Film Gate Interactive celebrated their 10-year anniversary in 2023, and I had a chance to get a retrospective recap from founder and curator Diliana Alexander as well as with board members Savannah Niles and James Powderly. Their 11th edition of Film Gate Interactive is happening December 4-8th, 2024 and so be sure to check out their sponsorship deck for more context on the many different partnerships and collaborations that Alexander has set up in this unique regional immersive festival. We talk about the curation process, the unique character of Miami and the various immersive excursions to explore the city, and a retrospective look at the founding and evolution of this cultivation of the immersive community within the unique cauldron and culture of Miami.
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.458] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye, and welcome to the Voices of VR podcast. It's a podcast that looks at the structures and forms of immersive storytelling and the future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. So last December, I was invited to come down to Miami, Florida to attend the FilmGate Interactive Media Festival. I was giving an opening keynote talk there, as well as covering the immersive stories that I haven't seen. And there was actually a lot of student projects there from the University of Miami. So this was actually the 10 year anniversary of Filmgate Interactive and had a chance to sit down with the founder and curator, Diliana Alexander. And I kind of recap a lot of my experiences at the Filmgate. I had an amazing time there. There's lots of different immersive storytelling, regional festivals around the world. I think this one is unique in the sense of just all the different themes. sponsors and collaborators that Diliana has in order to pull this off. In fact, I highly recommend checking out her sponsored deck that gives an overview of what she's been able to really curate and cultivate there. Since there isn't a lot of state support for funding the arts, she has to scramble to create all these different partnerships with companies with these different embassies from around the world and Yeah, it's just a really remarkable opportunity for immersive artists to come around the world to Miami and to see these different pieces of immersive art and immersive storytelling. The other thing that's really amazing is that they had quite a lot of excursions out into Miami. In this interview, we talk about how much Miami itself is an immersive city and there's so much that's going on there. And it's usually like a week for Art Basel being able to actually like explore and get to check out some of the essence of what the nightlife and what other things We did a whole like get on a bicycle and listen to these immersive theater actors give this whole story around different aspects of the history of Miami. So it's also worth noting before we start to dive in that the upcoming 11th edition of Filmgate Interactive Media Festival is coming up here from Wednesday, December 4th to Sunday, December 8th, 2024. And they're actually going to be starting a brand new market. So most of the different markets for XR projects happen overseas in Europe, but this is actually going to be the first North American inaugural immersive market that's going to be spotlighting projects from creators from around the world, including Canada, France, the French Caribbean, Germany, the UK, Taiwan, and Colombia. And the theme this year is going to be rewilding, which is showcasing how immersive technology and generative AI can inspire innovation across storytelling, education, and wellbeing. So that's the next version coming up. I'm going to be talking about in this conversation, my experiences from the 10th year anniversary of Filmgate Interactive Media Festival, as well as a little bit more around the history and also two board members that actually were former Magic Leap employees, Savannah Niles and James Powderly. So we also talk around like just the, scene that's happening there in Miami. I think the interview that I did with Lisa Masseria, where she did this whole anthropological study of how immersive technologies were emerging within the context of Los Angeles. After reading that book and kind of seeing how each city has their own spin and flavor of how the technology is merging there, Miami and Florida is its own little unique cauldron for where these different immersive art and immersive projects are incubating and for Filmgate Interactive Media Festival as well. So we're covering all that and more on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Dilyana, Savannah, and James happened on Sunday, December 3rd, 2023. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:03:38.180] Diliana Alexander: My name is Diliana Alexander and I'm the co-founder of Filmgate Miami and Filmgate Interactive in the downtown media center. And 10 years ago, we founded the Filmgate Interactive Media Festival here in Miami. And that's how I ended up producing in VR and XR and AR and dome experiences and also programming them.
[00:03:59.036] Savannah Niles: Hi, I'm Savannah Niles. I currently am a design manager at Meta. I lead trust for the Quest platform and I've spent my whole career in XR. I worked for six and a half years at Magic Leap, leading design across a number of different aspects of Magic Leap 1 and then Magic Leap 2. I've been involved in FilmGate for five years. I've been on the board for a couple years now and helped Diliana organize some of the festival.
