The Polyphonic Spree band founder Tim Delaughter was looking for innovative ways to get people to listen to the entirety of his latest album called Salvage Enterprise. He was driving around a lot of speakers in his van and setting up pop-up listening parties around his home town when he thought there should be a better way to coax people into listening to his entire album, which is something that’s a lot more rare in today’s fragmented media ecosystem. He worked with Scott Berman as his long-time collaborator on visuals to recruit a number of different animators and filmmakers to create a dome version featuring his entire album called RESOLUTION: A CINEPHONIC RHAPSODY FOR THE SOUL. It’s the first time SXSW has been able to curate a dome experience (which showed on the main showroom floor), and it was one of the experiences that was able to quickly fill up their 20 available slots per hour across their six showings a day. It ended up taking home the Audience Award for the XR Experience Spotlight, and was one of the hotter tickets of the exhibition with people rushing to sign up as soon as the doors opened. I had a chance to speak with Director Scott Berman, Polyphonic Spree Founder Tim Delaughter, and Producer Ryan Hartsell about the process of putting this dome experience together.
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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 special computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. So continuing on my coverage from South by Southwest and also continuing on this trend of how some bands are using immersive media to be able to promote people to listen to their music. In today's episode, we're going to be talking around the Polyphonic Spree. The band founder, Tim DeSlaughter, collaborated with his longtime childhood friend and collaborator as a visual artist, Scott Berman. And they created a whole dome experience in collaboration with Brian Hartzell, who is helping on the technical end of things. And I have a chat with all three of them talking around this journey of creating an entire dome experience to show the entire album. Tim really wanted people to listen to his entire album. He was driving around a van with a bunch of speakers and he would drive up and have these pop-up listening parties where he'd invite people to come just listen to his music. This was a dome experience where you sit and listen to the entirety of the album. You're listening actually with headphones, and there's 20 people in this smaller dome that's within the context of the showroom floor. It's not like a big, large dome with lots of people watching. But it was actually one of those experiences when people were lining up in the morning to go see. There was just a rush of people to go sign up for it. It was super popular and ended up actually winning the audience award for the XR Spotlight. So it's a super fascinating story to hear the journey and evolution. They ended up collaborating with a bunch of different artists. So one of the things they said is that they have it. So there's a variety of these different artists, and sometimes you may like one of the artists more than others. And so I found that was my own experience where I didn't like the whole thing equally, but it was more of like, there were different parts and sections that I enjoyed more, but it was great to be able to listen to the entirety of a music album. And I think that was what the main intent was and to get people to listen to his music because In our fragmented culture and society today, we don't have a lot of opportunities to just sit down and really pay attention to the entirety of an album. So we're covering all that and more on today's episode of Wasted VR Podcast. So this interview with Tim, Scott, and Ryan happened on Wednesday, March 12th, 2025 at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:02:30.314] Scott Berman: I'm Scott Berman. I'm the director of Resolution. We tell stories with music. Our studio is Cinephonic Studio, and Resolution is a 45-minute film based upon the album by the Polyphonic Spree, Salvage Enterprise, and it takes you on a journey through the album.
[00:02:50.754] Tim Delaughter: My name's Tim DeLauder. I'm from the band Polyphonic Spree, and I'm part of the resolution team here. The record is Salvage Enterprise, which the movie's based on.
[00:03:00.139] Ryan Hartsell: Hi, I'm Ryan Hartzell. I came on as a technical and creative director for the project. I'm also one of the animators. I'm kind of a veteran in the VR space, been around for a little while, but been really interested in doing communal experiences, which right now I think that's so needed. As powerful as a solitary, individualized VR experience is, there's something tribally instinctual with us with being together and experiencing something as a group, as a collective.
[00:03:35.286] Kent Bye: Awesome. And maybe each of you could give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into the space.
[00:03:40.737] Scott Berman: Yeah, so Tim and I have been childhood friends since the seventh grade. I've always been into art. I was an art student when Tim called me in 1991 and said, hey, man, I'm starting a band. I'd love for you to do the visuals for the band. And so I started with Tim with Tripping Daisy back in the 90s. And then Polyphonic Spree happened. So we've been doing visuals and music together for 35 years now. Yeah.
[00:04:09.818] Tim Delaughter: So like Scott just said, yeah, we've kind of grown up doing this. I guess to segue into resolution to get to this point, we've often talked about eventually doing a planetarium experience at one time. And this record kind of gave us an opportunity to do this. Before this record came out and the film was made, I was doing listening experiences because of wanting people to hear this album as a whole. It's not really happening these days in a disposable environment, fragmented environment. And no one's listening to albums, you know, much less even songs. It's crazy what's going on. But anyway, so I did these listening experiences to get people to hear the record from start to finish. So kind of floated up in a van with a sound system, a couple generators, head out on the road and did pop-up, get on social and say, I'm going to be at this spot. If you're around, you'd show up and it'd be a circle with speakers all the way around, moving blankets on the ground, and I'd play the record from start to finish. It was my way of getting people to hear an album, kind of taking matters into my own hand and making it happen. Came back and told Scott about my experience, what was going on, and this became an opportunity. We decided to kind of jump in and do what we've been talking about doing, and this record, Salvage Enterprise, gave us the opportunity to make it happen.
[00:05:29.460] Kent Bye: And I'm wondering if you'd also be willing to give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into becoming a musician and just a little bit more context as to Polyphonic Spree as well.
