I interviewed Floréal director Katayoun Dibamehr during Tribeca 2023 about her journey into becoming an award-winning immersive producer. See more context in the rough transcript below.
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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. 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 Voices of VR. So on today's episode, I'm going to be featuring a producer that worked on a couple of projects that were being featured at SXSW 2024 Kata Yen Di Ma Mer is from Floreal, which has been producing a number of really amazing projects over the years. Minimal Mass, which I first covered back during the pandemic in 2020. And then Hangman at Home, which ended up winning at Venice in 2020. And then the following year, Goliath Playing with Reality by Enneagram, that also ended up winning at Venice in 2021. So this year at South by Southwest, Ketan Youn was the producer of Maya, the Birth of a Superhero, which first premiered at Tribeca of 2023. And then also Impulse, that was a carry on of the Playing with Reality series by Anagram. And that was showing a preview here this year at South by Southwest. So I'll be having an updated interview with both Impulse and Maya, the Birth of a Superhero, but this is a conversation that I actually had with the producer of those pieces, Ketan Youn, back at Tribeca of 2023. just to get a little bit more of her journey and story of her work within XR since she's working on a lot of these award-winning XR projects. And Floreal is certainly a production company to keep an eye on for the different pieces that they're working on. So that's it for coming on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Kato Yun happened on Sunday, June 11th, 2023 at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City, New York. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:01:42.705] Katayoun Dibamehr: Hi, my name is Katayoun Dibamehr. I'm an Iranian-French-Canadian producer based between Paris and Montreal. And our company is based in Paris. I have joined Floreal. Lastly, known as Floral Film, we just changed our identity to Floral because we wanted to do more than just films. I joined the company in 2018 and before that I was curating for a festival, the Nouveau Cinéma, a festival that is dedicated to films and new media for the last 10 years. This is actually the first year that I'm not working with them. But I can, with a lot of confirmation, say that a lot of my knowledge in producing at Floral comes from my background of curating. new media projects at Festival de Nouveau Cinéma. I started working with them in April 2011. In 2018, I joined Floral Film, Floral right now. I'm working with my husband. We met each other five years ago in Tribeca Film Festival. So I met my husband here in Tribeca five years ago, and he asked me to join the company as a producer. And I've been working with him ever since. And my job ever since had been really concentrating on how we can develop new forms of storytelling, production of new forms of storytelling. He was here back then in 2015 with Sgt. James by Alexandre Perez. as part of the competition here in Trabeka. And ever since I have joined the company, we have produced more than five or six completed immersive VR projects and completed the projects into festivals.
[00:03:41.061] Kent Bye: Maybe you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into this space.
[00:03:47.890] Katayoun Dibamehr: So I left Iran 16 years ago. I was studying, well, culturally, my background of family, we are all, like in Iran, because the society is very closed, we are always curious to know about culture and anything that we are not allowed to see. So I think our generation was always really curious and we wanted to discover I was studying French literature when I was in Iran, but we're rounds of friends that film and cinema in Iran is very important for us. We used to do like underground cinema nights and watching David Lynch's films for 12 hours in a row and doing retrospectives of different directors. We had our own kind of subculture of how we can inject culture into our lives because we were not allowed to. I moved to France to continue my master in French literature, which was a very good base in my culture because I really got to know anything about specifically French culture in the 19th century and 18th century, which really made the basics of I didn't have the basic knowledge of art and literature in general that everything comes from the writers and the painters somehow from that centuries. Then they develop and they become other forms of course. I spent two years in France, in Montpellier. I finished my studies in Paul-Valéry University, got my Master. I had a choice to whether go to Paris and continue my studies, become a teacher, because that was what was happening with most of my friends, or come and join my family in Montreal and get another perspective in life. I joined my family in Montreal and after a year of sabbatical thinking what I want to do and where I want to go because I wanted to kind of maybe have a fresh point of view about, okay, what is the contemporary arts doing? What is visual arts doing? And Montreal was a great space at that time. to kind of understand. I didn't know anything about digital arts. I was coming from that literature space that was a little bit limited as well at some point. So I thought, OK, I want to maybe know more about what is happening in North America. I don't know anything. And after a year, I decided to study another master in communication and media in Concordia University. And this was really the beginning of my adventure of what the new media is. And I started to work as an intern at MUTEC festival, which is a music and digital creativity festival in Montreal. I learned a lot from them. I worked three years intern from them. And this was like my entry to the digital creative world. and then after three years internship with them I immediately got this position at Festival du Nouveau Cinéma. They were very very welcoming, gave this position as a curator of new media projects at their festival. I had a lot of flexibility with them as well to be able to kind of surf around other sections as well, like do short films, do bring on feature films as well, which had something to do with the new media sphere, whether it's a subject matter, whether how the creator has approached the medium, even in video installations or audio creative projects, podcasts, yeah.
