LSU Horror Film Production Course Takes Filmmaking to a New Level with Louisiana’s First LED Volume Wall
September 08, 2025
On LSU’s campus, the Digital Art Department’s XR Studio houses the first LED volume wall in Louisiana. Students have the opportunity to learn how to create digital environments in video game software to display on the LED wall, allowing them to set their production in any environment they can dream of.
The studio also has industry-standard equipment, such as cameras, microphones, and motion-capture equipment, which allows students to create polished, professional-looking work for their portfolios.
“To encourage students to balance their creative voice with the technical aspects of filmmaking, we emphasize both specialization and collaboration,” said College of Art and Design professor Christine Bruening.
Louisiana's first LED volume wall in use.
Topics in Art: XR Horror Production students working on their horror film.
Topics in Art: XR Horror Production students working on their horror film.
Christine Bruening and Derick Ostrenko teaching Topics in Art: XR Horror Production course.
The Digital Art Department's XR Studio.
During the Topics in Art: XR Horror Production course, students were able to mix their creativity with this equipment for their final project.
“This course is one of several in Digital Art that utilize the LED wall in the XR studio,” said Bruening. “Past versions have ranged from Digital Art’s Digital Twinning project with NASA to explorations of interactive visuals connected to electronic music. My colleague Derick Ostrenko, who co-teaches the course with me, proposed that we design this iteration around horror in conversation with my research.”
For this course, the students pitched a movie plot to their peers and voted on which movie they wanted to create. They then wrote the script and brought the movie to life.
“The students acted in the movie themselves and managed the whole production themselves,” Bruening said. “As instructors we stepped back and mainly served as guides and IT support and the students did everything else themselves.”
Bruening said collaborating on a large team encourages a unique kind of creativity in artists as they interpret prompts, solve complex problems, and work towards a shared vision, all while maintaining their individual artistic voices.
The final project supports the goal of the course by providing students with hands-on experience creating their own production.
“It’s extremely rewarding to witness how students grow—individually and collectively—into a cohesive team as they work towards a shared creative outcome,” Bruening said.
Bruening said the biggest challenge that she, and the students, faced during the creation of this project was balancing creative ambition with the amount of time allotted during a semester.
Facing the challenge, Bruening is proud of the movie the students created, and had fun watching the students delve into her favorite genre of filmmaking.
“Horror has been a central influence in my personal art practice for a long time,” Bruening said. “I'm particularly interested in how the genre reflects cultural anxieties and explores the potential for catharsis through the aesthetics of violence, so one of the most surprising and rewarding aspects has been seeing how students who don’t consider themselves fans of the genre still embraced the course for the production experience.”
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