In designing this chamber, I shifted to a 15mm field of view (compared to the 25–50mm range used elsewhere) to push a sense of extreme scale. My intention across the whole film was to escalate room size progressively, and this lens choice allowed me to frame both the girl’s entrance and the Behemoth within a single composition. The drawback is that the creature sometimes reads larger and earlier than intended, compromising the reveal; however, avoiding a mid-walk introduction of the girl felt more important, as I wanted to preserve the transitional rhythm of her physically entering the frame. The scene also pushed Blender to its limit: the number of lights, the scale of the geometry and the ray-traced bounces made the space difficult to read, so I leaned heavily on Fresnel-driven rim lights and emissive backlighting to pull key elements forward without adding more shadow-casting lights.
The pillars were introduced late in development because the scene initially lacked any architectural language that could communicate scale. Since earlier rooms used tight, wooden cabin structures, I wanted this space to immediately read as grand in contrast. The pillars never appear elsewhere in the short; they are deliberately alien to the domestic interiors. I tapered their size toward the Behemoth to force depth—partly stylistic, partly because Blender could not comfortably render an environment large enough to show genuine distance. I placed stone slabs across the pillar tops to avoid the visual problem of “supporting nothing,” suggesting the remnants of a long-collapsed structure. This also contributes to the idea that the demon has been embedded here for centuries, deforming the chamber over time (similar to a tree reshaping itself against the pressure of its environment).
Lighting here follows primarily visual, not narrative logic. Full visibility of the creature in early versions collapsed the tension of the scene, so I adopted intermittent lightning strikes to reveal only fragments. This mirrors the flicker used earlier during the father’s first possession scene, creating a formal link between the two moments. The chamber’s cold blue palette continues my interior/exterior colour dichotomy; it also helps bridge the visual jump cuts later in the edit that momentarily reveal the outside forest. Compositional pointing still operates here: the pillars and slabs guide the eye toward the Behemoth, while the framing also accommodates the giant hand, whose scale further reiterates the creature’s unreadable enormity. The Behemoth’s obscured size is intentional. Early versions made him too legible and therefore less unsettling, whereas partial concealment maintains ambiguity and suggests a presence too large or ancient to fully comprehend. The architecture reinforces this by feeling grown-around or warped by the demon itself.
In this shot, the mass of fabric develops above the girl as a direct escalation of the burlap-based visual language established earlier in the film. The tendrils were keyframed manually in Cinema 4D, exported as Alembic caches, and then integrated into Blender; this allowed the movement to stay controllable while still feeling organic. I imported the full hall into C4D to use as a spatial reference, ensuring that the tendrils emerge from specific architectural cavities rather than floating abstractly. This reinforces the idea that the demon is embedded in, and inseparable from, the building itself. The red interior glow functions partly as a readability tool and partly as an extension of the demon’s presence, providing internal illumination that reveals the structure of the mass without fully exposing it.
Maintaining the 15mm field of view was necessary to hold the entire environment and monster within frame – switching to a longer lens made both the creature and the cavern appear toy-sized. Because the girl becomes extremely small in the composition, I masked her silhouette frame-by-frame and added a separate distorted orange lighting pass beneath her to keep her readable against the darker background. The spherical form itself continues the film’s repeated “gestation” imagery: it echoes the earlier fabric tunnels and borrows from spider egg-sac morphology, which supports the demon’s shifting identity across shots. The shot holds for roughly seven seconds to give the viewer a break in pacing and to escalate tension before the confrontation.
Placing the mass directly above her emphasises her lack of awareness and positions the threat as imminent rather than distant. Practical limitations also shaped the design: Alembic caches combined with the paint filter increased render times dramatically in earlier iterations, so for this shot I abstracted the geometry heavily, resulting in sub-two-minute frame times while still maintaining the intended scale and complexity of the sequence.
This shot deliberately breaks the established voyeuristic overhead perspective and drops to a low, offset angle. The shift is intentionally disorienting, but it also restores a sense of scale after several more controlled compositions. I anchored the frame with a foreground pillar on the left to stabilise the composition and maintain the architectural language of the hall; the pillars have been a recurring device for scale, age and structural decay, and their inclusion here reinforces the antiquity of the space. The demon’s “exhalation” of spiders functions less as readable biology and more as a continuation of its established spider logic from earlier scenes: the creature is ancient, and its forms tend to shed, split, or propagate. Technically, the spiders were animated walking on the spot, duplicated, rotated, and scattered across the demon’s face; at this scale, fine detail was unnecessary.
In Blender, I rebuilt them using a Cinema4D mesh–volume workflow, then duplicated and solidified the mesh with reversed normals to create a fake rim-light effect, since traditional lighting was unworkable for such small, numerous forms inside a largely dark palette. Having one spider break away and walk toward the girl provided both narrative clarity and a readable bridge into the next transformation (the boy), avoiding a direct cut and allowing the transition to unfold within the same spatial logic. The shot holds for roughly five to six seconds, functioning as a contained spectacle that escalates threat while showcasing one of the strongest lighting–colour balances in the film.
