Embark on a voyage through the mesmerizing realms of immersive VR storytelling with our esteemed guest, Matthew Celia from LightSail VR and Co-Executive Producer on "The Faceless Lady" the newest immersive episodic series from Eli Roth, Crypt TV, and Meta, -who guides us through the latest advancements shaking up narrative and history. We delve into the powerful documentary potential of VR, especially as showcased in Elliot Page's project on queer Brooklyn's past. As giants like Eli Roth empower these ventures, we dissect the fusion of spatial videos with 3D content, leading to unprecedented narrative opportunities.
Join us as we pull back the curtain on the production labyrinth of VR filmmaking. We share the finer points of using Sony Venice cameras and Entaniya lenses, and how live stereoscopic previews have revolutionized the director's chair, allowing for immediate and cohesive on-set decisions. Listen to the meticulous care that crafts experiences like "The Faceless Lady," on which Matthew was Co-Executive Producer, and consider the implications of episodic VR content as a means to push creative limits and refine production techniques.
Finally, we tackle the post-production maze, revealing how even the most ornate locations like Charleville Castle present unique challenges when viewed through the lens of VR. With the help of innovative tools like Assimilate Live Effects and Andrew Hazelden's VR post-production wizardry, we reveal how we bring the director's vision to life, offering a rare peek at the impressive results that emerge from this complex process. This episode is not just a journey through the technical side of VR—it's an exploration of the artistic heartbeat that drives the industry forward.
And stay tuned for an exclusive clip from the "The Faceless Lady" episode one in the last part of the show. We were wowed! The next generation of immersive filmmaking is here, NOW.
Embark on a voyage through the mesmerizing realms of immersive VR storytelling with our esteemed guest, Matthew Celia from LightSail VR and Co-Executive Producer on "The Faceless Lady" the newest immersive episodic series from Eli Roth, Crypt TV, and Meta, -who guides us through the latest advancements shaking up narrative and history. We delve into the powerful documentary potential of VR, especially as showcased in Elliot Page's project on queer Brooklyn's past. As giants like Eli Roth empower these ventures, we dissect the fusion of spatial videos with 3D content, leading to unprecedented narrative opportunities.
Join us as we pull back the curtain on the production labyrinth of VR filmmaking. We share the finer points of using Sony Venice cameras and Entaniya lenses, and how live stereoscopic previews have revolutionized the director's chair, allowing for immediate and cohesive on-set decisions. Listen to the meticulous care that crafts experiences like "The Faceless Lady," on which Matthew was Co-Executive Producer, and consider the implications of episodic VR content as a means to push creative limits and refine production techniques.
Finally, we tackle the post-production maze, revealing how even the most ornate locations like Charleville Castle present unique challenges when viewed through the lens of VR. With the help of innovative tools like Assimilate Live Effects and Andrew Hazelden's VR post-production wizardry, we reveal how we bring the director's vision to life, offering a rare peek at the impressive results that emerge from this complex process. This episode is not just a journey through the technical side of VR—it's an exploration of the artistic heartbeat that drives the industry forward.
And stay tuned for an exclusive clip from the "The Faceless Lady" episode one in the last part of the show. We were wowed! The next generation of immersive filmmaking is here, NOW.
Hi there, welcome to the Stereoscope podcast. This is our fifth edition. I'm Byron, I'm Anthony, and this month we have an incredible new guest. He's Matt Celia from Lightsail VR. From LightSailVR, we've got a oh sorry. We've got some really interesting new video projects to talk about, and then Matt has some really cool stuff to show us in the interview segment, and then we're going to talk about just the projects that you've been working on over the last few years.
Speaker 3:Cool, happy to be here. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate it. Yeah, super stoked. So we're going to do the news segment now. We've got some interesting projects that have popped up. It's been an interesting few weeks in the VR industry. I think VR video is really starting to hit the ground running, or immersive video in general, and that is proof positive, because I just read about this Elliot Page is producing a new production on. It's called when Brooklyn Was Queer released. It's it was. It's an. It's an immersive adaptation of this book about the history of queer Brooklyn. What do you guys, what do you guys think about this? I think it's interesting that they're really leaning into a specific space. What do you think?
Speaker 2:I mean, I think it's amazing. Obviously, you know I'm a fan of VR as a documentary tool.
Speaker 1:I think it's excellent for that. Yeah, it's an incredible place for that.
Speaker 2:So I think this sounds amazing to me. I mean, I don't really have any other like well, I'll just have to see how it gets executed. But I think I'm very excited to see what comes out.
Speaker 1:There were a couple things that I think really stood out to me in the announcement for the production is that there's two specific companies that are working on it. One is MA Productions and the other is where is it NuCanvas. So these are two existing immersive production companies that have worked on other projects. I think MA I couldn't really find anything else that they'd work on but NuCanvas had done Lustration, which was a real-time rendered project, and they also did Awake, episode 1, which was a volumetric real-time rendered thing. Matt, do you have any insight to this, by any chance?
Speaker 3:No, I'd love to see what they've done, but I think any time you get very creative people involved in doing immersive stuff, it's really good for the whole industry. It's awesome that Elliot Page is doing that. It's a great platform to tell stories. Yeah, I'm excited about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I think the thing with New Canvas that struck out to me was that they've, they've done um a couple other projects, so I'm, I'm, but none of them were traditionally filmed, or at least the ones that I saw there. There were a couple uh on their site that I think were 360. I don't think they were vr 180, but lustration sort of looked like it was um, made in unity, possibly unreal um, but it had a uh sort of a rotoscope, like a pseudo rotoscope. Look to it um.
Speaker 1:So I think, especially with something uh, obviously in a book like this, when Brooklyn was queer, they don't have access to old-timey Brooklyn, you know. So I think there's possibly a chance that they could use some sort of reimagining through real-time rendered stuff in the same vein as illustration. I mean, this is all speculation, obviously. In the same vein as lustration. I mean this is all speculation, obviously, but it really is good to see big name creators get into this space because, unfortunately, what we know is that lends a lot of legitimacy to these projects. Yeah, I mean, matt, you obviously have some insight there yeah.
Speaker 1:Matt, you obviously have some insight there. Yeah With Eli Roth on your projects. How important was his involvement in getting these projects out the door?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, you know, I think what was great about Eli is he's already a really avid VR enthusiast.
Speaker 4:That's good to know.
Speaker 3:When it first came out he did this amazing shark documentary that he filmed a ton of three 60 stuff with and ensure you know he's going out, you know, a GoPro and doing it kind of on a like a more hobbyist level but at the same time like he had great storyteller and he understands a lot about the medium and so you know you have that energy behind something and it can really propel the creative forwards in a big way. So you know, for all the projects that we've done, you know, in collaboration with Crypt TV, you know I think you always feel that kind of energy of his storytelling and you know he comes from that indie background.
