#1106: Tribeca XR: Story Behind “Zanzibar” Volumetric Doc Shown on Looking Glass Factory’s New 65-inch Holographic Display

Zanzibar: Trouble in Paradise is a volumetric documentary that premiered at Tribeca Immersive 2022 on the Looking Glass Factory 65-inch Holographic Display that was announced on June 7, 2022 just before the festival. I was able to catch up with Brandon Zamel (CEO at Springbok Entertainment), Steven-Charles Jaffe (Cheif Operating Officer at Springbok Entertainment & co-director of Zanzibar), and Ashraki Mussa Machano (co-director of Zanzibar) to get the backstory of how this project came about, and some of the logistical details on their customized volumetric capture pipeline that can spatialize video and spatial data that captured on an iPhone, and format it so that it looks good on Looking Glass Factory’s Holographic Displays.

LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE VOICES OF VR PODCAST

This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon.

Music: Fatality

Rough Transcript

[00:00:05.452] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye, and welcome to the Voices of VR Podcast, looking at designing for VR and the structures and forms of immersive storytelling and the future of spatial computing. And if you'd like to support this podcast, you can do that over at patreon.com slash voices of VR. So continue on my series of looking at some of the different projects at the Tropic Immersive. Today's episode is looking at Zanzibar, Trouble in Paradise. So previously I had a conversation with the CEO of Looking Glass Factory that were looking at these holographic displays. And so that was catalyzed by this project, Zanzibar, Trouble in Paradise. So it's a volumetric capture piece. So they're using an iPhone and then using the LIDAR depth information from the iPhone on top of what they're recording with videos. and then able to create a live capture volumetric piece. And then it's being displayed on the brand new 65 inch holographic display from the Looking Glass factory. They had been working on the smaller 16 and 32 inch displays, but in the process of working on this, they were able to upscale everything up to 8K. and show a live capture immersive documentary on this holographic display. So I previously had a conversation with the Looking Glass track view that came about because of this project at Tribeca Film Festival. And the thing about like a hologram postcard, it has a horizontal parallax and it has maybe five or 10 different views as you rotate it and you see it shifting in this horizontal parallax. Looking Glass holographic displays has a hundred different parallax views. Now, when I actually saw the demos of this with the CGI generated content, I could see the more nuanced aspects of those horizontal parallax views a little bit better. But this is trying to take live capture and go through the process of not only the capture pipeline and the technology that was being developed by Springbok Entertainment, but to actually take those live capture scenes and to display them within the Looking Glass factory. So I have both the co-directors of this piece and some representatives from the Springbok Entertainment on today's episode of Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Stephen Charles, Brandon, and Ashraki happened on Saturday, June 11th, 2022 at the Tribeca Immersive in New York City, New York. So with that, let's go ahead and... Dive right in.

[00:02:25.635] Steven-Charles Jaffe: I'm Stephen Charles Jaffe, Chief Operating Officer of Springbok Entertainment, partners with Brandon Zemel, who's the CEO. I co-directed this piece Zanzibar, Trouble in Paradise. Hand it off to these gents from there.

[00:02:42.097] Brandon Zamel: Sure. I'm Brandon Zammel, CEO of Springbok. Springbok's been around since 2015 in the immersive space. Our specialty is emerging technologies and storytelling, currently with a great deal of focus on capture pipelines, so volumetric format, light fields, LiDAR photogrammetry. This particular piece, Zanzibar Trouble in Paradise, is the first custom pipeline for live action capture for holographic displays.

[00:03:11.358] Ashraki Mussa Machano: My name is Ashraq Musamachano and I'm from Zanzibar. I'm the co-director of Zanzibar Film. It's my first time telling the story from this technology. Okay, great.

[00:03:21.664] Kent Bye: Maybe you could each give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into the space.

[00:03:26.707] Steven-Charles Jaffe: Sure. I've been making feature films for a number of years. I produced Ghost, Star Trek VI, The Undiscovered Country, a number of Catherine Bigelow's movies. I'm still in that business. It's still part of Springbok. We're developing a number of feature films and television shows, so we walk in both technological and content-driven fields. I grew up in the age of Marshall McLuhan, who was famous for saying, the medium is the message. And as I've been involved with Springbok, beginning with VR, volumetric capture, and now holographic photography and display, I differ with his famous statement because the medium is not the message. The medium allows the message to be told in a more profound, empathetic way. And now that we're working with holographic photography and display, we think it is furthering the important content that Springbach develops and exhibits. So, it's a different time, it's constantly changing. When we did the 100%, we were in total unknown territory, although it ended up being a volumetric capture piece, and now we're doing this. So, you know, Springbox is one of the few companies that, first of all, takes risks on projects like this, where we're not looking for the immediate financial return. We know this is an important message, we know this is an important medium, to exhibit it in and we're thrilled that Looking Glass has been a partner with us on this. And here we are at Tribeca.