[00:07:52.288] Kent Bye: So yeah, I'd love to hear about some of the first entry into virtual reality. It sounds like you had this position to be able to start to curate new media. And so how did you come across VR for the first time?
[00:08:04.557] Katayoun Dibamehr: So VR for me was the first time that I put a headset on as part of the curating team at Festival de Nouveau Cinema. It was Into the Verse.
[00:08:14.865] Kent Bye: It's a Chris Milk piece.
[00:08:16.945] Katayoun Dibamehr: So that was the first time that I put a headset on and I immediately took it off after it was finished and I was like, oh, wow. Wow, what is this? What is this? Then I started to see Felix and Paul's projects and obviously blown away. So I had this chance to be able to watch a lot of projects throughout the year because of the position that I had at Festival de Nouveau Cinéma. I remember five years ago I came here in Tribeca. Tribeca and Itfa, I think for me, were great schools to learn. I think all the festivals, Tribeca, Itfa, Sundance, to understand what artists are doing. For example, five years ago, again, as part of Storyscapes, I met Anagram, that I'm working really closely today with, with the project The Door into the Dark, which was not at all a VR project, but that kind of immersive theatre, location-based audio project that I came out, I was like, oh my God. I remember Tribeca, was holding this day conference about bringing really innovative creators talking about their projects and you would be just, oh my god. For me it was really putting my feet as like Alice in Wonderland and being in awe that all these artists, what are they doing and that this is so amazing. With all the shortage that sometimes the technology had at that moment, it was still interesting how everybody was occupying the space in their manner and how everything was really creatively unique, innovative and just simply mind-blowing. So my job was to go to the festivals and bring in projects for our festival in Montreal, which I was doing year-round. Then when I started working with Floreal, it was definitely really natural for me to kind of step into the production because I needed something to get closer to the artist and to kind of dive in how and I had this drive as well to be able to help them and the festival context was just permitting me to welcome them but not really to be able to go further and to really you know be able to help the projects to go further. Yeah, I always had this kind of feeling and I learned a lot in the festival how to produce the festival, so produce the event. So I was really familiar with this fact of how to produce. It was very natural when I step into Floral. Okay, so now I can get closer and I can really get in the body of a production itself. It was natural, I started to contact people that I already knew and I appreciated in the ecosystem. So one of my first, one of our first, Flora's first journey in production was my encounter with Raki Syed and Arito Echevarria as part of the lab that we attended in Los Angeles. 2018. It was an incubator lab organized by Oculus and Kaleidoscope. Rene Penel, he's doing artisan right now. So we were a bunch of projects that was accepted to come to this incubator and incubate our ideas. I came with another project at that moment, but immediately connected with Raki. So from the beginning for me it was really evident that I wanted to work with people with really intimate kind of subject matters that they want to treat. And that's why I think I stepped into more non-fiction documentary storytelling from the beginning. For me, I think my relationship with the artist and how we were getting connected was really important before even, I don't know, the artistic proposition or what they want to do, to be able to protect them and support them. Because when artists come with personal subject matters, you know, you have to believe in that personal subject matter to be able to then really support them globally. So we decided to collaborate with each other. Raki is a Los Angeles-born, American-born, but origins of Pakistani. I think our origins got, as well, had to do with this connection somehow. The fact that we were women, the fact that we were working in technology, we really got connected. Then the subject matter about a couple that they were going through a lot of miscarriages and she wanted to tell the story about their journey, like what they have been through and what had been. She came from this tech kind of sphere where she's exploring a lot Unreal Engine with mocap. She wants to do a realistic kind of imagery and to be able to tell the story with real performance. It was absolutely innovative at that moment when we put our, like she had been working on a lot of films as well with Areto, like Planet of Apes. They've been working at technical engineers and VFX artists on this project. So they wanted to create the same kind of image in the virtual reality. So yeah, the project was made. We worked on the project. Well, we came halfway through, and they were halfway through when we came on. We helped them to fundraise from France. and the project was selected as part of Tribeca but unfortunately we got hit by a pandemic and the whole festival was cancelled but we did made it, we made the project. The project name is Minimum Mass, the first collaboration co-production between France and New Zealand. And this project was part of her research project as part of Victoria Wellington University. So it was very nourishing, intimate subject matter having to be said in this medium and the innovative mocap performance recording and the treatment of image and how we wanted to get into that realistic kind of image. Of course, we were not that close because it was really, really expensive to be able to kind of have that realistic image, but we did our best. Anyways, in virtual reality, I think to come to that quality of realistic image, it's really hard unless you have like millions of dollars of budget. This was our debut production, very successful one, very successful collaboration with both of them. They are now working on a feature film project with the same technology, mocap performance, but this time it's in Unreal, this time with AI script writing, and now they are part of MIFA ANSI pitch. They are pitching the project.