Speaker 3:Anyway, yeah, cabin fever, he's like he's an in the trenches kind of creative. Um, it was always super inspiring, especially on like trick be our treat, where she wrote and directed to just be on set to watch him work.
Speaker 3:Um, you know many ways, I think we, some folks, view immersive media as being very different many ways. I think we, some folks, view immersive media as being very different than traditional storytelling, but I think that that that's a that's a big mistake. I mean, at the end of the day, storytelling is storytelling. There are techniques and and things to be aware of, um, that do or do not work in either medium, but, you know, telling a story is kind of universal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cool, that was exactly what we're looking for. I'm also really interested in volumetric video too, so I wonder what you think I want to see volumetric video.
Speaker 3:That doesn't look like an MIT science experiment.
Speaker 3:I want to see volumetric video that looks like a real finished piece, and I hope that if they're going to go that route on this, that they don't do the thing where they just go to a festival with a half-finished piece that looks like it was done on a university program. For VR and immersive media to really break out and go mainstream, it's got to look good, it's got to be polished, it's got to have that level of finesse that audiences are used to. I mean, we're used to seeing Game of Thrones. I know that's kind of a dated reference now, but you know, when that came out our jaws hit the ground because we didn't think TV could ever be that incredible.
Speaker 1:We're used to seeing House of the Dragon now. Yeah, yeah, and that's interesting that you mentioned that, because there are some rumors in the immersive video community that Apple isn't interested in any project that doesn't have a large name attached to it. Yeah, I've heard that as well, and I mean, that seems very Apple of them, but it also, you know, they want eyes on their stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, we're going to move on to the next part. Um, this is. This one was a little bit of a out of left field thing. I did not see this coming at all. I don't really have a lot of context for it. I do like mechs and mech suits, so there is some crossover there, but I don't really have any knowledge of Gundam whatsoever, other than a friend talking at me for about 20 minutes one time.
Speaker 1:So Mobile Suit Gundam Silver Phantom is an interactive VR anime movie, which that's a mouthful, but, um, the more that I started to look at it, the more that I realized like this is actually pretty interesting because, um, I don't know if you guys got to see the making of little YouTube video that they put together, but like they're taking this fairly seriously, like it is a full, like they've got storyboards and this is not. This isn't just for a, like a flat adaptation, like this is like a VR animated movie. I don't know how long it is, it's probably like 30 minutes or something like that, but yeah, uh, yeah, so it's supposedly this was said by um, one of the co-creators of the experience. This is not a game, nor is it just a narrative experience. It's an immersive adventure that leverages the best of both worlds.
Speaker 1:That's some very um lofty lofty ideals there um, but what did really stand out to me was that atlas 5 is working on it, and so that means that and this seems to be a recurring thing here is that we get these long-term because we we talked about atlas 5 on the last episode yeah, I mean, they're a proven creator of great immersive content yeah, I mean time again like they've just done great stuff.
Speaker 1:I mean I watched Gloomy Eyes, like what six, seven years ago on my Oculus Go, you know, right there. So that's why it really did start to stand out to me, and I think I saw some of the pre-vis stuff and the trailer that they put in and, hey, I'm going to watch it. I like mechs and I like space. It seems like it's almost certainly being produced in Unity or Unreal, which I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Specifically, it does seem like a little bit cheating in terms of from a filmmaker's perspective, because you can put the camera literally anywhere you want without any physical limitations.
Speaker 3:That's true, but I mean at the same time. I think for me the most interesting narrative stuff being done in VR right now is the animation.
Speaker 3:If you hop onto the quest and you look at all the quill stuff when we were prepping for the Faceless Lady, the director and I would sit in and we would actually watch a ton of the animation stuff, because we found that we were learning a lot more cinematic techniques and story techniques from the animation, because people are playing much more fast and loose there and and I think that video has been stuck in this like we're going to make a documentary with a static camera, which is fine. But I mean, we we've been doing that for the last half a decade, you know, and we found a lot of inspiration animation. So I love, like you know, atlas, five stories. I think they also tend to have their foot on the gas of, like, pushing forward narrative techniques so when you like mechs and anime.
Speaker 3:I'm in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. I mean, we have our own ideas about some mech stuff.
Speaker 2:Our own lofty ideas.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I totally understand. In fact, now that you mention it, I remembered that Lustration was partially created in Quill Cool yeah, yeah so this is relevant to the previous thing. Lustration was partially created in Quill Cool, yeah, yeah, so this is relevant to the previous thing. Anyways, I'm excited for this. It seems like it's coming out in the next three to six months. I don't know how much it's going to move the needle in terms of, but Gundam has a huge fan base, especially overseas, so we'll see.
Speaker 3:I'm curious what the distribution is. Oh, especially overseas. So we'll see. I'm curious what the distribution is, oh for sure, like I think you know outside of, you know Apple TV Plus now and MetaQuest TV, you know what is the main distribution platforms for some of these larger things. I think that's interesting.
Speaker 1:I mean, we'll see. Especially after Google announces Google and Samsung announce their headset, I can only imagine that Google is gonna rush in with exclusive VR video projects. I mean, they did it back in the day, so there's no reason to think that they wouldn't do it now.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And Samsung previously also had their own little gaggle of self-financed or co-financed stuff. Yep, all right. Now on to Spatialify. Spatialify, all right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I played with this a little bit. Matt, do you have any?
Speaker 1:history with the Spatialify? All right, yeah, I played with this a little bit. Matt, do you have any history with the Spatialify app? Do you know what it is?
Speaker 3:Yeah, definitely. I mean we were using it when I was in the first beta just trying to get my head wrapped around. Mdhevc videos and like working with stuff in the Vision Pro. I mean, I still think like got my Vision Pro.
Speaker 2:Oh nice.
Speaker 3:I'm disappointed you're not wearing it through the whole podcast. I should be right, I'd be like in his videos. I think watching spatial videos, which is not to be confused with immersive videos, they're very different is one of the greatest things about the Vision Pro platform. I mean the fact that it pulls up your photo library. It has all those things. There is one of the biggest strengths of Apple and it kind of reminds me. You know that scene in Minority Report where Tom Cruise is having a memory and there's a hologram in front of him. That's exactly how it feels.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that horrible moment where he remembers his dead family.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I was enthralled.
Speaker 3:No, but I really love it. I've been doing a lot. I actually got a Peak Design tripod for my iPhone.
Speaker 2:Perfect.
Speaker 3:Just so that I could have a nice level thing for capturing spatial videos. It's perfectly level still, which makes them a lot more comfortable to watch. Um, and you know I did. I filmed tons of my kids and spatialify. Being able to film at a higher resolution.
Speaker 1:I think is is great so, anthony, you tested this out yeah, I was gonna say how much have you tested?
Speaker 2:because, like, so what I found is that you can film at 4k 30, but the export is still 1080 yeah and do you notice any big?