[00:05:38.604] Tim Delaughter: So, like he said, I had a band in the 90s called Tripping Daisy. It was kind of a neo-psychedelic rock band. Polyphonic Spree was something that I had thought about in various recordings of my previous band, of kind of wishful thinking, like, man, I'd love to have this type of instrument here. And it was a five-piece rock band, guitar, bass, drums, keyboards. And it was going to be something I was going to do much later in life, I thought. was put a band together that would be a hybrid of symphonic and rock instruments. But it ended up happening sooner than I thought. So I put this collective together of different artists that came from the symphonic world, mixed with rock, and instead of one person singing, ten people singing. And it was more or less trying to create a sound for myself, trying to see what that would sound like, you know, like wishful thinking. God, if you could have all the things that you wanted musically in one band, wow that would be kind of an amazing thing to witness and be a part of it was an experiment that turned out to be a band that's been all over the world now 25 years been in films television commercials traveled everywhere and done everything for a band that wasn't supposed to leave dallas because the size it's kind of remarkable that now we're here doing dome theater experiences but Yeah, so it started off as an experiment and turned out to be something way much more. But so over a 20-piece band, and we've been doing it now for, so it started in 2000. Awesome.
[00:07:10.060] Kent Bye: Yeah, just also love to hear a bit more about your context and background and journey into this immersive space.
[00:07:15.706] Ryan Hartsell: Yeah, so I have an animation background, and I was working at Studio Real Effects for a while, and they started investing in new techs, and they were one of the early investors in Oculus before Facebook for any of that stuff. And we had all the dev kits and everything, and they came to me because they knew I was a filmmaker, and I was involved in the music scene with a band member that plays with Tim a lot, Dylan Silvers, and Been doing a lot of music videos and stuff and they saw that so they were like, hey, do you want to figure out this VR stuff for us? So I helped develop workflows in the early days on and off set and traveled the world, been on over probably 100 productions over the years. and really kind of developed a knowledge and an understanding to help other people create in this space. I've been involved in the VR for Good program in the early days as a mentor. I directed one of them, the evolution of testicles on the second realm. And I've been just tangentially around the entire movement from the beginning of it. So when Scott and the guys, they were looking at how to do this kind of campfire situation, they were like, hey, we need somebody technical that knows how to do 360 work and all this kind of stuff. And he started talking around, and my name came up. I guess a few people mentioned my name. Then he was like, hey, Tim, I met this guy, Ryan. I'm like... Oh, yeah, I know Ryan. He's like, what the hell didn't you tell me? You know, kind of thing. So I went over there to talk to Scott about how I could help with this film. And then I was like, what else are you doing? He's like, oh, yeah, we all this animation and stuff. I was like, well, I have an animation background and I understand how to do animation and 360 and all this kind of stuff. Like, what are you doing for distortion? What are you doing for all this kind of stuff? And I was like, I can make you templates for the artists and all that. So he was like, OK, yeah, I need you on this team. And I've gone all in. And it's been a really great evolution of my trajectory in the immersive space. Because like I said, everything that I understand about doing 360 and VR applies to the dome stuff perfectly. So it was just a natural deal. And we've become family.
[00:09:45.831] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, that helps set a lot of the context for this project. And so it sounds like that you'd gone out and were showing people these little pop-ups and trying to encourage people to listen to the entirety of an album. And so maybe talk about this catalyzing moment where this idea got started and to start to build out a full Dome experience and where you started to begin with that.
[00:10:06.707] Scott Berman: Yeah, well, it started back when Tim actually played a couple songs on his voice memo, and the songs just moved me emotionally, and I felt like this was the best thing that Tim had ever written. I said, man, this is incredible, and as he started building the album together and we started experimenting and talking about different outlets and how are we going to travel this around the world, how are we going to make this have a larger impact than just what an album would do, And, you know, Tim came up with the album and then he gave it to me and I said, OK, cool, Tim, tell me what this is about. And he he didn't. He said he wouldn't do that. And so I spent four months listening to the album on loop every single day, every minute of the day to dive into actually what the meaning was behind the album. And then I wrote these synopsis of it. each particular song about what i felt like it was about and and then i brought it back to tim and i said so here's what i think your music's about is this is this accurate and he said not necessarily where i would have come from but yeah i mean it's accurate um the semblance of it the overall kind of arcing idea of it
[00:11:20.600] Tim Delaughter: It was captured. I think it's kind of unfair for me to stamp what it is to me. It's a very personal record. That's about all you need to know. It's pretty self-explanatory. It's about overcoming. There's hope involved. There's the resilience of human tenacity that we've got. It's also kind of a reminder of what we can overcome. Not to get too specific about it, but that's kind of a general idea and Scott picked up on that and kind of ran with it. Found an empathy value in it that I wasn't really trying to put out there that he found in the overall arc of it and built a story around it. That's kind of part of it. So you can open up and let go a little bit and have someone else contribute and put their own spin on it. It gives it so much more of a richer value than just it's just singular as much as most people do. But I find that we've kind of been really open with this. I know I've been open with it more so than I've ever been with anything. creatively. And it's been, for me, it's been really rewarding to see what everybody else contributes to it. Ryan and Brian, Pete, other people that have worked on the other animators, Anthony Shepherd and Scott, what these guys have done with something. It's like, you see, that's what's so... That, to me, is what's so amazing about life in general is that it's always you think you know what's going on, and all of a sudden it flips on you and becomes something else that surprises you about something that's about yourself or comes from you. And that just is such a, to me, kind of an atonement of how life is and an environment that I'd like to be in and I am in. So it was great to kind of watch it unfold like that.