[00:16:17.677] Kent Bye: So yeah, just to jump in, I just wanted to add that even though the physical exhibition was canceled, they did actually have a virtual exhibition. So I did actually have a chance to see it and do an interview with Rocky and Irito. So folks can check out that podcast. But I didn't realize that that was your first production. So was that in 2020 or 2021? 2020. OK, so 2020. So Tribeca was cancelled for when it usually was, and actually was delayed a little bit, but did actually have the Museum of the Realities collaboration with ConXR and New Images France, and had a big selection that was online. So the beginning of the virtual festivals, which Anna Brzezinska was working with Kaleidoscope, and then eventually is now the curator here at Tribeca. So anyway, what was the next project that you then worked on after Minimal Mass?
[00:17:04.620] Katayoun Dibamehr: The next encounter is with brilliant Uri and Michel Cranot. I used to programme their projects, part of the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, Songbird, a lot of beautiful projects. They came to New Images to pitch the project in 2019. Uri and Michel don't go to a lot of festivals in general because they have five kids and it's very hard for them. It was the first time that I finally met Uri and we bumped into each other just by walking and I said, yeah, I'm working on my own now and we have this prototype that we want to show you and my husband was there and you know it was just like we were meeting on a corridor and we got to see the prototype. So Uri and Misha they come from animation with a great huge background. of short film animation. They are confirmed artists in that sphere and always very interested and very flexible to come to the universe of virtual reality. They do music, they do theatres, they are very, very curious. So, definitely want to work with you. Let's work. And this is when we started working with them. It was a great collaboration, I could say again, for the second production. So, this project has three different formats. It was short film animation, like a classic short film. It was a VR single user and it was a VR multi-user, doing four users at a time simultaneously. So we hopped on the project as the production company for the VR, two formats, single user and the multi-user. We were collaborating, they were already working with Miu Production, which is a great animation production house based in Paris, and National Film Board of Canada was already there, and Latela, which was their Danish production company. So, NFB and Miu, they were really engaged in the production of the short film, but very present as well for the VR and the single-user and the multi-user. And yeah, we hopped on and we produced the single-user and the multi-user. We... I'm sorry, what was the name of the piece? The Hangman at Home is the short film. The Hangman at Home VR is the single user. And VR at Home is the multi-user.
[00:19:47.970] Kent Bye: And this actually won a prize at Venice, is that right?
[00:19:50.532] Katayoun Dibamehr: Yes, exactly. So in 2020, the single user gets selected in Venice. Venice is not canceled, but mostly done remotely. I remember Liz was doing all the projects online from London. Michelle was in Venice. They didn't invite anyone. The project was part of the competition at Venice. And yes, the great surprise, we got the call one day before the closing ceremony that the project has a prize and we were invited to go. I remember my son was just only six months old and this was like so stressful. We decided all the team that after having worked two years remotely, that we all get together there. But in a very stressful manner because it was pandemic and we had to be careful and yes we got there. We didn't know which prize we were getting and we found out in the ceremony night that the project got the Grand Jury Prize which is the biggest prize at Venice and it was truly life-changing for us. It was really opening all the doors and just stepping into another era. So, yeah, the project got really selected in all other formats. The multi-user, we premiered here in Tribeca a year after. Again, second year of pandemic, when Tribeca did hold the festival, but didn't have, again, enough. The artists were there, not a lot of spectators maybe. We premiered the multi-user here, and yeah, the three formats got really all over, premiered in international festivals. Now we are working again with Uri and Michel Cranot on their first feature animation film. And yes, it's exciting. We're stepping into another creative collaboration with them and we're very happy.