Speaker 3:difference of like quality wise so far, no.
Speaker 2:What I noticed is that the field of view is wider through spatialify than the native. That makes sense so it's like. Maybe I don't know why apple might be cropping in slightly more, but otherwise my initial testing and I'll have a little bit more to say.
Speaker 2:Maybe are you going to drop in a clip I'll definitely be dropping in clips here, because I did uh, you know a comparison between the ios version and then the three different flavors you can shoot in. Spatialify my biggest like hang up with. Spatialify them. Aside from the resolution restriction, there is that you can't control the exposure at all, like at least in the ios app. You can do the tap and scroll it down to get things a little more where you want them hopefully they'll.
Speaker 2:They'll, that's gotta be, yeah that's gotta be, because they just got the camera thing working, so I'm sure. So you said you, you couldn't really see any difference quality wise no, but it is hard to compare because I was able to get different exposures out of the yeah, but I didn't see anything different, but I'm also not doing it in a natural way. I was doing it more of a studio lit way. So like that doesn't really reveal like the real weaknesses in shooting spatial video are when you're in low light and one camera is like super fuzzy and the other one is nice and sharp.
Speaker 2:You know that's yeah, but but no, no, no huge differences. What I did notice, too, is that you know how you can do the uh upload to your quest and view them in quest. That doesn't really work like you can do the upload and everything, but those files will, like, eventually stall out and stop playing.
Speaker 1:I wonder if it's a difference in bitrate. It's got to be, but I don't know.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it could be. I don't know what the bitrate is.
Speaker 2:I mean everything with.
Speaker 3:MDHVC is a bit of a black box right now. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, actually I don't really know. I was about to say something, but it was only after I did the exports. They were all roughly the same file sizes, but clearly the export is altering the files.
Speaker 1:I also think that spatial video is really interesting, because I don't know if you watched the last episode, but we dropped in a couple spatial videos into the podcast inside of an existing 3D video and it actually worked really well and I think we're sort of playing around with it in terms of because that's something that I actually really think that immersive video is good at is screens inside of other experiences tend to. I'm sort of obsessed with the concepts. I really like it. I think it's an interesting use of space. In terms of narrative stuff it's a little bit harder, but with stuff that's not as locked down to a traditional storytelling format, I think it actually works really well. You can see sort of all of my ideas historically have revolved around some sort of second screen experience or yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we call that. We call that AR and VR over here.
Speaker 4:Yeah. It's this vibe of like having an AR, advanced AR headset on your face almost where you can like have super zoom and like you know, like one of the big problems in VR is you don't have like closeups.
Speaker 3:A lot of people keep updating that stuff. It's a really healthy open-source community building. Mvhevc. Mike Swanson's doing a bunch of really interesting things. I released an open-sourced video player app for Vision Pro based on his work. I think it's nice that there's like a community of folks that are like really invigorating. It does feel a little like 2016 all over again. Yeah, you know, that's kind of fun.
Speaker 1:All right, so we're out of the news segment and we're just going to go into the interview discussion part. Now I guess we're. We'll just do it the easy way. So big big question that I ask pretty much all of our guests and it seems to be a lengthy intro into everything else is how did you get into immersive video?
Speaker 3:cool. Yeah, I'm happy to share my story. Um, it's a long road uh, to get here.
Speaker 3:But basically about 10 years ago, um, I was trying to make it as commercial director and I just made a feature-length documentary with my wife and we were shopping around uh, like oxygen and own and you know, a bunch of cable networks and, uh, my manager at the time, robert watts, who's also a college friend of mine we weren't getting any traction. It just was a lot of like just closed doors and no's, and it was frustrating because we felt like it was a really good film. Uh, film's called off the floor, by the way, uh, and it's a story of women who are. Film is called Off the Floor, by the way, and it's a story of women who are trying to take pole dancing and make it into an art form, and it's a big women's empowerment film that I made with my wife and it's a really good story. It's actually coming up on its 10-year anniversary, which is crazy to me.
Speaker 3:But you know, he comes over to my house one day and he hands me his phone with a cardboard attached and he says hey, I just saw this. I think this is going to be really cool one day. You should check it out, because you're kind of a technical guy and I put it on and I watched Walking New York was the first piece that I saw ever in VR. A Chris Milk's company at the time was like turning out some really interesting and I was like this is really interesting.
Speaker 3:This is cool, like I'm in the middle of the story, I'm in the middle of the action, but for me I kind of felt like there needed to be more. All right, so I went to VRLA that year down in Los Angeles and I watched everything I could find and I was sitting on this panel called Storytelling in VR, because I'm a narrative guy, I'm a filmmaker, I went to film school, I like to make movies and in this panel I remember the moderator goes what's your favorite story in VR? And one of the guests there who I assumed was important because they were on the stage, you know, he says I was on Mars and that was like the end of his answer. And I'm like whoa, I think you and I have different opinions on what a story is Like. What happened on Mars? Did you save the Earth from an alien invasion? Did you find 20 dollars? Did you like escape with your life? Like like, where's the conflict, where's the emotion, where's the storytelling? And uh, and that was a similar feeling I felt to all the pieces I saw at VRLA.
Speaker 3:It's like I was like this is really cool, but as a creative person, I felt like the stories I wanted to see in the storytelling, the narrative of it all didn't exist. I called robert up and I said hey, man, I'm gonna go buy a bunch of gopros. Do you want to go half on it with me? He was like sure, and one of the insights I saw from watching all that stuff is a lot of people are shooting with six GoPros, which puts the scene line straight down the middle of your action. Yeah, and I thought that was really dumb Of course.
Speaker 3:So I was like we're going to do the 10-camera GoPro that prioritizes the horizon so we can get like the most amount of coverage and the best-looking image, the cleanest stitch where our characters are sitting and where our action is in the scene. So we bought 10 gopros. We started making a bunch of really terrible videos, um, learning how to stitch and auto pano, and I kept producing and working in the 2d world. And I got a phone call from a friend, of a friend who had saw that I posted my vr rig on facebook and he said hey, I'm working with this big company. Uh, we're going to do this paranormal activity 360 seance. It's written by the writers of the film. Uh, and this company I was working with they just pulled out.
Speaker 1:I'm screwed what year was this? It's 2015 so this would have been around the time of paranormal activity four, yeah, the ghost dimension the 3d one release of the ghost dimension yeah which launched in december for christmas that year.
Speaker 3:And uh, and he said, like I saw you have a vr camera. Like can you help me out? I'm in a huge bind? And I was working on a set of a horror movie at the time, or horror like marketing assets for, uh, an stx entertainment property. And uh, I was like, absolutely, you know. So I just like walked around to my crew and I was like, hey, can you work on this saturday? You want to come work on saturday? You want to work on the saturday? I called my, we were moving, I called my movers. I'm like, hey, can you clear out my whole garage? Like a couple days early, and so, like we just took all the set design from this like marketing assets, we filled my garage with it and we we filmed this like 10 minute vr video. That was like an in-universe original. It was a narrative, storytelling horror piece with real actors, with real characters, shot on a real camera it wasn't.