[00:04:22.404] James Powderly: My name is James Powderly, and I'm a board member at FilmGate. I also used to work at Magic Leap and have been working as a designer at Snap on their hardware projects for the last four years.
[00:04:34.477] Kent Bye: Great. And I'd love if each of you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into working with XR and immersive storytelling.
[00:04:42.085] Diliana Alexander: Sure. I, like many, started in traditional film and television. So I've been a producer in TV for over 20 years. And I saw an immersive project and I really, I guess, experienced an immersive project. And it immediately captured me with the possibilities of how you can collaborate with an audience and how you can take them through different journeys. And then also, I think, linear storytelling has become boring for me. So I love the challenges of what immersive storytelling is. Makes you do.
[00:05:15.461] Savannah Niles: Yeah, I guess I sort of also fell into it via being very curious about spatial experience design. I studied art as a student and built a lot of spatial experiences as a part of my art practice that included sculpture and new technology. I ended up at an interdisciplinary program at the Media Lab, where I leaned more into that. And on graduating the Media Lab, I took kind of a weird job at a startup in Florida, building a spatial computer. That's how I ended up at Magic Leaps. It was my first job at a school. And yeah, I've been here ever since.
[00:05:51.932] James Powderly: yeah i've been working i guess in what i thought of as augmented reality since about 2005 and it started with a graffiti project that a few of my friends and i worked on namely my colleague evan roth we started making a kind of a digital form of graffiti where we were projection mapping and having interactive camera-based installations on buildings and I realized at some point that what we had was sort of an XR headset, but it was on a bicycle. You know, the tech fit on a bicycle at that point. But I kind of understood that the power to augment reality was really interesting and super empowering and could be empowering to, in the case of like graffiti artists and activists, a kind of a fringe. And then I worked also with Evan and a few of our artist friends, Zach Lieberman and Chris Sergrew and Theo Watson, on a project called the iRider. And that's where we went to Venice, and we bought a pair of sunglasses, and we built a device with a graffiti artist named Tim Tuan. His name was Tony Kwan. And this device allowed him to draw again, though he had had ALS for five years. And so I realized between the two of those things, kind of the power of mapping, overlaying digital content on space, public space especially, and then also the power of these like wearable devices or putting sensors very close to our bodies, almost kind of integrating them into our bodies. And then now I find myself again back on Venice Beach working on, you know, hardware for Snap. So it feels like there's a very kind of straight line from that work to the industry work.
[00:07:37.466] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, we're here on a boat in Miami. We're about to have the closing night adventure and excursion out. Lots of amazing excursions here at FilmGate, by the way. But maybe you could actually take me back to the origins of FilmGate. You said it's a 10-year anniversary. So what was happening 10 years ago that was the catalyst for FilmGate Interactive to exist?
[00:07:57.855] Diliana Alexander: So in Miami, almost nothing in terms of XR. So when we first started, it was quite difficult. Also a great challenge, a fun challenge to explain and show to media and to funders and to even just audiences. And we talked about how hard it is to put sometimes a headset on a person because it freaks them out. Well, that was definitely the case at the beginning. And we had to explain what we do and usually bring an experience to put people through because we will see these articles that were coming before the festival and they're clueless. And then after the festival, they were better. So that was a really interesting time. And it's... Now, ten years later, Miami has become kind of one of the convergence points in terms of technology and what's going on with T's and regardless how you feel about things, but blockchain and crypto and Web three. So it's a lot easier to explain what we do, but we're the only festival, I think, in the region that specifically focuses on storytelling and storytelling from a creative point of view. So in that respect, we're still pushing boundaries and convincing audiences and funders to be a part of it. But it's gotten better and the projects obviously have gotten better because of the advances in technology. And one of our main questions that we ask at Filmgate and I think all festivals that focus on immersive is what is the technology of today that's creating the most interesting experiences? And because it's changing so quickly, So, for example, of course, this year is artificial intelligence. We have a lot of our projects that are from that perspective, and that wouldn't have been the case three or four years ago. And when first VR started becoming more ubiquitous, we had three VR projects and crazy lines around the corner because people were so curious about that. But we never really wanted to just focus on, for example, virtual reality. We're interested in the convergence of art and technology. So we have immersive theater. We have, as you saw, dome experiences. We always also trying to find the most democratic way of doing projects and then with the biggest audience. So it's not an alone experience. Yeah, that's it.