[00:21:56.264] Kent Bye: Is that a 2D or a VR piece?
[00:21:58.547] Katayoun Dibamehr: 2D feature, yeah. It's a really exciting project. Their first feature, our first animation feature, so it's going to be a nice one. Because, just to add to this as well, because our production house doesn't just do VR, we produce all kind of formats, including short and feature films. Until now, we have been really lucky that the artists that we work with, they are all interested in all formats, so we have been having this opportunity to be able to explore with them the creation of multi-format projects.
[00:22:36.387] Kent Bye: Maybe you could give some highlights on some of the other projects you also worked on.
[00:22:40.603] Katayoun Dibamehr: So, yeah, our next adventure, I think, is Goliath playing with reality with the genius May Abdullah. She's like a sister to me. We knew each other from years back. And I think, again, I will say it again, because most of our collaboration has to do with a lot of trust and personal relationship before starting to enter the production. Yeah, Goliath playing with reality by Barry Jean Murphy and May Abdullah with Anagram, the studio based in London, UK. I think one of our most celebrated projects until now by the industry and a Metal VR for Good project. Our beautiful producer that I have to mention, Amy from Metal VR for Good. And yes, the project got the Grand Jury Prize again, 21 in Venice. That was like, oh my God, we're embarrassed. Everyone will think that, you know, we are bribing someone, but no. It was just so amazing to be able to, for them especially, to be able to be recognized for this unique project. Actually on Goliath, playing with reality, we are So, Playing with Reality will be a collection that will talk about different mental health conditions. Goliath was on schizophrenia and now we are heading into production of the second episode, I could say, or second part of this collection, which is about ADHD. and is entitled Impulse. Same director, same studio, Anna Graham, with Barry and May, and already in development. We have been supported by VR for Good and CNC from France, and we are very excited to head to production very soon.
[00:24:41.469] Kent Bye: Great. Is there any other projects that you've been a part of working on? I know they actually have a piece here this year.
[00:24:47.779] Katayoun Dibamehr: So here for Maya, The Birth, Chapter 1, a great collaboration with creators Pulumi Basu and CJ Clark. They both come from visual arts. They are photojournalists. Pulumi is an activist. And she has been working on this body of work for around 15 years now. So she's from India and she has been advocating for women from India and women's rights in general for the last decade. The collection's name is Blood Speaks. It started with photography, mainly writings, books, and three different VR 360 films. And now we are here with this piece, Maya, their first entrance into animation, Sixth Of Kuiil. This time the subject matter, well the subject matter, the main subject matter is about the taboos around menstruation and she has been investigating because women in Nepal and India in traditional families they have been sent into this remote places out of their villages or their hometowns because they have their period and they are considered unclean. So Paulumi has based her projects around these women when they are sent and how they can cope with this isolation without clean water. So Maya here is bringing that non-fiction subject matter into a fictional story that we are talking about adolescents in London. Maya is being bullied in school by schoolmates because she's having her period. And this is actually the reality, like, you know, until this day, even in our societies, you know, still, a girl having their period, they are not comfortable with the fact that a girl, and you know, she's been trying to say that, you know, period for women is actually a very important thing because, you know, it's their power to maybe give birth, it's maybe their power to being a woman, so it's their superpower. has to be considered as a superpower and has been always kind of shut down and, you know, really treated as a taboo subject. So we are here with the chapter one. I think we are going to publish the whole experience in September on the store. And yeah, we are actually here with two projects at the Creators Market at Tribeca Impulse, second episode, second part of Goliath with Anagram and we have the greatest honor to work with Gilles Jobin on his newest collaboration project, Sunset Motel, which is a project that he's working with this great artist Thomas Ott, a great comic book illustrator. It's a collaboration of him and Thomas Ott. Gilles Jobin had been very active in the more choreographed dance multi-user experiences for the last couple of years, but I think this will be his first one-user, six-star fiction project, but with the same technology. Mocap, all the performers will be mocapped and treated in mocap. Yeah, so...