[00:12:57.014] Scott Berman: Yeah, I think to add to that, you know, as I mean, I've experienced that same thing here. Here's my overall idea of what I want to do here. It started with these different pieces that I'd written first. And then I had to figure out because out of necessity, I wanted different artists to do different pieces of it. But we wanted to we didn't want it to be a collection of nine music videos. Right. It needed to have a story and an arc. that flew through the whole thing. And so I think, you know, just kind of how it unfolded. You know how sometimes you listen to music on headphones and you're walking through the park and a music video just lays out in front of you? So that's sort of how it happened this one day. I was sitting in the office. I'd written all these pieces. I couldn't figure out how to quite make it fit together. And I just went outside and just walked down to this park and You know, the first thing that happened to me, I was listening to the music and just as loud as I could. And some bubbles flew across right in front of me and I turned to the side and I saw this mother and their child there. And they were blowing bubbles in the park and it was a beautiful moment between a mother and a child. But then I looked at her and I saw how vacant she was. It was like she wasn't even there. And so I started thinking about her, you know, what was happening to her instead of just walking by somebody like we typically do in everyday life. Just walk by somebody, not think anything about what's happening emotionally with them, where their life goes when you get together and then they leave and go someplace else, what happens to them. Then the next person I walked by was a kid playing guitar and just top of his lungs singing in a park with people all around and he didn't care what anybody thought. And then the next person I walked by was a homeless person. and they were laying on the park bench and I just, I looked at them differently than I would normally look at somebody and I really looked at them and I thought, this guy hasn't always been here. What happened before this? And then I went by this other person and this was all happening in the context of the music and maybe four or five songs as this was happening together. And then there was this like 18 year old girl somewhere around there, but she was sitting on a pedestal And she was drawing, you know, but she was kind of covering it up to where nobody could see. And I walked as close as I could to her just so I could see what she was drawing. And it was sidewalk chalk, and it was this beautiful drawing, and it said, God is here. And it just hit me right at that moment. I was like, why is she embarrassed about God? Is she embarrassed about her artwork? Why is she so withdrawn and doesn't want anybody to see what she's doing and doesn't want anybody to see her expression? And it was really at that moment that it hit me that it's like, okay, that's what the movie's about. It's not about an individual person and one story. It's about multiple stories and how each of us have things in common, but we're all different, but we have similar issues, but they might be completely one side or another. And then just from a technical standpoint, and this is what Ryan was talking about earlier, how I got Ryan involved. I thought, okay, I'm going to do it in a park, and this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to walk around this park benches, and as I walk around to the next one, somebody else will be sitting there by the time I get back around, and it's going to be this continuous loop of stories that happen. And I felt really good about it. I was like, oh, my God, this is great. This is what we're going to do. And then I went out and did a test filming of it, and I was thinking about how you create in a dome, which is far different than anything else that you can – create in just the technical side of it is is just unbelievably complicated so anyway after film that I went back and looked at it in the studio and I said oh my god this isn't gonna work everybody's looking out and I need something where everybody's looking in and then it clicked that it would be the campfire and it goes along with the first time all of our friends sat together and listen to the music was at a campfire, you know, and it was beautiful. It was happening with the sparks. And that's the place where people tell stories. It's a place where people meet. It's like it's inherent to all of us. And so that became the sort of glue that held everything together. And then the other stories started coming along with it. And that's how it was written.
[00:17:34.164] Ryan Hartsell: Yeah, I mean, to just bounce off of that, you know, it goes to our primal instincts. And, like, our initial time when humans actually gathered together, when storytelling first began, was around the campfire looking at the stars. And there's something that's in us all together. And the communal experience, it just... It connects to our past, but it also brings us back together in a time in our society when we're so divided and people are spread out and, you know, pitting against each other, creating something that helps heal that a little bit and also brings empathy and you're able to share this with all people in a collective way because we're not prescribing or preaching or like you know we guide people on a narrative but we leave more to interpretation and I think that helps anybody connect their own synapses and they have their own experience and they take their own life and their own background into it so you know one song might resonate with somebody and another person might have something completely different but that's what's so cool about this is it it's hitting people in different realms but collectively we can all have an emotional experience in a different way you know it's one of those things i i like that people always ask what the hand is but it's just you know you tell us right we're not trying to tell you what we think it is like All of it's right. All of it's valid. And, you know, when you go back to like what made Star Wars special when it came out, the force wasn't defined by any religion, by any, you know, until George Lucas screwed it up with midichlorians and turned it into Scientology and all that shit. but but but yeah it's you know it was something that all of us can aspire to and grab onto you know and that was what was so cool about it is no matter what your beliefs are or whatever oh i could tap into the force you know and there's something special about that
[00:19:44.284] Kent Bye: Yeah, so it sounds like a really interesting process of you creating the music, embedding so much of your personal process into the music, but releasing it out into the world without dictating how people are going to interpret it. And then your job is to interpret it, but then at least be the mediator by creating this overall narrative architecture that is going to allow some structure for each of these different chapters to be tied together through this spatial metaphor of people sitting around the campfire and kind of zooming into their brain and getting this abstraction. And there's a lot of symbolism and kind of like a dream logic of there's not anything concrete. It's very abstract. And so there's like almost like a telephone game of music and then interpretation and then each of the artists and then people receiving it and then interpreting it through all these levels of mediation. And so as you were working with these animators and artists, Were you showing them your synopsis, or did you give them a similar remit to say, go figure out what you think it is, because you're kind of responsible for at least trying to create some level of coherence amongst all these different individual tracks that are going to be tied together in this concept album that everyone's listening to. So I'm just curious of your process of starting to work with these animators and give them direction, and you're kind of the middleman of... tying it all together.