[00:10:16.198] Kent Bye: Was there a specific moment that you see as a turning point for what was a catalyst for you to make the decision to create Filmgate Interactive? I guess the broader context for what was happening 10 years ago.
[00:10:26.909] Diliana Alexander: I think there were maybe three or four moments that happened in 2012 as we started conceiving Filmgate for 2013 start that one was hearing journalists on NPR squeal from the experience that they were having in a virtual reality headset. And I believe that was at South by Southwest. And I hadn't heard an NPR journalist squeal in a long time with delight. And I think that's what great storytelling is when you have that kind of effect people and I thought that was fantastic. Also I had a friend who was working in haptics but haptics were starting to appear in different formats in your car and in your phone and what you could do with technology that vibrates on your body because you have so many for example sensors on your hand and how you can have really interesting experiences with that and I thought that was really fantastic and of course probably as many of us in the space first and foremost the sci-fi geek loves reading William Gibson and Neil Stevenson so it's also seeing that what I've been reading about is now becoming a reality 3d printing and for example right that was really cool so I of course I wanted to be there yeah
[00:11:40.239] Kent Bye: Yeah, one of the distinct qualities of being here at Filmgate is that it felt like a bit of like a Magic Leap reunion because Magic Leap was just up the road here in a plantation about an hour away here from Miami. But being one of the startups that are really been a driver of A lot of innovation within augmented reality then got dispersed amongst all these other companies now and has moved into its next iteration of enterprise phase. But being here situated in Florida, I think it's distinctly different than, say, the tech scene in, say, New York City or Silicon Valley or even in the Pacific Northwest and Seattle. And so there's kind of like an emerging quality here. So I'd love to hear, as former Magic Loopers yourself, being connected to this region and how FilmGate Interactive was playing a part of that culture being developed over the past 10 years. And so, yeah, as you're now on the board, helping to advise. And so I'd love to hear some of those reflections of what's happening here in the region and both your connection to Magic Leap, but also the broader emerging nature of what's happening in Miami.
[00:12:44.173] Savannah Niles: Sure, yeah. I think we were a little surprised at how much it did feel like a Magic Leap reunion. We didn't really intend that. But I think myself and James have helped bring a lot of the speakers and supporters to Filmgate since we've been on the board. And our networks include a lot of people at Magic Leap at this point. And like you said, they've dispersed into other companies. So it sort of happened by accident because of just our networks, I guess. And, of course, you know, that's how we encountered Dilyana and FilmGate. We were working at Magic Leap at the time. In fact, the first time I met Dilyana, I'd given a talk. It was right after the announcement, the release of Magic Leap 1. I think it was right after LeapCon, and we could finally kind of be a little bit more open about what we were working on at Magic Leap. And Dilyana and I instantly became fast friends, of course, because she was, you know, a kind of cultural leader here in the area working on XR and XR Tech. The first time she said, oh, let's go to dinner, come see my space, come see my studio where I have all these resident creators and fellows working on stuff. I showed up at her space. And Diliana, by the way, is a really good social engineer. She kind of knows how to bring people together in really special ways. So earlier that day, she had randomly gotten a message from somebody on Facebook. That week, Magic Leap One was released to creators. You could pick up the headset. Somebody randomly reached out and said, I'm flying in from Spain to pick up a Magic Leap 1. I need somewhere to, like, open and unbox this thing. Like, who will volunteer a space? And Diliana, of course, said me. And so she brings this random stranger with an ML1 to her studio, which is, like, the place and the area where people are really into what we do. And then I just show up, like, not really expecting this. And I got to, after years of... And a lot of really hard work bringing this thing to life. I just sort of walked into a group of enthusiasts, like, unboxing it and trying it out for the first time. And it was one of, like, the most special moments in my life. So from that moment on, I think DeLeon and I became, like, friends and partners. So on. But yeah, I guess Filmgate in that way has always had a connection to Magic Leap by proximity and by being aligned with like the vision of the company, at least at that time, to bring new tools to creators and storytellers. That's always been a part of the core DNA of Magic Leap in some way, too. For that reason, it was special to see Roni come and give a presentation on some of the things he's working on now as well. Yeah.