[00:28:29.810] Kent Bye: Yeah, it's been quite a list of projects we've been involved with over the years and some ones that have been very well renowned and received with a lot of success and acclaim throughout the XR industry. And so I'm curious to hear from you. What do you think the essence of what makes a good immersive story versus a story that is told in other mediums? What is the affordances that you find make the medium so compelling for you and the creators to be able to explore telling these stories in a new way?
[00:28:59.002] Katayoun Dibamehr: Well, I think, first of all, I have been really lucky to be able to work with these creative people and, you know, we have every time created a family, a safe space for artists to be able to really express themselves. I think one of the things that this immersive space will need, it will be a lot of time to be able to explore and R&D because this medium needs to be researched and worked with and I think part of the fact that Goliath has been very successful it's because the time that they have spent in the R&D search and development to kind of understand the medium and how they can kind of match the medium with what they want to imply, how they can... I think it's always about how you want the user to perceive. So I think R&D and user test is two things that go hand in hand for a project to kind of get good and get better. In contrary with film production that production timeline is much more longer than the development. I think Creators need to have more time to develop an R&D, to be able to really be comfortable and confident to tell their story. Yes, I think in your questions there are a lot of questions.
[00:30:33.775] Kent Bye: Yeah, yeah, so as I think back on your history of being in Iran having to have like this underground education around the cinema and then this voracious curiosity that led you to being a curator and seeing all these emerging forms of media and then getting a couple of master's degrees and Literature and storytelling from a literature perspective, but also digital media and so as VR is coming up It's in some ways blending all these different media together. So aspects of gaming interactivity aspects of architecture and theater Aspects of cinema and film and aspects of literature and writing and so it seems like from your background you tend to be either drawn to the stories or drawn to the creators who are Exploring the mediums and new in different ways. And so there's a certain magic of when it works Well, so I'm trying to crack the magic of what is it that you're seeing in these either the projects or their creators or you know these new potentials for how to push the medium forward to experiment with Something that hasn't been done yet and being innovative in that way And I think the projects you've been involved with have each in their own ways Try to push the medium forward in terms of what can be done in terms of immersive storytelling
[00:31:44.010] Katayoun Dibamehr: Yeah, I think it's definitely you have to understand the medium to be able to challenge it. For example, for Goliath, how you can really play with the mind of your spectator so that they can understand what a psychosis feels like or looks like. So always trying to, you know, adapt the subject matter to the medium because I think VR there is a space that there are stuff that you see in front of you but then there is your brain that is processing all these images and there is an interesting thing to connect to them and trick them sometimes. That was of course for Goliath and hopefully you will see a little bit from Impulse that is even more innovative. In terms of blood speaks, so you are bringing, I always think that VR is a medium that you know, you can have this one-to-one conversation with someone. Rather than film there is a space and you know there is something that I mean you are immersed of course definitely in a film watching in a screen but for us Maya talking about menstruation, talking about something intimate of a woman, we had to bring it to a one-to-one conversation with the spectator because we wanted them to engage or Pulumi and CJ, they wanted to provoke. So, you know, sometimes it's really provocative that we were thinking giving a tampon to a man, you know, in a VR experience, you know, yes, let's do it. You know, we have to, if you want to be proactive and VR is that kind of medium that you can invite your spectator to take an action and you can provoke physically or brainfully.
[00:33:37.987] Kent Bye: So yeah, or like cognitively?
[00:33:39.388] Katayoun Dibamehr: Exactly, exactly. So, you know, even in the terms of like, most of the time we don't go to this explicit kind of, you know, we don't do documentaries. I mean, I don't want to, but we are not giving the subject matter explicitly to the spectator. We want them to discover, I think, and VR is a medium for exploration and for discovering. yeah to put your spectator in that kind of spot you know bringing them the curiosity.
[00:34:14.297] Kent Bye: Yeah so I guess to reflect back that there's certain aspects as you are in an immersive experience you're having both an embodied experience but also expressing your agency and engaging your curiosity but engaging the emotions and you know having this sense of plausibility of being immersed into these worlds and feeling like they feel real enough that you have some agency in that. So I think the fusion of all those things together I think is something that in each of the pieces are exploring and unique in novel ways. I think Minimal Mass is a little bit more of, you know, a third person omniscient view where you're not necessarily embodied as a first person but you're watching this tabletop experience go through and a lot of innovations with using your embodiment to direct the camera. So it's almost like you're the camera person in that piece and you're kind of moving around.