[00:20:54.257] Scott Berman: Yeah. So so it goes back to what Tim was saying, like you have an overall arc and this is the story and this is how it's going to fit together. But it was really about the emotion of it and wanting to nail the emotion of it. And that's You know, every artist that I went out to get to work on the film, the first thing I did was I sent them the music. If they like the music, they're out. If they love the music, they're in. I mean, they had to love the music first because as an animator or designer or whatever you're working with, when you're working the amount of time that you're going to spend with this song and this record and wanting to spend more time with it every day, for months and months and months and never get sick of it. Years. And years. I've never gotten sick of the music one time. And so it comes from that, and the emotion comes from that. And then the story, I wanted them to know the entire story, even though they were only participating in one piece of it. So they knew the whole arc of the whole thing. And it was about the emotion that we're trying to get out, and this is what's happening here. This is the idea, this is, some of them were more specific, some of them weren't. But it was mainly started with, this is emotionally what we're trying to feel in this, and this is the arc of the song. Here's an idea that I have. If you don't like it, pitch me another idea. And so some people like there's a scene where there's the puppet scene, right? Where the puppets are on the RC cars. That had nothing to do with me as an idea. The concept was childhood exuberance, right? And here's in the context of the whole story, this is about this character that comes back and felt like he didn't belong and never could really realize that he actually always did belong. And the last time he felt that was when he was a kid. And then you go back to that feeling of when you were a kid and just when you were free, you know, and this is the arc of the story that I'm telling them. And the idea that I had was just riding on a bicycle, you know, through trees and, you know, just that time when you left the house and you just went off on an adventure. And how free you felt to do whatever you wanted. You know, that time doesn't really exist anymore because, you know, of the phone. But they said, can we interest you in RC cars with puppets on them? Brandon and Limber. Yeah. And I said, OK, this is crazy and I love it. let's see how it can fit into the story. If it can fit into the story and the overall arc of the story. And they said, well, it's like what you said about childhood exuberance. So I just had to figure out how the connective tissue went and then I said, let's go for it. There was other stories just like that, that started off as a different story and progressed but what stayed true to the whole thing was this is the emotion we're gonna go from here to here to here and there's a first part of the movie that's about discovering what your obstacles are facing them and then there's a middle part of the movie where you're figuring it a way out and there's an ending where you're transitioning out of that and what life can be when you pass that. And the way Tim writes songs, this was the challenge of it too, was like, even the first song, we could do that entire movie in that one song, right? So we had to figure out a way to not sort of close the loop on that one and then close the loop on that one because I wanted these people at the campfire to sort of progress together. And then one person takes the leap and the others follow. And that's also important is to say, you know, look what can happen when you're the first person that takes the step and look how others can follow you. And so that's sort of how they all come back together in the end. but that same thing. But yeah, it was artists being artists. And not just that, like finding, if you notice all the different techniques that we use, we've done everything from 2D cell shaded animation, hand-drawn animation from Anthony Shepard and Dave Zabosky who did Disney work and everything up to Quill where you draw on a VR headset. And so we had to allow these people, these artists to work in their own space. And then it was the challenge between Ryan and I is to figure out how to get that to work. And because we tried it the other way, it didn't work like, OK, you're used to doing it this way. Now let's put you in this space and try to do art. And it wasn't working right. And so me and Ryan got together and we said, we have to let them operate in their space, the way they operate, and then we'll figure out how to get it into the dome. because we had the opportunity to get, at the University of North Texas, where I went to school, we had the opportunity to test things out, go up to the school, you know, we would test it out, get in the VR headset, go, okay, we think that looks good. Let's go up to the planetarium at North Texas, where they allowed us to come every week for a year And so every Friday we would go up there and we're like, oh shit, this doesn't work at all. You know, let's go back to the drawing table back and forth, back and forth, back and forth to fine tune everything. And now we pretty much have, I mean, there's, there's a Titan, which is a 360 camera. There's a Antonia, which is like a, 180 camera, there's regular cameras which are just 16 by 9, there's cell shaded animation that doesn't belong in a dome. So we've got this smorgasbord of all sorts of different types of methods that we've developed to sort of make all this work in the dome.
[00:26:51.693] Kent Bye: Awesome. Yeah, I want to get into kind of the logistics of working with artists. But before I do that, I want to turn it back over to you and kind of get a sense of like you were giving the music over and then this project was starting. And then throughout the course of the project, as they're doing like these screenings every Friday, are you are you involved at all looking at any of the footage that's coming along or were you pretty hands off up to a certain point? I'm just trying to get a sense of. how you were interacting with this process of this distributed collaboration with all these artists as it was going on. And then like if you kind of were more hands off or kind of more involved with seeing how it was progressing and giving feedback.
[00:27:25.100] Tim Delaughter: So a lot of it at the beginning, Scott and I were kind of talking, getting together back and forth and talking about ideas of where it was going to go, how he's going to do the story. And we'd kind of get in these little debates back and forth. And finally, it was the point where it's like, you know, you could kind of do that back and forth. Sometimes you got to pull back so the process can move forward. So that would be me pulling back so I could kind of let go. It was kind of letting go of a lot of things that were, like I said, I'd never in my past been this kind of open and free with things that I was being a part of creatively. And so it was a challenge for me at first to do that just because it's kind of second nature to like, wait, wait a minute. That's not how I'm, you know. So it was kind of difficult at the beginning. Once I got my head around it, we started talking more and things started becoming more in fruition where I could see where it was going. Then I felt more confident about it. Yeah, I would accompany them time to time to the planetarium to see what they were doing and finally to keep their workflow going. Times that I couldn't do it, they would just continue to do it. So it wasn't like all in it like you would think. It was just every now and then. It was a lot kind of at the beginning and then would slowly kind of taper off. And then once they got into it, into it, then, yeah, I'd come in and check things out and be kind of, we'd always discuss. We'd talk every day about it. So there was things like being connected.
[00:28:45.683] Kent Bye: Okay, I'd love to hear your perspective in terms of like as you're coming in and now the artists are starting to do your thing and just talk about from your perspective this process of starting to iterate and what I imagine sounds like a little bit of like a pre-visualization in the headset just to get a sense and then maybe get some sense of what it might look like but you won't really know until you're actually in the space to see what it looks like and so but yeah I would love to hear a little bit more around like once you start working with the artists what it was like for you to individually develop each of these different tracks and have all these artists working in parallel and helping to provide the technical expertise to tie it all together.