[00:05:07.617] Brandon Zamel: So to give a bit of background on Springbok and the trajectory of the company and the content that we've produced. We are not a virtual reality company. We are not an XR company. We are a story-driven company that looks at integrating technologies in a way that supports great narrative. Technology should be there to support the experience and the message, as my partner Stephen pointed out. Our history with the Tribeca Film Festival, we were here in 2016 with the ARC. It was a very early 360 video piece about the northern white rhinoceros of Kenya. the most endangered species in the world. In 2019, we were here with the 100%. It was a story about a ballerina with stage four metastatic breast cancer, won best VR experience in 2019 in the Tribeca X program. And now in 2022, we're here with Zanzibar Trouble in Paradise. And I think those projects give a good overview of the evolution of our capture pipelines and where we have been at the forefront of a lot of these emerging technologies. We currently hold the chair for Interactive for the Volumetric Format Association. Our work with volumetric and now light field captures I'd like to say is on the cutting edge. Our interest continues to be in developing a suite of technologies and capture solutions so that from the storytelling side of it, the right tool is available for the right setting. Zanzibar marks a huge success for us in that, in particular with looking glass displays where volumetric, photogrammetry, LIDAR, CG assets, real-time animations, they look exquisite in those displays, on the filmmaker side of the spectrum, those tools need to exist as well. Zanzibar marks the beginning of that. So for us, in creating those tools and being able to hand them to Ash and say, implement your craft, you know, act on your talents, don't worry about the technology, and be able to seamlessly integrate that into an emerging medium, you know, we see that as a great success.

[00:07:16.381] Kent Bye: And just to follow up on your own background and journey into the space.

[00:07:20.123] Brandon Zamel: Yeah, so my background, I worked for Johnny Depp's company, Infinitum Nile, for many years with a focus in interactive experiences and emerging mediums. We started Springbok in early 2015, and we're still here, which I think is a testament to our success and growth, given that a lot of those folks in the early days are not. We've worked very hard at it. I think a lot of that has to do with not just our tenacity, but an ever-growing team of really incredible, talented people.

[00:07:52.217] Kent Bye: Maybe a bit more about your background and journey into filmmaking and then working on this project.

[00:07:58.258] Ashraki Mussa Machano: I began doing filmmaking and photography by telling the story of my community, by telling the story about my culture. Where I come from, Zanzibar, the technology is not a thing. The technology is something that is not considered in our community. But being able to use this technology, telling the story about my island, telling the story about the Zanzibar and how incredible people there are, what's going through our everyday life, for me it is really a privilege. And then here I am today in New York and Tribeca Festival by using this technology, telling the story that massive people into my community is something phenomenal for me and I'm happy for that.

[00:08:37.749] Kent Bye: Yeah, maybe you could give a bit more context for how this specific project came about.

[00:08:41.410] Brandon Zamel: A big part of what we at Springbok pride ourselves on is that we really try to identify and bring to fruition narratives and creatives like Ash to tell stories that not only have a great deal of meaning and purpose, but also have the potential for a measurable call to action. And I think our legacy as a company is evident of that. With Zanzibar, Trouble in Paradise in particular, we had an opportunity in late summer last year to put into the field these new capture technologies that we were working with and developing. And we reached out to a frequent collaborator of ours and one of the producers on the project, Rick Collins, and told him about what we were working on on the tech side and said, you know, we're interested in finding a story that we can put it to action. Rick introduced us to Ash and the two of them ended up coming to us with several different potential topics and this was the one that really resonated with all of us and you know was a really exciting opportunity.

[00:09:43.170] Kent Bye: Yeah, maybe you could help set the context for people who maybe haven't seen the film in terms of what's happening with the seaweed industry in Zanzibar.