[00:34:59.454] Katayoun Dibamehr: own scenes and you edit your own point of view and where do you want to engage, how do you want to engage. So again we give this agency to the user to kind of engage with the story freely somehow.
[00:35:14.276] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I think with the Maya, the birth, chapter one, it's exploring a lot of the affordances of the spatial medium and almost like an architectural way with these installations that you're immersed into, but having them sequentially back to back creates this dreamlike experience to have the story that's being told in a much more dreamlike or archetypal way.
[00:35:37.326] Katayoun Dibamehr: Layered, kind of, you know, you are definitely thrown away into something that, you know, constantly being shocked or bring away to a world or another and which makes you a little bit uncomfortable as well. So I think VR is a medium to be able to kind of really challenge your user as well in that sense.
[00:36:04.237] Kent Bye: We've had quite a lot of success as an immersive producer, so I'm wondering if you could provide some tips for other aspiring immersive producers out there. Like, what's it take to be a good immersive producer of these types of immersive stories?
[00:36:17.895] Katayoun Dibamehr: That's a very nice question that I have been asked a lot. But I don't know if I know the answer. For me, as I told you, it had a lot to do with the teams that I was involved in. It had a lot to how I was connecting to the subject matter and how deep these subject matters was touching me a little bit. So I was kind of, you know, really wanted to... It was if I'm one thing with the creator, I'm becoming one with them and I want to, you know, really just make this happen. So it's kind of... Yeah, I think all the producers know it's a lot of hard work. It's tremendously stressful. But if you have the right team and right partners, I think you will make it. But I don't have the recipe, honestly. I was just so lucky to be able to work with all these creative people around me that nourished me to be able to really advocate for them, creative wise, technological wise, and to be able to fight for them to arrive to the last bites of the production.
[00:37:37.480] Kent Bye: It sounds very similar to when I hear venture capitalists or investors speak, they often emphasize the importance of the team and the people that are working on it. And it sounds very similar for your own process of both the team, but also believing in the project and the stories that are being told. And I guess, you know, as we're in this phase of the industry, it's sort of like gone through its ups and downs. Love to hear from you. What do you see as some of the biggest challenges that are to be overcome by this whole branch of immersive storytelling which, you know, so much of VR has been so focused on gaming and the distribution channels are obviously a big challenge in my mind, but I'd love to hear from your perspective of what are some of the other challenges that you face trying to both produce and get this work out into lots of audiences to see it.
[00:38:24.110] Katayoun Dibamehr: I will be very transparent. Of course, for us as well, it has been very stressful the last couple of months, of course. We've been collaborating with VR4Good, for example, that gave us this possibility to be able to be published and fund, partly, the projects. Publishing is a very, very important thing for projects. You want to be on a store. but I refuse to be negative.
[00:38:54.616] Kent Bye: Just to fill in a little bit of the gaps is the VR for Good people working at Meta were all pretty much recently laid off, so they're no longer there. So just to give that extra bit of context, so the people that you're working with were part of the latest rounds of layoffs, so they're no longer there. There is essentially no more VR for Good representatives at Meta anymore.
[00:39:14.498] Katayoun Dibamehr: Exactly, but so yes, there is this stress of oh for the last couple of four years we have been at least we knew that there is some funding and we are going to be published and now we don't know anything. I think having worked with artists that I have the chance to work with them is that In Floral, we have always been really flexible and fluid in our productions. That means we were always working in different formats in one project. Even Goliath, for example, had a projection mapping version that you could go to a space and you can see 10 minutes of the story with the interactive floor out of headset. That brings me to this that, you know, as a producer, I will just become more curious, again, at this world, to explore more and to find other possibilities for my creators to be able to get distributed. And again, lucky enough, they were always being so curious to expand their body of work. I think the future might not be just virtual reality. is maybe even though that we know that Apple has just, you know, the news from Vision Pro and these are all exciting, you know, you have always contradictory news, but we will not give up. We will not stop doing VR, but we will do more than VR on just a single subject matter.
[00:40:52.161] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I'm curious for you, what type of experiences do you want to have in VR? What type of immersive stories do you want to experience?