[00:29:20.481] Ryan Hartsell: Yeah, so when I came in, I guess Anthony Shepard had already been working on quite a bit of this in MICA. So I had to kind of reverse engineer the plan based on how they were delivering assets. And I ended up taking the first piece, which Anthony Shepard did, and rebuilding it so that it worked and wrapped correctly in the dome. So going from Cinema 4D, After Effects, I built templates in both of those. Bringing it from a 2.5D space into Cinema allowed me to use Redshift with fisheye lensing. There's a lot of techniques to go into that. There's not one solution for everything. It's like, oh, this piece actually looks good just straight up on it. But then when you get something that people recognize the hardest thing as humans, because we know what it's supposed to look like, everybody does. So anything that's distorted weird is like obvious to people. So it was piecemeal based on what the artist was developing in their own style. And each of them were bespoke, even within the pieces themselves. So it was a challenge to go in and dissect what each of the different art styles were. Luckily, I have live action and animation background, so I'm able to understand what the post needs because I'm probably going to be the one doing it.
[00:30:57.210] Kent Bye: So it sounds like you're working on all of your technical workflows. Artists were all putting all their stuff together. Talk about getting all the finished assets and tying it all together and starting to see it all together for the first time. Because I imagine that you're seeing it all in these increments, but there's something around listening to the entirety of the album where there's going from track to track where it built up a context and a rhythm and a flow that there's already a track list where the album was set. But in terms of having the visual counterparts, there's another dimension of making sure that it is cohesively all tied together. So talk about like tying it all together and that process of if there is other refinements or tweaks that you're doing or some of those first times of actually seeing it all complete for the first time.
[00:31:40.123] Scott Berman: Yeah, you know, I think early on we said we're going to put these images together in a song and we're going to listen to the whole thing in whatever's finished and whatever's finished in a sequence. So some pieces were completely done, some pieces we'd still listen to the whole thing, the music included, because in order to sort of feel like, because they're coming in at different times and they're at different levels of completed, You can't watch them out of context. If you do, you can't really evaluate them. So we would put the whole thing together, even if it was just a graphic that just said... Placeholders. Yeah, placeholders everywhere. And then there was one piece that I think finished the earliest, which was what Ryan was doing with Anthony's first piece, and then this quill that had finished early, which was an incredible underwater scene, you know, when the kid puts the hand in. in the water and then this whole underwater scene done by dan frank from germany but seeing that piece completed was the first time that we said oh my god we have something here you know because it was all just mishmash and critiquing every single thing and that piece sort of finished first and set the bar for everything else which was great. And it's good when you have a bunch of artists too, you know. It's interesting because they're all insecure. Every one of them are in their own way. Every artist is insecure. And so when we would show people Anthony Shepard's piece, which was the first artist that I got on this because he was my favorite artist. And I would show other artists and they're like, oh my God, Anthony Shepard's on this. And so it was sort of up the level of what they felt like they needed to do. in order to not compete with that, but to get the whole film up to that level. And so when those two pieces sort of finished first, and by the way, Dan, who has seen Anthony Shepard's work, was blown away with it. And he said, man, I don't think mine's going to be that good. And I said, do you know that Anthony's over here saying how much he loves your work? And they just don't know that. And they're just like, oh my God, he loves what I'm doing. And it's amazing because each one of these artists are phenomenal in their own right. And until you sort of do that, but seriously, like the level of, not competition, but just wanting to make sure that they didn't fail in their piece. Once we got those pieces at a certain level, the whole thing started to lift up and to get to where it needed to be.
[00:34:21.121] Ryan Hartsell: Mutual admiration. Yeah, exactly.
[00:34:23.504] Scott Berman: And like, I can't let the project down because look how amazing these pieces are. But really, honestly, the first time we saw it in a dome was the day it was going to premiere. So the first time we saw it finished was the day it was premiering.
[00:34:43.264] Kent Bye: Here at South by Southwest?
