For years, the dream of making a big movie has come with a pretty intimidating checklist: money, connections, studio backing, expensive cameras, huge crews… then along came Backrooms and Obsession, films that started smaller and proved audiences will be eager to see new ideas, new aesthetics, and different voices. These are ambitious, strange films built outside the traditional system, using Blender and other low-cost tools, and that might be exactly why they connect. Backrooms has made $367 million globally on a $10 budget, so it definitely connected.
For Eliot Mack, CEO and co-founder of Lightcraft Technology, these films are a sign of where things are heading. “The key movies in every generation are the ones that rewrite the rules,” he says. “What you are seeing now is the speed at which new talent gets a shot at rewriting the rules.”
It’s a pretty big claim, but Mack believes the next shift in filmmaking won’t just be about making things cheaper; it’ll be about making the entire process more open. Instead of spending years trying to convince people that an idea could work, creators will be able to build, test and show those ideas much earlier.
That’s where Lightcraft Spark comes in: the AI-assisted filmmaking platform, with new features set for a reveal at SIGGRAPH 2026 next week, is designed to bring the screenplay, creative decisions, and production planning into one shared 3D space, giving filmmakers a way to explore their worlds before cameras roll, making the process easier and more affordable. Moreover, its script-first focus means writers and creatives new to filmmaking can explore how their ideas work in 3D, which is ideal for pitching.
Below, Mack talks about why Backrooms could be a glimpse of a new kind of Hollywood, how Spark could change the relationship between creators and studios, and why the future of filmmaking might belong to the people who can show their ideas rather than just pitch them.
CB: With films like Backrooms and Obsession proving that micro-budget ideas can punch far above their weight, are we witnessing a genuine shift in the kinds of films people want to see?
Eliot Mack: The key movies in every generation are the ones that rewrite the rules. What you are seeing now is the speed at which new talent gets a shot at rewriting the rules. Twenty years old is very quick for a big break, and you are going to see more of this, not less, as the tools become more powerful.
Horror is the established on-ramp, but what audiences are really looking for in entertainment is to be transported. The usual tricks of the trade are story and spectacle, and spectacle is easier to scale.
This led Hollywood to pursue projects that were safe from an accounting perspective; the deep work required for story breakthroughs was too scary. But what people actually want hasn’t changed much since the Greeks. I think people have always wanted to see stories that have heart.
Emerging toolsets are going to make it much easier to make these types of movies. The layers and budget needs are about to shrink so much that the classic barriers are just going to go away. And this is going to allow a new creative class to finally make the stories they want to make, not what a financial class wants to finance.
CB: Where does Spark sit in that shift? Is it best understood as a tool, a pipeline, or something closer to a new creative backbone for production itself?
EM: Spark is really one place to create stories together, and is designed to accelerate this shift. It’s both a set of tools for storytelling, and the underlying data backbone that those tools and others can connect to. It’s designed to make the process feel less abstract, and more like working together in the same room.
CB: Hollywood has traditionally scaled creativity through budget and infrastructure; what breaks first in the old system if Spark scales as you expect?
EM: The most important thing you just said is that Hollywood scales creativity, and inherent in that is the belief that Hollywood is actually driving the train. And for years they have, acting as both financier and gatekeeper for anyone looking to operate outside of the smallest budgets. But what happens when movies start costing much less to create? More people get to make big, original projects.
It also flips the current system on its head, because it allows filmmakers to start setting their own terms instead of starting out in the mailroom. Curry Barker and Kane Parsons will be living proof. Instead of pitching studios, studios will start pitching creators because the talent will be so obvious. This will make Hollywood less of a gatekeeper and more of an equal partner long term.
Spark is going to change things because it lets you show what you have very, very early in the cycle. This is what everyone needed to kick projects in hyperdrive. That freedom, and ability to get people on board much quicker, could also mean that the entry point won’t always be Hollywood going forward. We’re already seeing the beginning of that with the YouTubers. Because when you give creators more opportunities to break through and gain traction, the world gets a lot more interesting. And that’s the most exciting and transformative aspect of all this.
CB: For small-to-medium filmmakers, the bottleneck has often been consistency at scale in VFX, post, and polish. How specifically does Spark collapse those friction points?