Speaker 1:I've seen this.
Speaker 3:It wasn't this cheap 3D PS1-looking thing where everything scares at you. Instead, you're watching people actually be scared, which is what I thought was really missing. It's easy to be ignoring when stuff's just coming at you, but when you see someone else scared, that's when you're afraid and yeah, we shot it and it got like 10 million views overnight coming at you. But when you see someone else scared, that's when you're afraid and uh, yeah, we shot it and it got like 10 million views overnight. It just went super viral. Um, and people started sending us videos of themselves watching it and and we would. So we were like this must be really cool, so we would go to all these conferences. You know the time VR was taking off. So there's all these expos and conferences and Robert and I would have Samsung Gear VRs in our backpack with you know this paranormal activity piece loaded up and like what terrible people were we? That we would walk up to anyone important looking and be like hey, have you seen VR? And then they were usually like no, and I'd be like you want it, you want it and I'd be showing them.
Speaker 3:Paranormal activity, horrific piece where, like, people get brutally murdered. But it was. It was really visceral and it was really good. I thought I still think it's like I mean it feels dated now but I still think like it was really good and the sound was great and it felt like it was. Was it belonged to the paranormal activity universe, um, and it did move the needle for a lot of folks and we start all about like hey, can you, um, do this thing for gopro, can you do this thing for google, can you do this? And you know, robert and I just kept saying yes to really cool opportunities and trying to always put forth this idea of story first, story first. I feel like now it's like way overused as a word, but you know, when I say story I really mean it's got character, it's got conflict and it's got some emotional resonance, like you have to come away feeling something.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:That's kind of been the lifeblood of our company for the last almost 10 years now.
Speaker 1:I think that's incredibly important. I mean so I think I love Paranormal Activity. It's actually one of my favorite franchises. I think it gets a lot of hate now, but it like changed the industry. I mean talk about ultra low budget. I think it gets a lot of hate now, but it changed the industry I mean talk about ultra low budget and sort of took what Blair Witch started and then iterated on it in a really compelling way. I personally think the third one is the best of all of them. I love that movie. Anyways, we're going to move on, but this dovetails perfectly, because what do you think is the future of this industry? And I think you just said it, but I may be wrong.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean there's a lot that's exciting about what's going on right now, but I also think that we're just still getting more narrative techniques and when you think about it, if you were to count the real big narrative pieces done in this medium that have moved a needle, I mean it's hard to fill two hands right. Yeah, Like what there was Invisible, there was Hero. That was like a one-off kind of monster flick that Google did.
Speaker 1:I liked that one. That one was good.
Speaker 3:What was it? Oh, I, liked Hero.
Speaker 1:Yeah, hero was good. You know that one was good. What was it?
Speaker 3:oh, I liked hero yeah, and here was good. You know, here was good. Uh, I think felix paul did miyubi, that was in narrative. Yes, um, you know oh gosh it's not that there's not there.
Speaker 3:There are examples, like there's definitely examples, but outside of something that was done for like a marketing campaign, there's not that many. And I really think that, um, that there's an opportunity to to push forward some of that, and I, you know we talked earlier in the show about interactivity. I still want to explore that like. I still think that there's a world where, because you're in the narrative and you're like actually like surrounded by stuff and you're it makes choose your own adventure projects, in my mind, a little more native, rather than like when you watch Bandersnatch, you're behind a screen, it stops the action so you can make a choice. Like that feels so clunky to me, you know, but like immersive theater. Like that feels so clunky to me, you know, but like immersive theater. That's that's where I think like some storytelling and VR can go.
Speaker 1:I'm actually surprised that we haven't seen more things like Sleep no More adapted to immersive media. I mean, you said you had worked on a project before the podcast started. We were chatting. You had worked on a project that sort of tried to adapt that. Can you tell us a?
Speaker 3:little bit more about that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and this is so dated I don't even think it works anymore, but it's called Speak of the Devil and we took basically the same crew that made that paranormal activity thing because we'd done a few projects with them, you know, and we had like a lot of goodwill with them and we produced this thing for like no money up in the, up in the forest in big bear, and it's a uh, it's an interactive horror project with 56 unique locations over about a square mile of forest wow, and 150 some odd videos or things that can happen.
Speaker 3:And you know, depending on where you are and where who you've met and what part of the story is, it changes what happens in each of these locations. So, for example, you start you're at a campsite. It's sunny, it's awesome. You know you meet your characters. They're like we're going to go off to find this like weird cryptic tomb thing, and then you know, a few hops later they find it Spoiler alert, the demon comes out, right. And then if you return back to the campsite, the campsite's now like moodier, it's like later in the afternoon and there's creepy sounds and like there's like a weird demon creature running around the woods and, like you know, we're just trying to like up the.
Speaker 1:How did you release this? What's right? How did you release this?
Speaker 3:so we released it on oculus okay and was it a? Standalone app it was a standalone app and it was built in midi with the concept of like you had like a hero video in a loop video and you know, my take on interactive videos was we should never stop the action at any time. There should never be a moment where, like you know, the character's like pick me or pick me.
Speaker 3:Or there's like two like words on the screen, like cause. All of that feels like you're taking the world out of being present, and the whole idea of making immersive media is that you want the audience to feel present in the space.
Speaker 3:So we kind of designed it a lot like sleep no more, where characters would come in, they would interact, they would do a little thing you know, and then they would run out because something would grab their attention in a narratively justified way and you could choose do I follow them or am I? That's a whole bash of crazy. I'm going to go with this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it reminds me a lot. There was a interactive zombie film that came out in like 2007, 2008. And it was shot here in Portland, and there was a short project that I was working on, a short. There was a short project that I was working on and one of the actors that we auditioned ended up being the lead from this film that I'd seen. You know about five or ten years previous to it, but it was. It sounds a lot like what you were describing, but it was a java project and so java's not supported anymore, so you can't access this production. It is now lost to time and it was the only method of interactivity that they had for it, so they'd have to rebuild the project from scratch in a new engine if they wanted to oh wow, I think Speed of the Devil's still in the Oculus store, but I don't recommend grabbing it because I don't think it works anymore.
Speaker 3:I'm pretty sure they've all updated their sdks and we haven't touched the code base.
Speaker 1:That is that is a big problem for a lot of these, uh, interactive projects is that once, once the, the platform that you're using, stops supporting that engine. How, how do you?