[00:34:44.465] Scott Berman: No, no, no, no. So we premiered in North Texas at the planetarium there. And so when we did that, the first thing was we were in there. Our family was in there. First thing, we watched it in the morning. I said, Ryan, we need to watch this without critique. This is what's going to show tonight. And we need to enjoy it for the first time as you know, as an audience member, right instead of a creator. And we tried to do that and get ourselves in that space. And it was joyful because it was like, we have a film, we let go of all the imperfections and the things that are missing things that we're going to do next week. because it's not like a print piece where you print it and that's it, or a record where you put it out and, wait a minute, I want to change this piece, because you can change it every week with the planetariums. You just send them a new file. So, by the way, it's never done. But at that moment, it was like, we've got a full piece here, and then it was interesting. Then I showed it to my family, and then there was a news reporter in there, and everybody loved it, and they're jumping all, you know, oh, my God, I love it. And then I watched it for the first time with an audience. And I didn't look at the screen one time. I just looked at everybody in the audience and I was sort of having a panic attack because they were just sitting there and there was no emotion. I couldn't read any emotion on their face. And then I noticed about three quarters of the way through, no one had picked up their phone. No one had stopped looking at the screen. I mean, it was like, oh my God, did I charge them too much money? They were expecting Avatar, you know, just going through that. And then the show ended, everybody clapped. And really it wasn't until we got out of that room that night and a 15-year-old kid walked up to me. And this was the best moment yet in this entire experience was this kid went up to me and he said, I needed to see that today. And I just kind of, at first I just kind of took it like, okay, cool, awesome. And he goes, no, you don't understand. I struggle with mental health issues and now I know everything's going to be okay. And I embraced this kid and I was just like, I was crying. And it was just a moment that was just like, i had no idea what could come of this you know and i was bawling and he was crying after that this woman comes up to me and she said she said can i talk to you and i said yeah and she said meadowlark was the daughter's name she said meadowlark tell him what you said what you said to me during the movie and she said she said my heart was bouncing At first, I thought it was the loud music, and then I realized that's what the movie was doing to me. I was like, oh my God. And then she came and talked to me, and she said, you know the part in the middle where the guy's rowing? I said, yeah. And she said, that was so deeply personal to me. I mean, it was, she said it three times, like it was personal to me. I mean, to me, it was personal. And she described this part in the movie that I thought no one would get. But I put it in there anyway, whether anyone would get the symbolism behind it or not. And she got the symbolism. And there's this moment of where you're sort of looking at your life of where you are instead of where you can be what you can be, right? And maybe you don't like where you are. You don't want to look at yourself in the mirror because what you see, you don't like at that particular moment. All of us have had those moments where we don't like what we see in ourselves. As a parent, that's happened to me. Like I told my wife, I would never say that to my kids. Right. And so this moment was happening for her. And then she said she described it perfectly. She said, and then the boat is rowing towards it. And it's about what you can be, not what you are. And I was like, oh, my God, she got it. And I just didn't have any expectation of that. You know, and I hugged her and And it's been that part of it, I think, that has been, without a doubt for all of us, just the most rewarding part of this whole thing is just that it's helping people. And I'm not trying to stand on a soapbox or anything like that because Frankly, it wasn't intentional like that was the purpose of it, but we did want people to feel emotion and empathy and all these emotions because that's what, when I broke down Tim's record, I wrote a list of emotions for each one of them. These are the emotions of that song. It's great because it's just like an album. When you listen to an album and one song hits you right in the very beginning, and then those never end up being your favorite ones. The ones that are the deep cuts are your favorite one. When you start to understand them and the different art styles, some people aren't going to like three of them, but they're going to really love one of them. You know, and that's what we found. Frankly, we found that they enjoy that there's different art styles that they like. And even with Tim, we had talked about this in the beginning, like let's make this different art styles instead of the art that we particularly like. Let's do that because individuals are different like that. And anyway, the emotion of it is just the best reward of the whole thing.
[00:40:18.840] Ryan Hartsell: And that change element of different styles, it induces imagination and wonder and awe because it's like, what's going to happen next? It keeps people engaged. It's the sleight of hand surprise element. And a lot of the stuff that I've been focused on for a long time now is I'm convinced that the lack of empathy is directly correlated to the lack of imagination. How do you induce imagination with people? You do it by giving more questions than answers. And you allow things to change to where people wonder. And the more you give people the opportunity to wonder, the more their imagination starts flourishing.
[00:41:02.166] Kent Bye: Beautiful. Thanks for that. And yeah, I'd love to hear some of your initial reactions of seeing it for the first time, but also we're here at South by Southwest. And every morning when there's hundreds of people lining up here to get in, there is there's a big long line of people to get signed up. It seemed like you were getting people filling up all the different spots very quickly, which was great to see. Like there was so much excitement, enthusiasm from both the crowd here at the beginning.
[00:41:25.514] Scott Berman: but it was chaos to begin with but we we adapted we weren't expecting that that was going to happen that it was just flooded and then an hour every you know as soon as we could get everybody through it was sold out every show we did six shows a day um it's a music festival so there's like both the tech people but it seemed like there was fans of your music or other people that had heard about it that i'm presuming that that yeah from i mean a lot of people that weren't
[00:41:53.371] Tim Delaughter: didn't even had heard of polyphonic spree or the band which was great but then having their own experience and kind of feeling what he's talking about the people that experienced the film in denton having it here and never heard the music before so it was pretty amazing but yeah i i I find, too, that a lot of times when you may have your own expectations of things, of how you think they're going to go and unfold, and then something else completely different just comes out of left field and like, holy shit, I wasn't even thinking about that. And that seems to be a series of what I think, I mean, I didn't, I wasn't expecting when I was writing these songs for Scott to feel the way he felt about them or how other people felt about them when it was happening. But it felt that way to me when I was writing them and what I was getting for myself. And you don't often think about because you're so self-centered. It's all for you at the beginning that you're not really thinking. And I'm referring to the music that I'm not really thinking about what other people think about it. And so you're more just like, I want people to hear this as like, check this out. You know, you have to hear this from the beginning to the end is a story. It's a journey that I want you to experience. I'm not thinking about what is going to come from that journey. It's more of like, I just want you to hear this, not thinking about why do I want them to hear this or what I'm going to get from them from that. It's just kind of a need that you have. And then when you start seeing what you're not even thinking about is going to happen, the reaction, what people are getting, the things that they're finding in it and accompanied with the visuals with what's going on musically lyrically it's just like holy shit then you're like flabbergasted like wow this is way more than I thought you know and I found that I've been surprised by that in so many times like the worst situations I've found I've experienced this as a human that the times I've done things like this is gonna be the worst environment for something like this to happen maybe I'm playing a show or whatever it's not gonna be good and it turns out to be the best situation or this didn't really work out but turns out to be that was exactly what it needed to be able to touch people to make things happen so i don't know it's these pleasant surprises that hit us and have been hitting us here yeah this was crazy and uh yeah we all were hoping that it was going to be well received and and we had experienced people's um feelings at the planetarium so we had a you know an understanding but you're coming to someplace new and no one's ever heard the band and no one's heard these music this and are they going to accept it and It just, yeah, became out to be a lot more. Are people are going to allow themselves to feel in this environment, you know, being around all these people? Are they going to be able to let go in this dome and sit next to each other and actually have a personal experience like that? Are they going to be able to do that? yeah the answer was yeah they did it they were able to do it and then you're like wow and then your people are coming out and telling you what it means to them and like how personal it was and it's just it's great man because it's so much more than spectacle and we're trying to entertain you it's so much more than that to me it is it's like we need to have that human moment and be able to connect with people and and resonate that in the world and So to be a contributor, that's what I always kind of try to do is I want to feel like I'm contributing to something. And so when you get that kind of response back, it's like, yeah, man, this feels good.