[00:09:50.617] Ashraki Mussa Machano: Zanzibar community is independent of the ocean. The ocean does provide, the ocean does unite. And currently, with these women, who they know the ocean very well, who they grow up by the ocean, who they live their life depending on the ocean. Now this ocean has been denied them for everything. But they're living with the hope to be able to tell their story, to be able to do this immersive storytelling about what's going on in their life, in their community, because they keep putting blame on each other right now and they don't know what's going on. With this weather unstable, they may know the ocean very well, but they don't know what's going on right now in the world, what affects them in their everyday life with the ocean. So it's, like I said, the same ocean that had been provided for decades, and now the ocean that has been denied. And we are the ones who are responsible to make the changes today.

[00:10:46.185] Brandon Zamel: A big part of what Ash communicated to us was that here is a community that is defined by the environment and yet, in many respects, does not have a voice, does not have an ability to bring attention to it or to make a change for it. And Ash's objective was to give a voice to that and bring attention to it. And for us, receiving this perspective and just our immediate visceral reaction to it a sense of responsibility to our global community, to our fellow human beings, that I think oftentimes we look at these types of issues through a single lens, you know, our own particular perspective, which there's plenty of metaphors and parallels there in terms of how it relates to immersive content in particular. But in this particular case, it was literally a group of people whose entire lives are being devastated by climate change, and it is really up to the rest of the global community to take action for this. And that was a big part of what Ash had stressed to us, was that for him as a filmmaker and a storyteller, to be able to bring a voice to his people through his craft is the essence of so much of the work that he does.

[00:12:01.267] Steven-Charles Jaffe: Add to that that there are a number of brilliantly made accurate documentaries about climate change. It was not our goal to try and do a short version of that. It was our goal to be able to let these two women tell their story and let the world hear that even in a paradise-like setting of Zanzibar, climate change connects us all. It's a problem we all have to deal with. So here in a 10-minute holographic piece, you get to see who they are, what their trials and tribulations are, and how their livelihood has been impacted by climate change. But you also get to see the resilience of these women who are incredibly strong. And even in the face of the seaweed business they were in, that they were so happy to be gaining their independence, that got decimated. Then they pivoted to sponge farming. That got hit by climate change. And there's a line at the end of this that I find priceless and so hopeful, where she says, and so we go on. Most people would have said, well, there's nothing left for us to do. But they have this amazing optimism. in face of this hard thing we're all having to deal with.

[00:13:20.484] Kent Bye: You had mentioned that you had been working with looking glass technology for a number of years but also been developing capture technologies and you told me the other day that you actually use an iPhone to shoot this in terms of having both the camera of the iPhone but also the depth sensor information to take that information then be able to display it on something like the Looking Glass 65-inch holographic display that's able to give some depth information as a group context of many different people watching the same. Usually a lot of holographic displays are tracking an individual, but this is providing a group experience for a group of people to watch and experience. And so, yeah, maybe you could talk a bit about the relationship with Looking Glass technology and how the capture technology was a turning point for you.

[00:14:03.103] Brandon Zamel: I'll try and do justice by them. So for listeners who are unfamiliar with Looking Glass Factory's displays, these displays are capable, it is more than just 3D, they are capable of true parallax. So the dimensionality that you perceive as you move in your natural sway or just as you move around from side to side of the screen, you can effectively see around objects. It's everything that traditional 3D has promised and to a large degree under-delivers. And as I mentioned earlier, a big part for Zanzibar was what does a live-action capture pipeline specifically look like for that. You know, our past work with looking glass displays, when you put in CG assets, when you put in volumetric capture assets, when that data is there, when those visuals are there, It's absolutely magical. These displays are truly a window into another world. I think for our world, our culture, for the medium as a whole to continue to move forward, we also need the tools to be able to bring the real world into those displays in a seamless process as possible. And ultimately, I think we are all big believers in the democratization and accessibility of technology. That's where it really shines, is when we can all get our hands on it and it's not this exclusive club. In terms of specific tools that we used, it can be a combination, and in this case it was a combination of single-lens RGB image data with depth sensors, in this case LiDAR, camera arrays, in some cases, you know, single-lens camera using AI interpolation. It's a combination of tools, right? Specifically to the application of the iPhone, a big part of this, and I think this is where storytelling and filmmaking needs to be heavily balanced with the technical aspect of it is that having beautiful crisp images is extremely important and is ultimately the end goal. At the same time it is there to support good storytelling and if you are making a documentary film and you are trying to capture genuineness and authenticity and vulnerability of your subjects, then it needs to be balanced with the right tool that's going to allow you to capture that. And because of that, it was critical for us to have a tool as part of our arsenal where it was unimposing and allowed us to ultimately focus on our human subjects, while at the same time capturing beautiful imagery that could be displayed on looking-glass factory's displays. That's where the iPhone became such a massively critical tool. So a big part of our workflow was not just being able to define how we managed that data, but ultimately how we processed it at the end and bringing out the most crisp, beautiful images possible. You know, we feel that we were pretty successful with that.