Speaker 3:make problem for immersive in general, like think about all the films jaunt made. Where are they're gone.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they don't exist anymore like I teach a lot of workshops and, and you know and students about immersive media and I'm always bringing like these pieces that were touchstones for me that, like you know, they did some things well, they did some things not so well. I can't find them anymore and and then if I do find it, it's at such a low resolution and quality it's not even worth looking at. I know it's better. Like you know, there's a brilliant film in the Amazon that Jaunt produced. I think Celine Tricard was the DP on and she's a phenomenal filmmaker and it's just amazing shots of the Amazon and it only exists in this, like horribly, in this horribly compressed sub-4K version on YouTube and you're like I know the John camera is capable of much more than this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think this industry has always had an issue with putting archiving into it. Games and movies are just really bad at it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel like it's that uncomfortable friction point between the art world and the tech world, because the tech world is like well, it's old, who cares, it's gone, there's no need to have that anymore, you know? Uh, that's how you.
Speaker 3:I had billions of dollars, I would just I would be the like biggest vr archivist, because I think that it's so important. I mean, I view really what we're doing now as like 1910 in the great yeah, very much.
Speaker 1:So, um, it's okay, we're gonna move on, All right. So this one is. I think different people have different takes on this and I definitely have my thoughts on it, but what do you think differentiates immersive I put VR180 in my notes, but immersive video from flat filmmaking.
Speaker 3:That's a tough question, just because you know, every project I try to do and work on and this is a question we ask ourselves all the time is like, why should we make this in immersive? Like why is this better being in immersive? And I've been on calls where I've told creatives on the other end of the phone I've said, hey, I just I don't think this project's going to move the needle immersively. I think you should shoot it in 2d because that's what you want. Um, and I kind of really draw the line in the sand on that Cause I don't think that, you know, putting that round peg in a square hole is going to do anybody any good. Um, and I think for me, I look at okay, do we gain something by transporting someone into a new environment, to a new place? For example, concerts yeah, like you're on stage at Red Rocks. Yeah, you can't buy a ticket that good.
Speaker 1:I was looking at the prices for it was a perfect circle of Primus and Pucifer for a Red Rocks show at this soon and it was like $700 per ticket. I was like, well, that's just not going to happen.
Speaker 3:I mean five-year headset would be that close Exactly One thing that I've noticed in ticket.
Speaker 1:I was like, well, that's just not gonna happen um five year headset, exactly um. One thing that I've noticed in between the differences between the two formats is something that comes up that I have a lot of very, very strong feelings about. Is the camera as pov, a subjective versus objective reality? Is what is the camera's relationship to the audience and what is the camera's relationship to other characters within the room?
Speaker 3:so I think it's really interesting because I also think that, you know, in your original question you did put 180 and I think 180 is almost even a different medium than 360. They have very different vibes. Right In 360, I think you are much more present in the scene and you feel much more like I am a character and I have a POV. That doesn't mean that it's hardcore, henry, where you're looking down at a body and you're moving all your stuff around, but you do exist. I find that there are stories where you being acknowledged in the space is really powerful. You know, it's kind of like. The analogy I use is if you go to a party and no one looks at you or talks to you or engages with you at this party, how long do you stay Right?
Speaker 3:You don't really feel very welcome in the space and 360, I've always felt like that that's really important. In 180, though, like especially with the narrative work that we've done, particularly be mine and trick and the faces lady which is coming out, you know, um, I feel like you can be the ghost a little bit and it just seems to work because it feels a little bit more like television yeah and you're.
Speaker 3:It's more about just having something that's so huge and it feels good and the cutting styles faster, right, like it really just feels more like television, but like you're watching almost bigger than IMAX. Yeah, whereas you know, I've seen some really beautiful pieces that, like the shots really linger for a really long time and you're kind of meant to look around and explore and like those are the ones that I feel like camera placement. I feel like I need to always be in a place that I can be.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, watching Be Mine last night, something that I really took a notice to was how often the cuts were, which was more than I've usually seen. Um, how traditional dialogue segments within like a room actually flowed incredibly well and felt much more like I was watching a traditional project, but it also allowed me to project. But it also allowed me to engage with the characters in a way that was really natural in it, which is sort of the antithesis to, I think, the way that most people think about these types of scene.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like you traditionally put the camera, like in a triangle, right with the two characters and your camera would be here and you'd be like looking back and forth and you play it all out.
Speaker 3:well, like that doesn't really work in narrative unless you have really phenomenal actors. And it really kind of makes sense, because a lot of what creates modern day television is editing and piecing the story together and getting the dialogue and the pacing right. And I'm really a fan of long takes. That's why I got into this.
Speaker 3:But we spent a lot of time on be mine, like taking our sphere and going what, how many degrees are people standing? What's the height of everybody? Where's the eye lines of everybody? And like doing a lot of tests on over the shoulders of like ah, what is this language? Like, where do we put the camera? How do we intercut between the two? Where are we looking? And, like you know, editing editing in VR is very much about anticipating audience eye lines more than it is about cutting on action. We think more about where is the audience looking and less about what's happening on the screen. I mean, of course that's important because what's happening on stream drives where you're looking, but you know I see pieces all the time where I think they cut too early. Yeah, you know, we're like I'm following someone and then they cut that someone's back over here and I'm like what?
Speaker 1:right, right now. See, these are a lot of discussions that we've been having for a couple years now and, um, I think be mine and specifically the faceless lady are some of the clip that we saw that we'll show later. Um, uh, these are some of the first times that we've seen the things that we've been talking about used in the ways that are exactly the ways that we've been talking about. Yeah, and it's very Encouraging.
Speaker 3:Encouraging, it's cool right, I mean, but it's not. It's not everything always works.
Speaker 2:Right, you know like.
Speaker 3:I think that there's shots in Be Mine and in the Faceless Lady that are really interesting but don't always work and they don't always work for everybody in every setting.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 3:I think a lot of what's really tough right now is you've got many ways to view this content and then you also have an audience that is very fragmented. You have VR enthusiasts that have been in VR have VR legs, can handle moving camera, can handle fast cuts, can handle stereoscopic stuff. And then you know, 20-30% of people watching this stuff have literally never been in a headset before and if you even move that camera slightly they're going to get woozy and they're going to feel sick.
Speaker 1:I still suffer from fairly intense VR sickness under the right circumstances. But one thing that I was very impressed with from, specifically, be Mine and Faceless Lady is that I didn't get any semblance of VR sickness whatsoever at any point.
Speaker 3:There were some elements of feeling uncomfortable, but that had more to do with close talkers and stuff like that yeah, and there's also like, when you're making horror we have this discussion a lot about like, hey, I think this might make people feel uncomfortable and then creatively go well, it's a horror piece we want it's supposed to there's a couple scenes in, like the faceless lady, where we intentionally put the camera off axis and we intentionally kind of like messed with your worldview because something traumatic has just happened and we want the audience to also feel that sense of disorientation, like the characters of the screen are feeling yeah, yeah and I think that that all really worked.