[00:15:11.204] James Powderly: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just to go back for a second to something you were saying, like, I do think it's a really powerful feeling to stand now enough years back from Magic Leap that I can see what we did achieve, where we failed and where we actually did achieve. And then I see, like you said, the industry is sort of now infused with people from the design team that Savannah and I worked on. And we brought people in from all over the country. And essentially they were like Roni's kind of analogies to the early space program. They were far away from all the tech centers and we formed a really tight family. And now that family People like Amy DeDonato and Laura Pasamino at Apple, myself and Mike Tucker, Karen Stolzenberg at Snap, and many others. Greg Tran has started his own company. He's doing really cool work. We even talked with Tim Stutz the other day. So they're taking some of those things, a little bit like the cautionary tale we told ourselves about General Magic, that we didn't want to be a General Magic. Maybe Magic Leap won't in the end because they continue to try to push forward the product. But I think that early Magic Leap 1 did have a quality of overall failure, but like small wins that are now seeing the proper kind of nurturing inside companies that can turn them into real products with value. But yeah, and during that time, like all of us, we didn't have any And I was coming from Seoul, where there's big communities of creators. And then before that, New York, where there were mainstream organizations, grassroots organizations. And then here there were really none except for Filmgate. So, you know, I think you introduced me to Filmgate and we started coming down from plantation to see events here. And there wasn't another option, you know, that was that was it. And so it was like feeding hungry mouths, you know, and the audience was filled with people that I didn't know because they lived here in Miami or they were coming from other countries. I mean, this place is a hub, you know, right? So like we were meeting new people, but also our friends were coming down and building like a what felt like a stronger place to land the product that we were making, you know. And Magic Leap One was such a Florida device. I don't know how to describe it. It has a kind of a bonkers quality like like Florida itself and Florida's in every part of it, from the colors on the LED lights to like the jungle startup scene, you know? So like, I'm glad that I got to meet FilmGate and I'm glad that Miami And South Florida, we're the home of this product. And now it feels like there's a little bit of Florida in Silicon Valley and Silicon Beach and everywhere else.
[00:18:14.585] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, the event of FilmGate Interactive took place on the University of Miami, and I understand that it's been in a number of different places and locations over the years, and so I'd love to dig into more of this collaboration with the University of Miami. But before we do that, I'd love to have you maybe reflect on, over the past 10 years, if there's different phases or different eras of how FilmGate has evolved over the last decade.
[00:18:36.960] Diliana Alexander: Yeah, it's a very long story, so I'll try to keep it short. When we first started, we started in, at the time, an artistic area called Wynwood. I wouldn't call that area artistic anymore, but every artist that was working and living there basically got completely outpriced in this place, so we all spread out. So our first five years we were in Wynwood and then most artists went up north into the little Haiti or little river areas where we went south and we ended up in downtown Miami. And downtown Miami, maybe like downtown Detroit, maybe not to that level. And it's also Detroit has changed a lot, but I would say that it was a similar scenario. So it was an interesting time to be there. And then we moved into a building that's a historical building that's been there since the 1930s, actually 1926. Which is absolutely incredible for Miami because most buildings were built in the 80s and the 90s, 80s mostly. Badly, as we know. And we loved it. We loved the historical significance of the building. We loved the fact that downtown is actually quite high comparatively to the rest of Miami, so it doesn't flood as much. So there are actual basements in downtown Miami where back in the days Al Capone used to have speakeasies. So it has a lot of really wacky history there too. And we like to infiltrate and collaborate with different buildings that have character. And as you saw, we went into the Frost Science Museum. We were the first ones to infiltrate the Frost Science Museum in order to do creative programming as opposed to their traditional programming, which of course, that's their base and they need to do that. but we brought in stories and immersive stories in there. And then we've done similar things with the Press Art Museum and different other venues. We actually returned to University of Miami this year. So when we first got involved with Atlas 5, or it wasn't Atlas 5 yet, it was Notes on Blindness. When we invited Notes on Blindness, we were at University of Miami and we were quite a young festival. So it's been really fun for them to watch us grow. It was great to return back to University of Miami, especially because that's where it started with Savannah and also Ronnie is a graduate of University of Miami. So he really loved being back there and kind of like this full cycle. But I feel that the University of Miami collaboration is fantastic because it's the only university in Florida that has a master's degree in immersive and XR. Working with our students and their professors is really fantastic. A big part of our programming is education. We do educational programs on a weekly basis. We'd like to do more immersive programming. We teach in traditional and then also in immersive media. So we think that this collaboration is only going to grow and hopefully in a place where As we already spoke, we don't have a lot of technical talent. We need to basically hire and work with talent that's just coming out of school and get them to a point where we can create projects that are video on international scale.