[00:16:50.212] Kent Bye: I was talking to the CEO of Looking Glass, Sean, and one of the things he said was that there's all of this spatial data that we haven't had access to be able to really experience. We have virtual reality, but I think with these holographic displays, it creates new opportunities to make use of some of that spatial data, like the iPhone having LiDAR sensors as an example. So, Ash, I'd love to hear from you. What was it like for you to shoot this piece on an iPhone? Do you usually use an iPhone or do you use other equipment? And tell me a bit about the process of producing this piece.

[00:17:22.474] Ashraki Mussa Machano: Well, I use multiple equipment in my shootings, everyday shootings. And after getting approach about this, everything was new to me. Even iPhone 13 was like very new to me because access for the latest phone is not easy over there. So I did say Hakuna Matata. I mean, no problem. I learned through it. And as a filmmaker who always curious about new technology, and then I blended in well with it.

[00:17:50.203] Kent Bye: What was it like for you to actually see the end product now on this holographic display?

[00:17:55.431] Ashraki Mussa Machano: This is incredible, unbelievable even to me that the final product is how it is because I knew it would be something never seen before, something like very new but I didn't know what it would be like and then having got a chance to see it and to see the shots as well that we have been doing and to see how the story has been putting because The magical part is, I didn't know what the final product will be, but the unique part is working with Steve Child, Jeff, on the story, bring it into final product. To me, it was unbelievable. Some shot I asked, did I shoot this? Unbelievable.

[00:18:39.656] Steven-Charles Jaffe: What's really remarkable here is that evolving technology, which we employed, brought us together. How in the world would we have met in other circumstances? So there's some added bonus to working with evolving technology because it brings filmmakers together that otherwise might never meet. And we have plans for future projects. This has been such a wonderful joyous experience because so many things have come out of it. Not just getting our message across, but meeting new talented filmmakers from places I haven't even been to Zanzibar. Now I can't wait to go.

[00:19:23.603] Brandon Zamel: To speak a little bit to the workflow as well, part of the way that we approached this, for Ash, it was also really important for us that he sees, at least conceptually, what the end goal was. So we sent our team to Zanzibar, we had Looking Glass Factory portraits with us. So part of the dailies review was using the portraits. And then on the studio side of it, this was before the 32-inch displays had been released, we were working with the original Gen 1 15.6-inch displays. And as we were receiving footage and reviewing footage, there was a lot of back and forth between the team with boots on the ground in Zanzibar and the team here. So for Ash, you know, his first immediate experience was with a portrait, and then You know, I think the crazy journey of all of this, of Ash ultimately getting to New York and seeing the 65-inch display, which has made its premiere here at the festival, is kind of a speed run to exposure and familiarity with these state-of-the-art displays.

[00:20:26.246] Kent Bye: I was talking to Sean that the input is an 8K and that you had to do an AI upscaling from the iPhone to be able to get it, but also potentially some interpolation. Can you talk a bit about to what degree was the depth information sufficient from the iPhone and how much did you have to like clean it up or add additional AI to be able to maybe give more layers of depth onto something that we're seeing here in the final product?

[00:20:49.529] Brandon Zamel: AI interpolation was used specifically with the drone shots, which Ash shot all of those as well, and it's some of my favorite shots in the experience. Our technical director, Sam Maliszewski, he is an absolute wizard and artist, and a lot of that credit goes to him in terms of taking Ash's footage and bringing those things to life. Specific to the iPhone, the data is sufficient. A lot of it has to do with, in terms of the post-production process, We've created automated tools, our own custom automated tools, but then a lot of it also is just the artist's hand as well. I think there's a great deal of balance between creating the tools, but ultimately how you use those tools. We've been very fortunate that our team are both artists and engineers. We all, to varying degrees, speak the same language, and there's a great deal of efficiency and beauty that comes out of that. So the data is there and a lot of it just has to do with what you do with it.