Speaker 2:I think all the prep you did because I would it was it kept striking me on all three pieces that like I was never looking in the wrong place when the cut happened, I was always looking right where I needed to be for the very next shot, so like all that paid off and I thought that was uh, because most of the time I'm looking over here and then, like you say, they cuts to a shot and like, oh shit, I gotta go over here now and it doesn't work and they're kind of like a nice evolution of storytelling, like trick-or-treat was all direct-to-camera, like you're on rails in a funhouse yeah very scary, weird mended funhouse, uh, and then be mine was like okay, well, we're gonna now approach it more like a television show and do a lot more cuts.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean a lot more cuts. We had, I think, something like 300 cuts in that 30 minute piece. It was intense. And then you know faces. Liddy takes that a step further by going, hey, let's do six episodes, let's do it in 3d, like let's tell, let's tell a serialized story, which also presents a lot of challenges.
Speaker 1:There were. There's some things in be mine that I noticed. There was some choices to use POV during dialogue, which I have. I'll just be very frank. I don't really like POV shots in VR180 stuff. I I personally it's not. I don't think that you can never use them, I just think that they're. They're a crutch for certain types of stories and a lot of people get obsessed with that concept and then they're not thinking out of the box, or at least I totally agree.
Speaker 3:I mean, I can't tell you how many like requests, proposals that we've had where it's like we are pov, and like vr does not always mean pov yes you. You may be in the space, but you can't really be the protagonist in a story, because then how do you grow in a meeting where you can't give back?
Speaker 1:You can't contribute anything and nothing can happen to you.
Speaker 3:It just does not work, and I know the shots you're talking about in B-Mind. It's like when we're in the library, which is a a difficult scene. It was like the first day of filming, um, and it was one of those things that we were trying and I think, like we look back on that, we go like I don't know if that really worked as well as we thought it was, but it was jarring at that moment and, like you know, creatively, we were thinking like, hey, it'd be kind of cool to like wake people up here a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there was. There was a sequence that I did like because it was more intentional and I think it added. It was the the first pov shot of the killer outside of the sorority house, which I realized was a direct allusion to black christmas. Yeah and uh, the pov shots from black christmas, um, which is one of the first POV killer shots in cinema, other than I think that the other one by. Anyways, the heavy breathing yes, exactly. And.
Speaker 4:Maniac there we go.
Speaker 1:Maniac was the first one and that one I think worked because it was an homage, but it was also putting you in the character of the killer at a certain point, and you know it's also referencing Halloween et cetera. But that thing, things like that, creative decisions like that, I think, work in ways that help the project along.
Speaker 3:I think you have to have a motivated reason to switch your POV in any project. You have to have a motivated reason to cut. You have to have a motivated reason to do anything. And the problem is that sometimes we try things and then we realize that we're just trying them because we want to experiment with them, but the motivations are a little fuzzy. Anthony, you had some stuff, some more technical stuff, yeah, yeah happy to geek out about the tech yeah, I mean it's something.
Speaker 2:It's funny, because I wrote some of the questions and then I watched the behind the scenes. I was like, well, that answers some of them.
Speaker 3:But uh, you know so that's a great, the one that eli roth did for trick beer it's so. It's such a great, great piece People should really watch that, because it's really fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it really is, and it's very enlightening. But yeah, so one of my questions was about the camera, but I feel like at least on the Haunted House one that was it looks like a Venice with just an ultra-wide. Is that right? Like sony venice? Is that what it was?
Speaker 3:so trick for your treat and be mine were both shot on venice, on the venice twos. Okay, actually, trick for your treat, I think maybe it was venice one and be mine was venice two. That would that would make sense. Um, and it was shot with a 200 degree lens, um, from entenaya.
Speaker 2:I think that's how you say yeah, yeah, I think that's right.
Speaker 3:And it was good and it worked really well, but it was mono, you know.
Speaker 2:Which is my next?
Speaker 3:question yeah, and I think, like you know, I always wish that those were stereo. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think that they would have been really cool if they were 3D.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that was effectively the first thing that we commented on was man, I wish this was in 3d, I know, and because it's so much more immersive and like 180 as a format really should be stereo because, like, one of the main reasons to shoot 180 is that like this stereo works and like and it's easier and the effects are much, much harder in 3d they're so hard and and the time it takes to produce it.
Speaker 3:So you know the real reality is that, at the end of the day, you have only so many resources available to you budget and time and if you're going to spend that money on technical stuff, rather than putting the money on the screen in terms of like production, design and cast and like locations, like always better, sir, doing doing production, design locations and all that stuff. Like you're always much, much better doing the things that are on the screen, because a lot of people can't even tell the difference between monoscopic and stereoscopic.
Speaker 2:It's kind of kind of silly yeah, which is um, I can, for sure, I absolutely can.
Speaker 1:It's huge to me, I mean when, when you, when you sent us the clip of the Faceless Lady, I instantly went oh well, there we go.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:But you know like.
Speaker 3:The other reason is you know the Faceless Lady. We prepped for that show for like two and a half months.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 3:And we prepped on, you know, trick or Treat for like maybe a month and then I feel like be mine was like just an extension of trick or treat, because we've wrapped trick or treat and went immediately into production like a couple weeks later to be mine like it was so fast, and so we recycled a lot of the same stuff because you just didn't have the time. And the way that you move the camera, the way that you tell your story, the way you block your actors when you're dealing with stereo, that's all different yeah like you have very real limitations, yeah, limitations
Speaker 3:and I would say, in the faceless lady, we come very close and maybe we even break a couple of those and some of them may work and some of them don't work, like we really push the limit on how close you can get, where you block people, how you set the stage of tableaus. Um, and you know, I think that that was part of the fun and that's like part of what we're so blessed to be able to do is to really innovate and to really try things and push the envelope and get feedback from people about what worked, what didn't.
Speaker 1:We've really talked about. We've we We've really talked about. We really want to work on an episodic production because we think that it'll help iterate and test things. I mean, look at Star Trek, the Next Generation, one of the best television shows of all time. They were doing things on the fly that nobody had ever done in television before, and now it is a staple of the industry because they shot a feature film every week. And that's sort of the level that we're on with these types of productions is that you're iterating in ways that nobody has the time or budget to do in other places.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you said it before, it's like we're watching this evolution happen in real time. Yeah, with every iteration.
Speaker 1:So each episode? How long are the Faceless Lady?
Speaker 3:episodes the Faceless Lady. It's six episodes of TV. They're between 22 and 25 minutes.
Speaker 1:Dang, that's like full episodes. Yeah, there's six episodes.
Speaker 3:They all tell a nice arc. I think the writing is incredible. I think the writing is incredible. I think the acting is really good. I think the way that the director, john Ross, staged this stuff and, by the way, he had never made a VR film before Fascinating Both him and the DP had never done a VR film before Impressive.