Research on Extreme Lens Distortion and Perceived Scale
When I first explored how wide lenses affect scale in confined and cavernous environments, I kept returning to cinematography research showing that fields of view below 18mm dramatically exaggerate spatial depth. This helped me understand why the 15mm lens worked so well here. Wide lenses make small figures feel fragile and large figures feel monumental, even when the geometry itself is not truly enormous. That research also made it clear why the Behemoth sometimes read too early in the shot: extreme wide angles dissolve concealment unless the lighting is tightly controlled. This informed my choice to hide him in intermittent illumination rather than full exposure.
Architectural Language and Monumental Interiors
I studied how monumental interior architecture communicates age and scale across various art traditions, especially cathedral and temple structures. One consistent point was that pillars become communicators of time and atmosphere even without explicit narrative explanation. That research guided my decision to introduce pillars late in development. They needed to taper, converge and feel ancient to contrast the domestic cabin interiors from earlier scenes. I also learned that broken architectural logic, like slabs resting on unstable supports, subconsciously signals that the space has been shaped by a non-human presence. That research aligned perfectly with the idea that the demon has warped the hall over centuries.
Flicker Logic and Horror Visibility
Research into horror lighting patterns emphasised that intermittent visibility produces more tension than full exposure or full concealment. Films that rely on lightning or strobes use them strategically to fragment the monster into readable pieces without giving away its entire form. That directly informed how I lit this chamber. I wanted viewers to understand mass and danger, but not anatomy. The research supported the idea that tension grows when the creature remains partially unreadable, allowing the mind to fill in the gaps.
Colour Logic and Interior–Exterior Continuity
I have been following a strict colour dichotomy across the film: blue for coldness, distance and structure, red for corruption, threat and internal bodily logic. Research into colour scripting in animation helped reinforce that maintaining consistent palette rules across major transitions stabilises the viewer, even when the scenes themselves jump drastically in location or tone. That is why the chamber stays blue. It anchors the viewer after rapid cuts, while the internal red glow grounds the burlap mass in the same language as the demon’s earlier transformations.
Embedded Creature Design and Environment Integration
Studying creature design taught me that monsters feel strongest when their biology appears fused with their environment. Many of my references used architecture as an extension of the creature’s anatomy. This research helped me decide that the demon should not feel like an intruder in the chamber. He needed to feel grown into it. That idea informed the tendril placements, the cavities they emerge from, and the architectural distortions. It also helped sell the notion that the building and the monster have co-evolved.
Alembic Pipelines and Controlled Organic Motion
Research into Alembic workflows emphasised that highly controlled organic movement requires external software, especially when dealing with painterly post processing. That pushed me toward Cinema 4D for the tendril animation. The research showed that Alembic caches preserve shape accuracy while allowing complex motion that would be chaotic or unstable with procedural rigs. This directly shaped how I built the burlap mass and why I avoided cloth simulation entirely. The research supported the decision to keyframe tendrils manually to keep visual intention intact.
Silhouette Readability in Large-Scale Spaces
I studied how silhouette readability breaks down when characters become very small in wide-scale shots. The research highlighted the importance of strengthening contrast and rim lighting when the subject will be dwarfed by architecture. That made me mask Lina frame by frame and add an orange lighting pass beneath her. It preserved her presence in the shot without overpowering the environment. This principle appears in a lot of large-scale animation work, and it informed my approach here directly.
Gestational Imagery and Horror Symbolism
When researching symbolic language in horror, one recurring pattern was the use of gestation, sacs and egg-like masses to signal transformation or rebirth. This aligned closely with the fabric sphere I designed. It connects to the tunnel imagery earlier in the film and the spider logic established through the demon’s shifting identity. This research reinforced my choice to make the mass feel organic, swollen and imminent rather than structured or mechanical.
Breaking Camera Logic for Emotional Contrast
Many psychological horror films break established camera logic late in the story to destabilise the viewer just enough to signal escalation. Research into these techniques helped me understand that the low-offset angle in the final spider-burst shot needed to contrast the earlier voyeuristic top-down compositions. This break in visual grammar allows the moment to feel disruptive without losing the film’s internal coherence.
Volume-Based Creature Multiplication
Research into creature crowding and micro-detail in dark scenes demonstrated that readability is more important than anatomical precision. That shaped how I built the spiders. Walking cycles, duplicated rotation, and painterly abstraction were enough to sell the effect. The research also suggested that a single spider breaking away and approaching the protagonist increases narrative clarity and adds psychological focus, which is exactly why I designed the bridge into the next transformation this way.
Lighting Small Elements in a Dark Palette
A lot of technical research in VFX forums highlighted that tiny creatures inside near-black environments require fake lighting solutions because legitimate light bounces simply vanish. That is why I used reversed normals as a faux rim light. This approach came directly from case studies where artists needed readability without additional lights that would disrupt the scene’s shadows.