[00:21:49.892] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I had a chance to see some of the demos of the Looking Glass display at the Looking Glass factory and seeing how the 3D objects, when you have something rendered, then you have a lot more information, I guess, when you're producing what Sean was saying was like a hundred different views as you look around. And so I think one of the things I'm just noticing in this experience is that you don't always have the information that's behind someone from those multiple views because it's occluded. And so that's probably another area in the future that I imagine that AI segmentation to take people out and then to put in what the background is and then allow that generation of multiple views because there are some Artifacts that are on the edges of where there's no depth information whether they're so there's stuff like that but one of the things that you said to me is that this is probably going to be one of the worst type of spatial volumetric videos and that's only going to get better as we move forward and so I

[00:22:39.038] Brandon Zamel: I think, you know, and to put into context as well, especially for those of us that have been in this space for as long as we have, we've got to remember to where things start and where they head. And when you look at early examples of 360 video, or you look at early examples of volumetric, and ultimately what drives those things forward, the continued innovation, And ultimately, I think in the context of Zanzibar in particular, there's so much in there that we built specifically for this. I mean, this is an evolving pipeline for us that we're continuing to invest in and build out. And there's nothing like it. I mean, it's completely new. And part of this, too, is because it's a pipeline. It's not a specific tool. It's not one single solution. And I think it's very indicative of our team as a whole. It is about what additional tools are on the horizon or what additional technologies on the horizon that continue to empower and evolve that pipeline. And to a large degree, I mean, since November when we filmed this, there's already new tools that are potential to be implemented. I mean, most obvious and specific here is the 65 inch display, right? This film was originally conceptualized for the 32 inch, you know, and then a lot of work went into preparing it for the 65 inch display. So as a whole, we are extremely proud of it and look forward to what this represents for the future.

[00:24:07.501] Kent Bye: And Ash, what's your experience been like here in New York City? Have you been able to see any of the other immersive stories or anything else as you've been here?

[00:24:15.755] Ashraki Mussa Machano: Yes, definitely. I've done, I've visited some other booths and it's incredible. New York itself to me is incredible. It's my first time here. Everything is so big to compare where I come from. So yeah, it was a very honored opportunity for me to be here and to experience more about the life of New York, the culture of New York, the technologies as well, what's going on in the world.

[00:24:38.936] Kent Bye: For me there's a big difference between the live capture and what's happening from CGI realm and I think there's a good mix here of both things. So yeah, do you have any inspirations or takeaways of storytelling in this new medium and how that may impact your filmmaking practice?

[00:24:56.114] Ashraki Mussa Machano: Yes, risk taking. This is something that I've learned a lot from the team that I've been working with, the risk that they've been taking. We saw poorly life in Zanzibar, like slowly, slowly, and then not bother of taking a risk. But this is something like to be able to grow, you need to take a risk. You need to go into, you need to do it, go for it. The future is bright clear for us to go into it. This is what a lot I've learned. And then there's a possible for everything.

[00:25:25.949] Kent Bye: Awesome. And finally, what do you each think is the ultimate potential of these new technologies and immersive storytelling, and what it might be able to enable?

[00:25:36.832] Steven-Charles Jaffe: I would just say specifically in terms of our relationship with Springbok, this is an evolving creative process and we're extremely excited. It goes beyond what we've done here, so we are definitely thinking ahead and we'll embrace any and all new technologies that allow us to have people empathize with our subjects and get the message across.

[00:26:01.133] Brandon Zamel: I don't see our industry, or immersive in particular, as any different than the evolution of technology and storytelling as a whole. I think it's a natural progression. And I think more importantly for our industry, I think it is a healthier perspective to recognize that and not segment it as something that is inherently unique because then it puts it outside of the context and the contributions of artists and inventors that came before it. On a human level, we all desire a great degree for human connection and the last several years has challenged so much of that and I think really shined a light on it. What is happening in our industry and my hope for it is that we continue to play with these new toys, we continue to push the envelope of what is technically possible, but at the end of the day that we never lose the soul of why we're all here in the first place.

[00:27:03.860] Ashraki Mussa Machano: I'll end up saying this to be able to use this technology to immerse people like to feel what my community was going through is like it's making me realize technology is like an ocean forgive me to say that but the ocean that divide people the ocean that divide people is like technology as well it's divide people also you use to connect people you use to get feeling of what other use as a technology can be as a transport to travel you to somewhere else where you can massive yourself. Awesome.

[00:27:38.380] Kent Bye: Well, thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast and helping to unpack the project of Zanzibar and as well as some of the technological pipeline innovations that you have to be able to show it on the holographic display. So thanks so much for joining me.

[00:27:50.646] Ashraki Mussa Machano: Pleasure. Thank you very much.