[00:45:29.434] Ryan Hartsell: The currency an artist truly works for is appreciation.
[00:45:37.343] Kent Bye: It sounds like you're getting a lot out this week.
[00:45:39.591] Scott Berman: Yeah, for sure. Definitely. And just the people we've met, it's totally unexpected. It's just amazing that, you know, it's funny when you're sort of what some people call in the flow and things are just happening and the sea is parting for you. It just feels like we're walking in this every day. Like, it's like this. I was at a party the other night, this meta party that only one person from each team gets to go to, right? Yeah. So it's kind of funny, I went into this, the wrong party. And I was like, well, where's the food? And they're like, here's your drink ticket. And I'm like, they said, there's no food here. I said, I thought this was supposed to be dinner. And they said, oh, you're supposed to be at the meta party? And, you know, the people that run the show here, Haley and and Blake said, don't be late to this party like this is important party. Don't be late to it. And I was early, you know, so it's 715 and I'm in the wrong party. So I walk in and I look around and there's one empty table. and every other seat is taken. So I'm gonna have to sit by myself and let's say, hey guys, will y'all make some space? And so I'm figuring out what's my move here? What am I gonna do? And all of a sudden, the guy that we made friends with over here, Craig, who's in the booth next to us, says, hey Scott, come here. Hey everybody, make some room, this is Scott. He said, sit down here. And I sat down. So we all went around introducing ourselves and what we did and what our movies were, our films were, our experience was. So I said, I'm doing this, blah, blah, blah, polyphonic spree. And the guy sitting next to me says, that sounds so familiar, the polyphonic spree. And I said, yeah, it's a band. And he goes, no, I think I worked with them. And I was like, wow, I would probably know who you are if you did. And he said, yeah, I did some concept art for this thing. And he pulls out his phone and he shows me a picture of the film that's in our film. And I looked at him and said, wait a minute, is your name Fooney? And he said, yes, I'm Fooney. And I go, I'm Scott, you're in my film, dude. And he's like, what? And he had never seen it. And he said, so are y'all in the XR experience? I'm like, yeah, we're the dome. And he goes, of course, the dome's gigantic in here. So when you say you're in the dome, you don't know whether you're going to be like, oh, you're the dome, you know, because they're competitive or whatever. And they're like, oh, yeah. He goes, so you're the guy that's right behind us. So his booth is right next to us. And he's been there all like the whole time setting up. And it's just like. moment where I just gave him a hug and said, Oh my God, your piece is brilliant. You have to come see it. And so he came over and saw it the other day, came out, he was in tears and he was just like, not because like it was for his own piece, but it was for the whole thing. But it's just like things like that happening over and over and over in the process of this movie. I could tell you three hours worth of stories that are impossible to happen that just happened, including getting the dome here. Three hours before we were on a meeting with South by Southwest, I told Ryan, I'm gonna go get a dome. And by the time we got to the meeting, I had the dome. And we had a collaboration and a partnership so that we could afford it and all that. And so we walked into the meeting with that. So it's just like when that's happening, you know something's right and the universe is working in your favor. God, whatever you want to call it, it's happening for you. The seas are parting. You're in the flow and it's just happening. I don't think I've ever experienced it to this level and it's amazing. It feels great and not for me, but it feels great that I'm part of all this and it feels great that it lets me know we're on the right track, that we're doing the right thing, that people are going to be helped by this and It's amazing and this has been a great experience for us. I mean. Oh my gosh, I can't thank it enough. Blake and Haley, who had the foresight to, you know, Blake's been wanting to do a dome in here for five years. And we pulled it off, and he's so grateful for it. But we're grateful to him that he would allow us to do that and for people to experience this. And that's the difference in being in a headset, which is amazing because there's all sorts of stuff that happens in a headset that you can't do in a dome. but you know we're in the omni theater in fort worth which is an 8k dome it's a mini sphere it's probably the second best theater in the country and we have a 300 show residency there and the way that they got introduced to us is just it's been amazing but this experience hopefully gets us to that next level where people see that there's dome theaters all around the country that are just sitting there. It's just like old movie theaters that aren't doing anything. And they're showing a few things during the day. And there are these beautiful experiences and theaters that could be used for so much more just opening people's minds and they're just waiting for this to happen. So we're hoping to get that around to all of these and And that's sort of the plan. But it's great to be in a communal environment when you see things.
[00:51:14.905] Kent Bye: Yeah. It definitely seems like you're tapping into a zeitgeist of this shared communal music experience. And being here at a technology and music festival, it sounds like it was really resonating with audiences. So yeah, I guess as we start to wrap up, I'd love to hear what each of you think is sort of the ultimate potential of this intersection of immersive art and music. And what do you think it might be able to enable?
[00:51:37.571] Ryan Hartsell: I think this can become the new church for a lot of people. Just like people pay for yoga every week or whatever, I'm going to go pay to have this beautiful sound bath, and I'm going to come out feeling great.
[00:51:52.611] Scott Berman: Yeah, I think it's definitely on the rise. I mean, there's a company called Cosm that has built a theater in Dallas, in LA, and it's going to become a thing, and it's just starting. We're on the precipice of that. And I think it's just only going to grow. And I think when you experience something like that, it's like when you're at a concert and you're watching the video screen at the concert, you can barely see the band. You're like, why am I here? Well, you're here because you're doing this together with other people and there's emotion in that and people are singing together. And so that experience, you know, and it's real. It's not, you know.