[00:21:33.052] Kent Bye: Nice. Yeah, I had a chance to catch up with a number of different faculty and students at University of Miami. So to be able to have both the selection from FilmGate Interactive, but also a number of different student projects was really quite interesting to see what's happening in higher education like University of Miami and to talk to some of the different professors and see the different projects. So it was really cool to see that fusion because usually it's pretty separate to see what's happening at, say, a film festival selection versus university. something like these student projects. But also there is a whole fusion between the exhibition of the different immersive stories, but also the whole educational series and different panels and different talks. You invited me to come down and give open keynote and there's been other, I think most of the other festivals, aside from South by Southwest, South by Southwest has both the selection and programming, but usually their programming is from the broader XR industry. It's not so specific to immersive storytelling or arts or entertainment. It's all of XR. So this was nice because it was able to bring in lots of folks from the XR industry from more of a creative and immersive storytelling perspective that brought in lots of people from around the country to have this core group of different people who are on the different festival circuit that I ended up running into. But it was nice to have them all in the same space and have all these excursions throughout all of Miami, which have been really quite amazing. But I'd love to hear from both you, Savannah and James, since you were helping to bring in all these different speakers. What was your strategy in trying to curate all these different panels?
[00:23:01.668] Savannah Niles: Good question. Yeah, we tried to balance creators who actually were showing work here at Filmgate with people more from the production side to be able to speak to that perspective. And that's a big part of the discourse, at least in our panels and discussions at Filmgate, is often the challenges of production and distribution for XR. And we also try to bring in people from industry who could give a perspective on like where the platform's going and also lend their expertise generally in experience design for emerging tech and so on. This is the first year that we tried to bring a lot of conversation around generative AI and how that might change creative workflows in coming years, how it might change this industry specifically in immersive storytelling. That was really fun. And we tried different formats this year for the talks and panels. We tried to mix it up with keynotes, workshops, panels, creator talks, lightning talks. I think that was good. I think in the future we'll do a bit more of that. Yeah.
[00:24:00.678] James Powderly: Yeah, one thing that I think is special about Filmgate is that it's a woman-led organization and Diliana and Savannah are able to, I think, offer a different perspective and we spend a lot of time being concerned about the panels to be representative of the audience of XR, you know, and to be representative of the actual creators who are making things. So you have a lot of voices that aren't normally at these events. And it's easily done without the kind of normal stress of trying to be inclusive. I think because it's a woman led organization. And that I really enjoyed, like on the panel, for instance, that I was able to moderate Professor Chuan on one side, who brought up engineering perspective, also creative engineering and focused on the arts. And then you had a true artist in Pingxing Wu. So like the mix of university, academic, art oriented engineering, plus the kind of more artistic focus. I just thought it felt very broad, you know, and and even the type of thing I remember seeing seven on seven events back in New York where they were sort of combining technologists and engineers together. I think there's likely collaborations that are going to happen because of this, you know, academics and artists making things together. And then hopefully some of this stuff can be born again next year at Filmgate and subsequent years.
[00:25:27.885] Kent Bye: One of the other real striking things was hearing you do all the different introductions at the Dome experience at the Frost Museum where you had Taika that's coming in. You have like this whole narrative lab that is in collaboration and lots of different collaborations that you had and different people getting up to speak. So I'd love to give you a brief opportunity to talk about some of the many different collaborations that were involved in this year's Filmgate Interactive.
