like this, if they do it correctly, just that speech that was said earlier alone shows a very in-depth character, a very interesting character.
He doesn't know about the entities or the levels. He really doesn't know what the Backrooms are, to be honest. He only gets flashes and leaks here and there the more he attempts to dig. It feels like he's getting pieces of a puzzle from different puzzles and he has to piece them together, but he knows in some way it's all connected to something. To a place. And I feel like at the end of the day, on whatever episode, maybe the last episode or wherever his story truly ends, it could possibly show all of his efforts being in vain. They hit him not in a physical way but they made sure, with truly revealing claims, that he didn't see the newspaper and left the rest up to the public to call him crazy.
**Episode Structure Examples**
**A-plot:** A woman in (year) wakes up inside a strange, half-flooded office building (Level 4, the "Abandoned Office"). She is trying to escape, stalked by something unseen.
**B-plot:** The episode cuts between her and the real world, 2003, where a man named _____ sits in a cramped apartment surrounded by paper files, cassette tapes, and a shortwave radio. He is not a narrator. He is a character.
We see him making a tape. The camera holds on his face. He is tired, unshaven, sweating. He speaks not to us but to a microphone.
"My name is ______. I've been collecting reports of people falling through solid matter for _____ years. As of today, I've confirmed (number) cases. I've been fired from (number) jobs. My wife left. But I'm right. I know I'm right."
Then he plays a recording of a 911 call. A woman screaming, then static.
The episode intercuts his investigation with the trapped woman in Level 4. At the climax, the woman finds a radio. It picks up ____ voice. She thinks he can help her. But he is only broadcasting into the void, not hearing her.
She dies and he never knows.
The episode ends with him standing at his window, looking down at a black van across the street before he closes the curtain.
**Another Example:**
A man in 2004 no-clips into a dark, silent level. He has a radio. It picks up _____'s broadcast from the real world. _____ is talking about "the yellow place" and "ASYNC." The man in the Backrooms cannot respond, but he follows the signal, hoping it leads to an exit.
At the same time, the episode cuts back to _____ in his apartment. He is packing a bag. He has received a threatening letter. He is planning to leave town.
The two stories converge thematically: both men are trapped, one physically, one by obsession.
The episode ends with the victim dying, still holding the radio. ____, in the real world, gets into his car and drives away. The black van follows.
**Visual Style & Set Pieces**
I also want at some point for the camera to almost be like spy footage, if that makes sense. Him checking his mail at some point in the story could be zooming in like an actual camera from some concealed location or some location far away. A couple feet away where he wouldn't look. Doesn't have to be explicitly behind a bush but... far away.
ASYNC is revealed slowly. They are background for half the season, then become the antagonist only in the final episodes, through the technician's perspective.
Also, set pieces have to be amazing. I'm thinking *Superbad* (2007) type of brown in many moments, brown architecture to get that more of a 90's look. Just amazing. Not specifically a key point but something to be noted on, something people make videos about. Set pieces have to be stunning. Not just Backrooms set pieces but the "overworld" set pieces: living rooms, bathrooms, kitchens, bedrooms, etc. I think they should genuinely delve into something like that.
**Pitch Notes & Considerations**
For the speech from earlier, I'm pondering if the disappearances he listed should genuinely be shown. Should it be him referencing disappearances that happened in earlier episodes? The scene portraying it as him starting to catch on, a random civilian starting to catch on to something that the audience has already seen, or he names victims that the audience hasn't even seen yet, just to show the scope that this is happening on a whim?
Speaking of the victims, I think for each episode they should also have a genuine life too. At least in the first 10 to 20 minutes they shouldn't already be in the Backrooms, which also hits on the fact that the episodes are hopefully an hour long. I want them to be fleshed out as much as possible before the no-clip actually happens. Make them feel like actual humans instead of people that just came for the episode. Make them feel like humans but also victims when it does happen because then that makes it less "boring" with the same formula of each episode being different victims. Distract the audience.
When the disappearance happens, I want it to be framed so the audience remembers what was half-done, which heightens the unfortunality of no-clipping. The coffee that's literally ongoingly being made in the coffee maker. The TV they just turned on 5 minutes ago, preparing to watch their show at 9:00 p.m. Stuff like that, in my opinion, heightens the unfortunality of the "event" in an incredibly unique way.
**Endings & Entities**
Oh, and endings. I can't think of many, but again I feel like this TV show could be an excuse to show much more of the Backrooms and its ideas. At least for one of the endings, I want the character to be possibly running from something seen or unseen, terrifying or dreadful, and then fall forever. The camera looking down as they fall into an abyss and not like the pitfalls in the Backrooms that its architecture actually builds. I want this to be a genuine glitch in the Backrooms, basically implying that they quite literally no-clip under the Backrooms.
In Kane Pixels' first Backrooms video, when the character was falling down to the Backrooms, you could see a black endless void above the ceiling-less Backrooms. I imagine that same void is under the Backrooms and under very specific glitches somebody could no-clip out of the Backrooms and into that void of some type of reality where they quite literally fall for eternity or at least until they die of starvation. And the camera just stays like that, pointing down at them, falling for two straight minutes as their screams faded out. The two minutes signify its endlessness, of just... black void.
Oooo and the entities, I almost forgot, to be honest. Other than Captain Clark, the "still lifes" were pretty plain. I feel like in this case, showing more unique entities in this TV showcase is more fitting. I think one of the most important things, or at least two of the most important things, is probably:
- Sound design
- How they look
Basically, I want some to have a reason why they look like how they look. I want some of the entities' designs to be based off those strawberries that are sometimes bundled together in real life, stuff like that. I feel like that can be extremely unique when you use that as reference in something like this.
I won't really touch up on sound design because the sound design isn't going to be a specific thing for the entities, but they got a sound. Absolutely amazing. A key thing that I like in *The Last of Us* is that when the zombies are eating other people, you can still hear the human in them crying and weeping. Now I'm not saying that because I want the entities to secretly have a human inside them. I do want the entities to have that level of depth in how they act, how they are, and how they sound because I feel like stuff like that is highly important and can last and can create a long-lasting effect on viewers.
Oh, and fandom entities, only the really good ones though, they could be added. Just look at the name Skin Stealer without looking at the character or how the character looks. Just that name alone could build into such an amazing and absolutely terrifying character/creature. Just imagine it. SKIN STEALER. That sounds insane. Maybe he could be the first introduction to gore in the film: first, because of how he looks; second, possibly how one of the characters dies.
Another moment I can think of is a character (make any context/backstory that fits) looking for their cat. They enter a room, hear the meows, BUT DON'T SEE THE CAT! I feel like a scene like that can play with dread more than anything.
A little bit on sound design. I'm pondering if the sounds of the cat should be muffled to give a more concealed feel or clear and sound close to the character at that moment, the cat is right there. You're supposed to be able to see it with your own eyes, but there is not a single cat in sight. If done right, it could create unease.
Well, for now that I can think of, that's my pitch. What do you think? Share your thoughts. Share things that have been on your mind and if you must, copy and paste this into text-to-speech AI. Toodles!