[00:41:01.007] Katayoun Dibamehr: I want to be moved emotionally. I want to feel that I'm one with the story. I want to not be told what I should do, but be brought away with the story and, you know, kind of Yes, I think from where I come, definitely I'm much more into whatever has to do with social justice and whatever has to do with maybe political subject matters. So this is definitely things that I'm more connected with. But not just that, but having unique artistic content I want the technology, the content and the social causes to be there in all aspects and be one together. I don't know if I explained it more. more ludic experiences that I think VR is a great medium to experience stuff rather than see. So anything that will kind of trick your brain to kind of or anything that will be provocative I think or call to action because I think it's a medium that you can definitely get the attention of your spectator.
[00:42:31.854] Kent Bye: Awesome. And finally, what do you think the ultimate potential of virtual reality and immersive storytelling might be and what it might be able to enable?
[00:42:41.803] Katayoun Dibamehr: The potential of virtual reality? I think there is a great, great potential. I think we just have to give more space to different artists to come and explore. And this is, I think, We are still not there. Five years ago we were having all these experiences. Sometimes you couldn't even go to the end because you were having all kind of feelings that technically was not. But I think virtual reality is a very open space. You just have to technically be very familiar with it and this will take a lot of years. I honestly think as well that MR will add a lot of potential with the new headset Quest Pro and you know, I think definitely maybe MR will even be much more, how to say, because maybe virtual reality close this space of creation because you need a lot of time or maybe a lot of budget, a lot of time to explore the potential of technology and how you can tell your story rather than MR will give you this liberty to be able to come out of the limits of virtual reality and be able to work a little bit more freely.
[00:44:10.392] Kent Bye: Yeah, for sure. You don't have to build all the worlds and there's new, you know, with Apple Vision Pro with so much of focus on both eyesight and the hands and speaking, new user interface standards and these constraints are going to actually force a lot of innovation in this space as well. So I'm excited to see how that plays out. But yeah, I'd love to hear if there's anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community.
[00:44:32.487] Katayoun Dibamehr: I think producers should be confident and continue the work. I think exhibitors should be more involved. We have seen a lot of museums and cultural centers that have been active. There is still a kind of how to say They're still not sure that we are still a kind of a gadget But I think we should in our industry. We should advocate a lot To outer industry we should bring in more artists in and we should let them explore and create and do not have this kind of You know, VR, what is VR? We actually had this great opportunity to work with an acclaimed director, French director Bertrand Mandicot. He used VR. Well, he did a feature-length project, 16mm, just premiered in Cannes at Fortnite, Director's Fortnite. And from the same project, he did a VR piece. It's the first time that I think a director has decided to create a cubic screen in the VR sphere. For me, at the beginning, I was like, oh my God, what is he doing? But I find that when I see the evolution of the project and the final versions, we should be a little bit more open for people to come into this space and explore the medium, because I think there are such genius ideas that this space can still benefit from. sometimes have the tendency to maybe you know just like this or this or if it's not gaming it's not good enough if it's not animation it's not good enough if you know so a little bit of fluidity and flexibility and openness will definitely and inviting storytellers because it's all about story as well and I think cinema has this capacity of still having the great storytellers so Yeah, we might benefit from that as well.
[00:47:00.215] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, Katerina, I know we've crossed paths in the immersive industry a number of times. And I'm a big fan of all the different projects that you've been involved with so far and look forward to seeing what else you continue to produce in this industry. And I just appreciate you taking the time to talk about your journey into the space, but also your process and deeper insights into where the industry is at now and where it might be going in the future. So thanks again for joining me here on the podcast.
[00:47:23.202] Katayoun Dibamehr: Thank you so much, Kent. It means a lot to talk with you because I have heard a lot of podcasts that you have done and I'm so honored that you invited me to do this conversation. Thank you.
[00:47:36.017] Kent Bye: So thanks again for listening to this interview. This is usually where I would share some additional takeaways, but I've started to do a little bit more real-time takeaways at the end of my conversations with folks to give some of my impressions. And I think as time goes on, I'm going to figure out how to use XR technologies within the context of the VoicesofVR.com website itself to do these type of spatial visualizations. So I'm putting a lot of my energy on thinking about that a lot more right now. But if you do want a little bit more in-depth conversations around some of these different ideas around immersive storytelling, I highly recommend a talk that I gave on YouTube. You can search for StoryCon Keynote, Kent Bye. I did a whole primer on presence, immersive storytelling, and experiential design. So, that's all that I have for today, and I just want to thank you all 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 so I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring you this coverage. So you could become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. Thanks for listening.