[00:25:51.308] Diliana Alexander: There's so many, I'll go quickly through them but this was our first year where we brought a really big Taiwanese delegation and it wouldn't have been possible without the collaboration of Taika in terms of helping us pinpoint or giving us an area of artists and also experiences that we can look at and they co-produced most of them but also being able to co-fund the travel with us too and we are in a state that doesn't have film incentives which means it doesn't have immersive incentives either So we have to be very creative in our collaborations to have like a very solid program, but also doing it on a string. You don't even want to know what our budget is. It's really, it's lucky that I was an independent producer before this because it's just, you know, we do magic with the tiny budget that we have. And that's by leveraging relationships like the French Consulate and Bill Albertine, because they do have this amazing program where they fly artists into your space. And then the same thing with the German consulate and the Canadian consulate. And one of the great synergies of Filmgate is also to have the technology companies that are interested in working with creators, supporting them as well. So our prices, our computers, this year many of our computers were sponsored by AMD. Our technical price is going to be an amazing graphic card that's coming from there, which is a great thing to give to a creator. And then same thing with Snap, and they had a fantastic workshop. I love the fact that we didn't just have talks, but we also had a hands-on workshop, and he was fantastic. So thank you for that, James. And then we've had support by Microsoft before. Hopefully they'll come back too, because they're so focused on education and diversity as well. So yeah, it's a creative challenge. The challenges of fundraising have actually created incredible relationships, but also programming as well, because I cannot be at every festival and I cannot be at every country. So working with the cultural agencies of the countries and Taika is the best partner you can imagine. I mean, they know their projects, they co-produce projects. They're so focused on exporting and artists and supporting them. I mean, every country should have that. It was just amazing.
[00:28:02.813] Kent Bye: Yeah, and bringing over also like a number of different companies from Taiwan to have their pitches and Rene Pinnell was helping to run a whole workshop for a lab for a number of different artists and so yeah just a lot of stuff that was happening and also I have to mention all the different excursions. I don't know if you were involved in helping to plan some of these different outings but you know having like a bus to like a whole nightclub and we had Frost Museum, an opening night party I was not able to make but that was also in a cultural institution so Yeah, I'd love to hear about the emphasis of trying to get outside of the normal bounds of what I see at most of these festivals, which is that you go to a single location and there's not really much encouragement to go out and about and explore the city. But I thought that was a real distinctive factor of this gathering. And here we are on a big boat about to go out for the closing night ceremony. So, yeah, I'd love to hear any reflections on trying to encourage people to get out and see a little bit of Miami.
[00:28:55.874] Diliana Alexander: When somebody comes to Miami, they have to see Miami. I cannot just lock them up in a space where there are no water views and sunsets, right? But also being in nature and being among the different neighborhoods inspires you. And our goal is to have creative co-productions and collaborations and for I mean, everybody at this year's festival is somebody that would like to work with again, to bring back as speakers, to bring back as creators. It was small and boutique and so beautiful. But my former life before I was a producer, I was a techno promoter. I used to do I used to I used to organize really, really big raves in Toronto and Detroit. So for me, music has always been very important and I'd actually like to start incorporating more of it in the festival. And last night with DJ Crystal Mess, which was also a collaboration with the French Consulate, I heard her, I loved her, I knew she was here. Yeah, she's amazing. So I knew that everybody had to experience her. I want the creators that we bring from out of town and the producers to also meet the local creators. And sometimes you have to bring them to the local creators because, you know, they're all creating. They don't have time to go to other people's projects. So, you know, there was a bicycle tour that was an Olympia Theatre production outside because they lost their space. So they actually they're being creative with using the city as a space. And one of our artists did the augmented reality augmentation for it. So that was like a natural collaboration. And yes.
[00:30:25.989] Savannah Niles: One thing to note is that in years past, Ileana has planned Filmgate to be concurrent with Art Basel or Art Week, Miami Art Week, which is a ten day time in Miami where there's a number of different art festivals. But we're talking like blue chip art like Basel and Nada and these really big sort of like you know, expensive paintings and sculptures and so on being sold in convention centers and very like chic parties. And over the years, more and more, you know, events from different industries and lots of music. And it's a really amazing, fun time in Miami. And in the past, I think it was a draw to get people to come to Filmgate, perhaps some of the more like international, you know, or higher profile guests because there was so much going on in Miami at the time. It was really great for Filmgate to maybe leverage some of the energy in the city at that time. But I think what was amazing this year, Dilyana, is that you brought Filmgate in a few days before Basel, so people could still come and stay longer and experience everything that's going on in the city next week. But we had people's focused attention, and that was really special. And I think the way you kept everybody together throughout the whole weekend and brought everybody all throughout the city It was great. And to me, it represented like a new phase, you know, that the festival is can sustain like a ton of fun and a ton of learning and connection and collaboration for like five days, which is amazing.