EM: Spark is organizing everything around a couple of pillars: the screenplay, a database, and the ability to collaborate, ideate, and track your work in 3D with a browser or iOS device. Consistency requires everyone being able to see the same information in real-time, across the project, in a way that is easy to understand.
A key part of this is making a lot of automated data processes work for a very small team, so they can actually start doing hundreds of shots. Most film projects start off with a big, wild, crazy grab bag of things that’s wildly unorganized. By organizing things around the screenplay and a 3D database, all the creative decisions that make up a project can be preserved. As Spark develops this will become an end-to-end solution.
In those initial phases, where you’re just scratching around trying things, you want a system that not only lets you ideate freely, but tracks where the shots are, what they are focused on, and where they tie into the script. This promotes consistency going forward, when everything is in the right place and easily discoverable by anyone on your team looking for the current ground truth of the project.
And when everyone can ideate from the same source, collaboration becomes automatic. For the first time, it’s going to open up 3D collaboration to everyone – not just the experts. Spark Story is creating a scenario where when you make a cinematic decision and send it to someone else, who can then replicate that situation right there in their apartment very easily – in 3D. That promotes instant, visual back-and-forths with no data loss and it’s going to propel small to mid-sized teams forward.
Imagine what happens when you don’t have to explain camera positions or shot ideas anymore. You can just show someone. And if you want to suggest an idea, you can make a new shot, show the DP and say “What if we did it like this?” Everyone can understand that, and with Spark, they are going to have a way to move quickly without worrying about data and ideas falling through the cracks.
CB: We’re seeing a new aesthetic emerge from low-budget viral films – raw, imperfect, but emotionally sticky. Does Spark amplify that aesthetic, or refine it into something more studio-grade?
EM: Spark Story gives them a playground to define whatever aesthetic they desire, but the aesthetic will always come from them. Our goal is to automate the mundane work that no one likes and help teams move fast. This means that the technical pillars that the system is built on, like USD, 3D databases, and high-precision tracking are all studio-grade, in case they want to pursue that level of polish. However, they aren’t locked into an overall ‘look’ by the system.
CB: When does a tool like Spark stop being “helpful software” and start becoming infrastructure that studios can’t ignore?
EM: When our films start clocking wins, and those wins are attached to budgets that are coming in at a tiny fraction of what everybody is used to. They need these wins to scale too. If that’s all in place, a studio can’t say it’s a flash in the pan. All of a sudden it’s “systematic and repeatable.” The latter is particularly important to them too. The other motivating factor will be if Spark movies start beating their movies. No one wants to be left out. And if Spark takes off with the incoming creative class, who start growing accustomed to moving light and fast, then it will spread even more.
I don’t think it’ll take much to change things either. The reports coming out post-Backrooms and Obsession are all saying studios are already scrambling to find their YouTube wunderkinds and often combing Reddit boards looking for the next rabid community base. If people see success, they want in on it.
CB: What does Spark unify that was previously spread across multiple teams, tools, and budgets?
EM: Spark is unifying everything! Historically, filmmaking operated like a bunch of little islands – pre-production, production, and post-production – that are crossed only with great skill. And half the time, you’ll find the people who are involved in those phases don’t talk to each other! They make the movie three times over, and this is just accepted as part of the problem. And because it’s accepted, the tools have never been designed to talk to each other. They’ve evolved independently, and none of them have a common data backbone. Spark is giving them one.
And by unifying all the different pieces, we’re giving people a lingua franca that helps all the islands connect. But we’re not rebuilding all the tools for every process. Avid, Premiere, Blender, Maya, Unreal, lots of excellent tools have already been built over the years. The industry just needs a better way to tie them together, so we can connect the story world to the technical infrastructure of filmmaking. It’s the biggest gap there is.
There’s one world that’s invested in vision, character, and what do they need vs. what do they want, and another world that has to figure out how to get the dolly through the doorway. And both of these coexist at the same time. It’s why it’s such a strange industry. Our argument, though, is that they can meet in the same place and clear up a lot of confusion. That’s one of the many ways Spark is going to drive costs way down.
CB: If a filmmaker today can achieve “Hollywood-adjacent” results without Hollywood resources, what role does the traditional studio actually retain in a Spark-enabled ecosystem?