[00:52:30.996] Ryan Hartsell: There's syncopation with all our heartbeats in the music. That happens. Like, people sync together, you know?
[00:52:38.559] Scott Berman: And this experience that we just created, we're going to do more of them, but it's not a movie with a soundtrack or it's not an album with visuals. It becomes one thing, and you can't really separate the music or the visual side of it when you're in that immersive environment. For it to be right, it's got to be like one single thing. And when I'm doing a live show or visuals for a live show, there's moments that happen there. Like, yeah, that moment, that moment, that moment. And that's what you as an artist, when you're working with music, those are the moments you're looking for. Right. And in this space, you can have those moments a lot more frequently.
[00:53:20.757] Tim Delaughter: Yeah, I think that with our intention of creating a space to listen to an album, music's not going anywhere, although it seems like it is, and it flashed, and it is so disposable, but we're introducing a new way to hear an album, which is going away, and that's something that's desperately needed at this time. It's not just the Polyphonic Spree that's making albums that they want people to hear from start to finish. There's a lot of artists out there doing that. But there's not a space that fosters that and promotes a space to actually listen to a record, to explore a record, to take a journey and experience with an album like we did when we were younger when you get an album and you go and you know, have a moment with your friend, turn the lights off and listen to it from start to finish or look at the artwork and read the lyrics. It's just we took time for that. So I think what we've done and what we're going to continue to do is have a place where people can come and listen to music and take it in in a way that gives them an opportunity to actually just take it in and be entertained and take a journey with both artists, the creative of the music and the film. To me, that's what's really kind of important about this because we need it more than ever. People need those breaks. They need to be able to have that the feelings that they're having when they come to our show jeez man that's awesome and to be able to have that and have an album experience where both worlds are coming together to give me an opportunity to do that is pretty great so i'm really excited about that awesome and is there anything else that's left and said that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community
[00:55:02.673] Scott Berman: Just, it's been a great experience, especially here, just seeing the heart that people have in their work and it feels real communal with that. I've met all sorts of people here and all the artists, and they're all welcoming to your work. art just like they want you to see their art. They're not sort of closed off and this is what I'm doing. I mean, I find that more so, I don't know if it's just an immersive thing or if it's a film thing or what it is, but even though everybody here is actually in competition for awards, That doesn't matter when you're in the ballroom, when everybody's in there, everybody's trying to get over and see everybody's stuff. And it's that energy between artists that we know that, man, we're going to all work together somehow. That's super exciting. And being in that community with these artists has been great.
[00:55:56.094] Kent Bye: Any other final thoughts or anything else you'd like to say to the broader immersive community?
[00:56:00.000] Tim Delaughter: Well, this is going to be a traveling film and going to come to a dome near you. So hopefully if you're hearing this, where is this going?
[00:56:09.414] Kent Bye: So lots of immersive audiences around the world that listen, yeah.
[00:56:12.640] Tim Delaughter: So we're in Austin, South by Southwest, but we're also we're in Denton. We're in Texas. But the idea is to take this all over the world. There's roughly 2000 planetariums in the country, about 1500 in the UK and Europe. So the idea is to bring this film all around the world and for people to come check it out. We're also going to do some traveling. Doing this experience, there's people wanting us to bring the dome to here and bring the dome to there. So there's no telling where it's going to pop up, but that's the plan. We want you to come check this out.
[00:56:48.024] Ryan Hartsell: Yeah, and there's a huge canvas and there's an infrastructure for your art come play. You know, a lot of the VR content over the years of all of us making it, a lot of that can be applicable for the domes. And a lot of VR content that's great that a lot of people haven't seen could be shown. So there could be a whole new life with the VR that's already out there.
[00:57:16.866] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, it was a real pleasure to be able to sit down with each of you to hear this story that kind of sounds like it should be impossible that you were able to pull it all off and, you know, bring all these things together and to herd all the cats and bring all the technology bits. And yeah, and I feel like just seeing the lines of just how quickly, like as soon as I would walk in, there would be like a line of like 50 or 60 people wanting to sign up and fill up all the slots immediately. So yeah. Just really encouraging to see that this is something that is tapping into a huge need for people to come together and to listen to music for an extended period of time. Like you said, these albums, you know, so just really great to see. And I wish you the best of luck as you continue to take this out and show it around the country, because I feel like it's resonating with folks. And, you know, it feels like it's something that's the beginning of a new phase of maybe bringing people together and finding new ways of having shared musical experiences. So thanks again for sharing a bit more about your process.
[00:58:10.902] Scott Berman: Yeah, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you very much.
[00:58:15.845] Kent Bye: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Voices of VR podcast. And there is a lot that's happening in the world today. And the one place that I find solace is in stories, whether that's a great movie and documentary or immersive storytelling. And I love going to these different conferences and festivals and seeing all the different work and talking to all the different artists and And sharing that with the community, because I think there's just so much to be learned from listening to someone's process to hear about what they want to tell a story about. And even if you don't have a chance to see it, just to have the opportunity to hear about a project that you might have missed or to learn about it. And so this is a part of my own creative process of capturing these stories and sharing it with a larger community. And if you find that valuable and want to sustain this oral history project that I've been doing for the last decade, then please do consider supporting me on Patreon at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. Every amount does indeed help sustain the work that I'm doing here, even if it's just $5 a month. That goes a long way for allowing me to continue to make these trips and to to ensure that I can see as much of the work as I can and to talk to as many of the artists as I can and to share that with the larger community. So you can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voices of VR. Thanks for listening.