[00:31:44.769] Kent Bye: Yeah, there's a whole other immersive quality of this festival, which is the experiences, but also like these adventures. So, yeah, James, I don't know if you have anything else to add to that.
[00:31:53.985] James Powderly: No, but I was just going to say like Miami is, I mean, all cities are on some physical level, but very few are on a kind of a lyrical level. This is like an immersive city. It smells different. It looks different. It feels different. And so it makes sense that we would want to kind of blend that unique aspect of this city with the kind of immersive projects that we're doing too.
[00:32:20.003] Kent Bye: Awesome. And finally, what do you each think is the ultimate potential of virtual reality and immersive storytelling, and what it might be able to enable?
[00:32:30.714] Diliana Alexander: For me, it's very exciting to see where education will take XR because I would love to learn physics with an XR capability. I would like to know more, for example. So how that will develop in the next year with the Apple headset, with all the other headsets, the Meta headset is very exciting. But then also as a creator who barely has technical skills, I can edit. but not great. I do cinematography, but not great. I am very, very excited, but I think I have good ideas and I would love to see how they get translated with that democratization of technology and the learning bar falling so I can get to a point where I imagine something and then hopefully materialize as fast as usual.
[00:33:14.761] Savannah Niles: I hope it just becomes more ubiquitous and not as niche, not as specialized, but these new formats become the regular formats, that they're not unique and different or high cost in terms of time and friction to put your face in a headset. Yeah, that's what I hope for.
[00:33:33.700] James Powderly: Yeah, I'm not very good at predicting the future, but I did get into the industry for kind of a specific reason and that like my background artistically was in graffiti, which I think is a very open practice that empowers people from the kind of ground up, you know, at a grassroots level and puts a unique power back in individual's hands. And the Internet was formed in a way that Graffiti isn't possible, actually. You can't put a mark on the surface of a website unless you commit a crime, a federal crime, that you would be arrested by the Secret Service. So it lacks some kind of quality that the real world has. And I just hope that as we develop these headsets and devices across AR and VR that we do think about what it means to enable that sort of empowerment from the bottom up. And, you know, industry's not often known for doing that on its own, so I think it was In my case, I want to stay in this industry so that I can be kind of that sand in the clamshell, you know what I mean? In hopes that the industry doesn't go the way that the internet goes, but is a little bit more open on a fundamental level. Also keeping the arts in the story very prominently. So yeah, I hope those things happen. It does seem like we're starting to get there.
[00:35:08.828] Kent Bye: Is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community?
[00:35:13.392] Diliana Alexander: Oh, I mean, what would I like to say to the immersive community? Come to Filmgate and experience it yourself. And if there are any suggestions how to make a festival better for the creators, we always like to ask creators, what can we do in order to assist your journey and your career and how to just, it's incredibly difficult to be an independent creator. So we always welcome these suggestions.
[00:35:38.917] James Powderly: Thank you, Savannah and Diliana, for getting me involved in this. It's my pleasure. Awesome.
[00:35:44.649] Kent Bye: Well, it's certainly been a great trip and a very immersive adventure and a great selection of different immersive stories and lots of different talks and lots of great conversations that I had a chance to have with both the folks at University of Miami, but also with different creators and also folks from the broader industry. So yeah, thanks again for inviting me out and bringing me down here to Miami. And it was a lot of fun. And yeah, thanks for sitting down to give a little bit more context for the history and evolution of the FilmGate Interactive. So thank you.
[00:36:12.671] Diliana Alexander: Thank you so much. And I've been a fan for a long time, so it's really great to have you here. Thank you, Kenz.
[00:36:17.878] James Powderly: Yeah, thank you. We're all, I mean, you already know, but we're all big fans of what you do. Thank you for keeping the voice of XR kind of active 24-7. Awesome. Yeah, thank you.
[00:36:31.513] Kent Bye: Thanks again for listening to the Voices of VR podcast. This is an independent podcast, and I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring this coverage. So if you enjoy this podcast and like to see me do more of it, then please do consider becoming a member at patreon.com slash voices of VR. Thanks a lot. Really appreciate it.