[00:27:53.636] Kent Bye: So that was Stephen Charles Jaffe, the chief operating officer at Springbok Entertainment and the co-director of Zanzibar Trouble in Paradise, as well as Brandon Zammel, the CEO of Springbok Entertainment, as well as Hasraki Musa Machano, is the co-director of Zanzibar Trouble in Paradise. So I found different takeaways about this interview is that first of all, Well, looking at the Looking Glass technology is like looking into a portal into another realm. When I went to the offices of Looking Glass Factory and saw some of the CGI content, it popped a lot more in terms of having a lot more information at those horizontal parallax views. Because this is a piece that you're doing a volumetric capture It's a lot more vast areas you saw a lot of more of the artifacts around were stuff that you know The camera wasn't seeing around people so that a lot of the information wasn't there it probably needs some sort of like AI technology to take people out to fill in the background and putting back in and One of the things that Brandon Samuel told me is that this is the worst that this type of volumetric capture stuff is going to look and as they move forward they're gonna increase the ways of doing light field capture technologies or just be able to do things on post-processing with AI and to be able to have the dynamic real-time capture of the documentary footage and be able to push the technology forward in that sense especially from the storytelling perspective because the story is looking at the ways in which climate change is impacting our These women within the context of Zanzibar and how they've been living off the ocean and as the ocean is changing due to climate change Then they have to adapt and change the way that they're making their living and surviving So just to be able to capture a lot of those different scenes with traditional Documentary techniques and just show them as they're walking through all these different places. It's a beautiful landscape and And I'd say at the same time, there's a lot of work to be done in terms of really pushing what's possible with not only volumetric capture, but also there's three different fields. There's the near field, midfield and the far field. And in this piece, you could really tell the difference between, I'd say, two planes of existence of people as they're close to you. And then you see the stuff behind you, but it was a little bit more difficult to have like three different distinct layers in the context of this documentary piece. When I saw some of the more CGI content, then it was a lot more of the things that are really compelling. There's a close-up of an object that is really getting into all those different 100 horizontal parallax views. When you just see a person, you don't see all the different nuances as well-defined. If it was just a close-up of someone's face, I think you might see it a little bit more, but it was a little bit more pulled out into mid shots or long shots. So not as many real tight close-ups of objects that really show, I think, the potential of what the Looking Glass technology does in terms of this holographic display. So I think there's certainly a lot of work that's still yet to be done in terms of trying to find what are the affordance of this, what's new and different, and then what are the stories that really are going to amplify that. I think if you were doing like macro captures of insects and their environments that might work a little bit better in terms of trying to use the affordances of the medium or maybe even different light field capture technologies to be able to capture more of a light field capture and then have that be translated through the looking glass technology to get a little bit more of a specialization. So based upon what I was able to see from some of the demos, and then just trying to think about what are the different real affordances that really showing what this new holographic display can do. But this is an iterative process. And just by the fact that they're working on this and already trying to work on the 16 inch and the 32 inch displays, and then having to up res everything up into the 65-inch, then they're developing their own capture pipelines and looking at the intersection between emerging technologies and storytelling. And really emphasizing the importance of documenting what's happening in the physical reality that's happening rather than just doing everything in the computer-generated. And when I talked to William Uricchio, one of the points that he made is that throughout the history of film that a lot of the documentary forms have been catalyst in terms of, you know, when you have a new communication media, oftentimes that one of the first things you do is start to capture what's happening in physical reality rather than doing sort of more narrative based. So doing the documentaries and then from there seeing how you can push it forward by telling the more narrative pieces or fiction pieces that are leveraging what you've discovered from the process of doing different documentary pieces. Anyway, I just want to sort of reflect on that and see how this is starting to go through that process of pushing What's possible with these holographic display technology which allows you to have a group of people? Stand around a piece and kind of watch it without having the need to have a headset So you have this capability to do a shared experience, but there wasn't anything that was necessarily like taking advantage of that shared experience and you know, in terms of the content of the piece, you know, trying to encourage different multiple perspectives or just trying to think about, you know, what, what is the group experience of watching this without a headset in a group? How is that different than watching it by yourself? And for me in this piece in particular, there's little difference in terms of watching it by myself or other people, but just the possibility that that is now possible starts to then feed back into, okay, what is the content that's going to really take advantage of multiple perspectives in a way? So. Anyway, that's all I have for today, and I just wanted to thank you for listening to the Voices of VR podcast, and if you enjoy the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends, and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a listener-supported podcast, and I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue bringing this coverage. So you could become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. Thanks for listening.

More from this show