THE SACROOMS

LOVESAC SOCIAL STUNT

THE SACROOMS
LOVE SAC

To hijack the cultural momentum around A24’s The Backrooms, Lovesac launched The Sacrooms—a real-time social stunt transforming liminal horror into the ultimate modular lounge. Over a six-hour live Instagram rollout, audience votes directly dictated an employee's path and environment decor, with updates reflecting across social and the live Lovesac storefront.

Reed + Rader was the sole 3D artist on the project and was responsible for the end-to-end technical and visual execution in Unreal Engine 5. We designed and built the complete 3D world, integrated Lovesac’s product line, set up dynamic lighting and camera systems, and rendered all final assets for both the interactive episodic Instagram story and the live e-commerce site takeover.

SOCIAL + WEB

The story unfolded live across Instagram Stories over six hours. Viewers steered the story via polls, deciding the character's route and decorating the space with Lovesac gear. The activation breached containment, swapping out live e-commerce product photos on site as the story unfolded.

The World

Photoreal Liminal Worldbuilding in UE5: To capture the unsettling weight of the Backrooms, the environment was built from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5 with photoreal fidelity in mind. Dialing in the tactile grime of damp carpet, repeating acoustic tiles, and sickly-yellow fluorescent lighting via Lumen grounded the surreal space in physical reality making the surreal collision with plush Lovesac furniture land with maximum contrast.

Behind The Scenes

100% Real-Time Engine Workflow: Every shot, environment, and product frame was realized natively in Unreal Engine 5, giving the creative team full control over camera framing, prop placement, and lighting updates on the fly.

Handheld Cinematography via Unreal VCam: To nail the claustrophobic, found-footage aesthetic essential to Backrooms lore, we operated the camera live inside the digital set using Unreal Engine’s VCam. Ditching procedural camera shake for real-time handheld tracking gave the footage authentic human weight and hesitation, while allowing us to block and record shots rapidly to meet tight turnaround times.

TEAM

Max Dotson - Art Director
Caleb Driesman - Copywriter
Spencer LaVallee - CD/CCO
Matthew Rader - 3D Artist / Unreal Engine Lead
Matthew Duncan - Audio
Sarah Dexin - Designer
Agency - Gus