The Room (lost unreleased digital HD footage of drama film; 2003)

Theatrical release poster for the film.

Status: Lost

The Room is a 2003 independent drama film written, produced, executive produced, directed by, and starring Tommy Wiseau. The film is widely considered one of the worst movies of all time but has gained a cult-like following due to its "so bad it's good" quality. In one of many strange decisions, Wiseau decided to shoot the movie in both 35mm film and digital HD simultaneously, with only the footage shot in 35mm film being used in the final edit of the film leaving the digital HD footage unreleased.

Background

Tommy Wiseau next to the custom camera setup.

There are conflicting stories on why Tommy Wiseau shot the movie in both formats. After the film started to gain its cult resurgence, Wiseau would claim that he filmed the movie this way so he could say he was the first director ever to do it. This is contradicted by his co-star and on-off friend, Greg Sestero, who claims in his book about the making of The Room, The Disaster Artist, that Wiseau read in a book titled something like “How to Make a Movie” that filmmakers may choose to use film or digital so he decided to film in both just to be safe. No matter the reason Wiseau committed to his ill-informed decision, buying two Panasonic HDX-900 digital cameras and one Arriflex BL4 35mm camera, an odd decision in an industry where even major studios rent cameras due to it being much cheaper. To accommodate Wiseau's odd filming choice, he had to get two separate crews, one for the digital cameras and one for the film camera, as well as making a custom dolly that could house both the Panasonic HDX-900 and Arriflex BL4 at once, which was used for most of the filming. Wiseau did all of this despite earlier warnings from the crew that only one format would be used in the final edit, which ended up being prophetic as only the 35mm film footage was used in the final edit of the film. As stated before the digital HD footage has never been released, even on the film's HD Blu-ray which instead uses an HD rescan of the 35mm film. It is unknown if copies of the digital HD footage still even exist.