EM: At the small to mid-sized side of things, Hollywood is going to see a lot of change, moving from their overseer, backer, and decider role to something more akin to modern venture capital. Ideally, Hollywood should become something akin to a supercharged incubator program that helps projects scale and develop. This is an industry with over 100 years of insights into the artform, and all of these people still have value no matter what happens going forward.
One of the looming questions is: what about the talent? Historically, Hollywood has played gatekeeper here, with many people spending years roaming about LA looking for their big break. What Spark Story is also going to do is help everyone – including outside producers – spot talent. Because if you can envision a story, develop magnetic shots, and then sell a rough cut to whoever needs to fund it, you’re going to stand out. Spark is going to enable a “seeing is believing” scenario, almost like a screen test for filmmakers. Everyone will know when they see it, and if you’re on the inside designing the shots, you’ll know who is excelling at the process pretty quick.
CB: Do you see Spark empowering entirely new genres or formats that simply weren’t viable before, especially in the wake of short-form, viral-first films like Backrooms?
EM: If you have a tool like Spark Story that accelerates storytelling and makes bigger ideas more financially approachable, then people will definitely pursue new creative opportunities. However, I think you’ll see less movement into new spaces and more movement from short-form to long-form, large-scale projects.
When people love their characters and worlds they’ve created, a lot of times they start thinking in more expansive terms. They want to make bigger projects, whether that’s a feature film or series. Backrooms is actually a good example of this. Kane has often discussed having a long-term vision for where this is going and how everything will develop, which is reflected in both the YouTube shorts and the movie. And I think having access to tools like Spark that clear the road is going to make more people want to swing for the fences because that’s where the biggest wins are.
CB: Looking five years ahead, what does a “typical” indie production look like in a world where Spark is fully embedded, and what part of today’s filmmaking process disappears entirely?
EM: Five years from the typical indie production is going to work much differently than how it works now.
Right now, people try to write a script and go around and pitch it. But what’s going to happen is people are going to start pre-shooting their project in Spark with their collaborators as they’re developing the script, all working together at the same time. So instead of this being kind of this solitary, isolated process, people are going to write, put together shots, and try out locations earlier than ever – frequently in tandem.
This is going to move people from a “I just got to stare at a blank page” situation to a more collaborative process that’s a lot more playful and creatively fulfilling. It’s much more fun to workshop scenes with friends as you work in the browser, in your bedrooms and bunny slippers, than alone. And this way, you can also start to see if your project’s going to work visually from the get-go. Which changes everything.
Having shots – or a rough cut – to showcase will also radically transform the pitching process. Right now, people are pitching on a hope and a prayer because no one can fully gauge the tone when you look at a script. It’s very hard to read one and mentally convert that to a visual feeling. But with 3D shots, the people you’re asking to join your project, whether they are on the talent or financial side of things, can actually start to see what this film is going to become. What you show is going to be much closer to the finished article than has traditionally been possible before. This will dramatically increase your chance of success when your vision has legs.
Working through this process also means that when you go into production, everything can be planned to a tee. This is one of the more important components of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms journey, in that he pre-visualized the entire project in Blender. That’s one of the reasons they were able to shoot so efficiently at that $10 million budget. In five years, this will be the status quo. Everybody will pre-shoot the project and use that as their planning template before they go into production. A primary reason is no one will want to head into production and barely know what’s going on anymore. Everyone will want that plan. The takes, the data capture, the planning decisions will all be there for anyone to see, in one centralized place that anyone can remote into if an issue ever comes up.
For post-production, you’re going to see the process stop feeling like a black hole. You’re going to be able to actually track every part of the process, every shot, and see it in situ. So you’ll know which shots need work and which ones are done. And people are going to get used to watching the film develop in Spark from the beginning, creating an end-to-end logic to everything.
All of this together will make the filmmaking process feel less disjointed and confusing. People will know which way is up and that they can be fast, fluid, and extremely efficient as they work. And ultimately, they’ll finally know where the ground truth of their project resides, how to find the answers to their questions, how to bring people in, how to get them up to speed and collaborating. It’s going to transform everything, but it’ll also feel natural. Like how people should have been doing things in the first place.