Speaker 3:Never worked in 3D before. Part of my job on this production was to help them, to help translate, to help solve problems, to help show them all the things that you shouldn't do, to show them the things that you should do, and then to talk about the in-between moments where like, should we do this, should we not do this? Well, what does that say? Like, hey, this stereo the 3d is going to really be not going. Really, maybe we're doing that specifically so that we can drive attention to this part of the frame. Does that work? I don't know.
Speaker 1:The audience says they're going to be the judge were there any ideas that maybe something stuck in their head that you were like that's not going to?
Speaker 3:well, I think a lot of traditional filmmakers, they're used to moving. Think like, you know a lot of traditional filmmakers. You know they're very, they're used to moving really fast. You know um, really fast. And you know, uh, brandon again, who's the dp on this is like a pro up and down, like he is probably the best dp I've ever worked with. He's so, so good and he moves at a very, very fast clip and we had a very compressed schedule. But there were some things where you know, as a dp, you're like, oh, I can put the camera on fast clip and we had a very compressed schedule. But there were some things where you know, as a DP, you're like, oh, I can put the camera on a Ronin, we can just do this handheld. And I had to come in and just be like you know what? In 2D that works great because you can stabilize and do all this stuff. But in VR, that little bit of motion like this is gonna make things really nauseating.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, we talked about this stabilization, like what's your stabilization rig look like, because we've had our own problems with that.
Speaker 3:So we did something really cool, I think on the faces, lady. You know Brennan wanted to move very quickly and he was like I really want to put the camera on a Ronin 2 and have it live on a Ronin 2 the entire shoot. And we had the Ronin 2 with the operator Rua who was going to be on wheels and panning and tilting. At first I was like guys, I really don't know if this is going to like you never pan mid shot.
Speaker 3:You don't tilt mid shot like that's like recipe for nausea and uh, and brendan was like. You know, I think we should. I think we should try it and see where we can push the limit. So we put up a bunch of camera tests and we found something really interesting. One of the most uncomfortable movements in vr is this lateral movement. Yeah, uncomfortable movements in VR is this lateral movement yeah. Right, because it just feels like the world's swaying from you and also, if you just pan the camera, super uncomfortable.
Speaker 3:Big no-no we found that if we combine lateral movement with panning the camera, we talked about this.
Speaker 1:We talked about this.
Speaker 3:We literally put a piece of tape in the middle of the monitor and Rulo would be on the wheels and keep that person locked dead center. It made for really comfortable, really interesting motion.
Speaker 3:And we were able to do stuff we'd never been able to do before. By dialing that in we had to keep the speed kind of slow. We really worked together to try to figure that out. But I think that some of the way that we move the camera in the Faceless Lady has never been done before and feels really good. And again, we're talking about the animation stuff that John Ross and I kind of went into in prep. That's where we got some of these ideas. I think is because animation, they are a little bit better about moving the camera and a little more adventurous. I think is because, you know, animation they are a little bit. They're a little bit better about moving the camera and a little more adventurous, I think.
Speaker 1:I think there's, for some reason, rendered stuff there's a better sense of, there can be a stronger sense of presence. It's a sixth off.
Speaker 3:It's a sixth off nature.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know, of all the cool stuff is all the cool stuff is sixth off, and even when you move your head just this much, you're getting parallax information. You don't get that in video and that can be really disorienting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's for sure. But yeah, it's interesting that you found that, because that's what we have started to observe, because there's this shot in the clip that you've shared where there's this tracking back and camera right all the way back for like several I don't know like a minute that was done on a that was handheld, that was on a no track, nothing. I was just done on like that's what it looks like weird like arm. I have the same with the ready rig.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I have that ready rig kind of thing, but it looks more like a doc ock yeah type thing, it's crazy, um, but we stabilize that a lot too. Yeah, like I would say, would say, out of the 318 visual effects shots, maybe 100 of those were stabilization.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we haven't gotten into much of the post-talk here. I think LightSail seems to have a fully featured post situation going on, sounds like yeah on sounds like. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we are. Well, you know, one of the unique things about LightSail is like we do production really well and we also do post really well, and this enables like the two heads to talk to each other, which is really important Because, as a post house, we've been handed a lot of footage that was literally unstitchable and unworkable and it's like we can't, we just can't. As a post house, we've been handed a lot of footage that was literally unstitchable and unworkable and it's like we can't, we just can't, um, and we don't shoot anything that we couldn't post ourselves, uh, and by understanding the whole pipeline and understanding all the tricks and things that you can get away with. I think that's what allows us to keep pushing the needle a little bit and trying different things, because we know we can kind of get away with and we can do it all internally in house um, I want to get into maybe some logistical stuff like how did, what was the process of putting the faceless lady together in terms of reproduction, in terms of producing?
Speaker 3:yeah, I mean, you know I can't speak too too much to that because our role in the project really was more in the vr realm of things. Sure, you know um and you know crypt and the team over there. They did a really great job and there's a huge machine of production that was outside a lot of what lightsail was doing because we were very focused on, hey, let's make sure we capture it right for vr and then, once we have the footage, we need to do all the proper of the 3d and the stereoscopic and the color grade and all that jazz. Um, I will say that it was. It was. It's a full tv show like there's really extremely talented folks. We had an amazing crew over in Ireland, um, where we shot um, and we had an Irish production partner over there that did just amazing work and it was. You know it was. It was a big beast I noticed we worked for 26 days, 26.
Speaker 1:Wow, I noticed that there's a lot of really impressive uh location work on this production and I think that's something that people don't really realize how much actual locations are super important.
Speaker 3:They're so important and I always say your location in VR is once you lock your location, everything else falls into place because it is so, so, so important. The castle that we found, charleville Castle in Tomar it felt like it was built for VR.
Speaker 3:It had these like ornate ceilings with like all this 3D depth, and it was a castle. That wasn't built as a castle but it was built in the 1800s by some rich land baron who wanted a party castle. He wanted like a castle that bring like host big balls and galas and stuff so it's like a romanticized version of a castle, and that's why I think it works so well for this kind of story um, yeah, yeah, I mean well, no, I mean, that was, I was the same same thing that I noticed from it.
Speaker 2:Uh, because it affects the lighting so much and so you're so limited in lighting in VR180 or whatever. So I was like you've got these giant windows. It was really hard in this production.
Speaker 3:Lighting was so challenging because you're filming. We filmed on the RED V-Raptor with the Canon Dual Fisheye lens and it's a very high-quality image, but it's not great in low light. We're filming 60 frames a second, which is also not great in low light. That lens. You really want to shoot it at an f5.6, which is also not great in low light.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you got all the challenges.
Speaker 3:Poor Brendan the DP, and Kevin our gaffer. We're just banging these huge HMI lights through these windows to try to get exposure on stuff. It was very, very challenging and of course I'm there saying like, hey, if you put a light in the shot, I got to paint it out later. So the less times we do this, the better financially.
Speaker 1:So that's actually something that I'm interested in is how does painting something out in stereo affect that shot?
Speaker 3:I mean, if you're doing a static shot, which there's not very many static shots at the Paceslip if you're doing a static shot, it's very easy, right? Yeah, you keep the camera locked off, you take out your lights, you maybe adjust your exposure or bounce some light in a different way and you shoot a clean plate.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And there's lots of shots that we did that like in the faces lady at the top of the stairs in the main entrance hall, like lots of lights are in that scene, you can't see any of them in the final piece.
Speaker 1:But what if it's not a static shot?
Speaker 3:If it's not a static shot, it's very complicated.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Because you basically have to have a motion track rig and we've done a lot of experiments trying to do it without having a motion track rig and I'm sure you can do it, but it will cost you a lot of time and money Like a lot of time, and money, it's almost better to figure out a different way. Each of the opening shots for episodes two through six were captured on a motion control rig to do a pullback from the computer screen.
Speaker 1:And that ain't cheap by itself.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but we used a pretty hacked together version that Scott Lynch has created, so like goodness to him and his engineering talent. It was very lo-fi but it gets the job done because you just need it to be consistent speed. Those shots still took our lead senior compositor well over a week to do and they were very difficult visual effects shots but they looked great and we were able to execute them and paint out lights and do screen replacements and all that jazz, and so kudos to the team.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really. I mean, I can't wait to see more of it. You know the clip that you shared is amazing. So my last question because we already talked about all the 3D stuff and I think you answered all that that you want to be shooting 3d as much as possible and I'm assuming again that you did mono previously. Just because of the, the technical balance, just lean more towards mono, right For time really post time and post production time and stereo.
Speaker 3:Everything takes so much longer. I mean, we have 300 visual effects shots in D-Mind Right, and to do that, oh, it's just insane.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's an insane amount of money and time.
Speaker 2:So my last thing, though, is about the, because it looks like you offer this on your site for a live preview with VR NDI. So have you got this figured out for stereoscopic Cause we love A hundred percent. Yeah, okay, so we absolutely do.
Speaker 3:Um, so you know, what you have to do is build a ST map, a stereoscopic ST map. We're big fans of the Canon dual fisheye. Obviously it's a great lens, um, and we've used some tools developed by andrew hazelden, who has worked in. Uh, he just has a bunch of free the card of vr stuff.
Speaker 2:That's what we're we use for our post. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:So if you make, a if you make an st map in that you can then use assimilate live effects to get your sdi or hdmi input into the computer. Unwrap both eyes and then use vrNDI to look at it inside a headset. Actually, if you're using Scratch, you don't need VRNDI, to be quite honest, Because the current shipped version of VRNDI. You have to be plugged into the computer, but Scratch will just do it for you.
Speaker 3:Oh sweet, which is great. So you'll have a stereoscopic preview. I have a little bit of a special piece of kit that we just have for LightSail that allows wireless VR, and the idea is so when we were on the set of all these productions we had, you know, every department had had a VR headset. The directors walk around with a VR headset, the DTS VR headset, and all of us are able to look at stuff together during the take, live, while it's happening, and spot things that don't work. And you know filmmaking filmmaking, as you know, is iterative, so take one rarely the right take. So we go and we make adjustments. You know we hide some camera shadows and tweak some lights. You know stuff like that. Um, and to get you know really good, I think that live preview on set is one of the things that I feel like has really elevated these productions. It's given creatives the confidence and executives the confidence to know that like, hey, we're doing something very cool here and we we do know that it's going to work right, right, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's taking the guesswork out of a lot of it, and that's why I was like excited to see that you were offering something, because I hadn't found a solution yet and we desperately could use one yeah, I mean you have to If you're going to go out on a production on this level and not have a preview.
Speaker 3:That's just crazy to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, this is how we've been going for a while.
Speaker 1:I mean, we've tried it and we've hacked together With different cameras and stuff, but yeah, not with the. It's never really worked in the way that we wanted it to.
Speaker 3:Simulate. Livefx honestly is the game changer for Onset and you know, lightsails partners with Assimilate and we do a bunch of work with them on the virtual production side as well. But, like, in terms of immersive, like live preview, there's no better tool out there. It's just great. So I brought a clip from the Faceless Lady. This is from Episode 1. Um, the story of the faceless lady is that three couples are invited to this castle to participate in games to win the castle, um, and this is the kickoff of the rules and the introduction to the first game. And you know we chose this clip because we think it's a really good setup for the series. But also some of the camera motion and the staging in this, I think is particularly great and it really looks good in stereo. So you know, enjoy.
Speaker 4:There are only two requirements for these contests Love and commitment. Commitment to playing the games and your love for one another. Very sensible shoes, apparently. Can I say I'm a comfort girl. So when do we start? Oh, tom, it's we already have. So is this like a tradition? The games I mean, sir? In a sense, yes, though perhaps somewhat different. You see, 350 years ago, a massacre occurred within these walls, one which turned a great romance into a needless tragedy. I'm talking about the headless woman, the faceless lady. She had a head and a name Margaret, lady Margaret, actually.
Speaker 2:So how much of this story was actually true?
Speaker 4:The story is true, though it remains incomplete, which is why you are all here. Over the next 36 hours, we will recreate the events of that fateful night, the siege of Killar Castle, and, as on that night, the winner shall inherit everything. I'm sorry we're being filmed for this right. You think this is a TV show? Obviously.
Speaker 1:Games castles, the prize.
Speaker 4:I can assure you there are no cameras. And now the first game awaits. Before we begin, the rules are simple. Rule number one when you hear the carnics, the round has begun and, as on that historic night, time is precious. Rule number two under no circumstances should you attempt to leave the grounds For any reason. Is that disqualification? Finally, these games are a war of attrition. Each round will eliminate one player. The last man or woman standing wins. The siege began with the death of a sentry. This is so dang. You shall each take turns to throw the axe. The first to knock the sentry off his perch wins.
Speaker 2:And now that we're back, we're hoping that y'all really enjoyed that as much as we did.
Speaker 1:I thought it was great. So that shot at the end there where the camera just lifts up.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:How did that happen? How did you guys do that?
Speaker 3:So we had the camera. We had the camera kind of on a dolly on track and on a jib. And the reason why the camera lived on a jib a lot of the time was if you're going to have track you have to have the camera extend out over the tracks so you don't see it when you look straight down.
Speaker 4:Yep.
Speaker 3:And so you know, because we had that, we were able to, you know, do some cool things raising up and really play with the movement of the camera. And I really have to say that I think you know John Ross, the director on this, is a master at moving the camera and he watched a lot of films. I think one of the big touchstones was orson welles's citizen came for this project because it's a film where these scenes play out in tableaus with really deep focus, with kind of slow and very prescribed camera moves, and it became like kind of a real textbook example for what we think works in this medium and we lifted a few things out of that for sure.
Speaker 1:The old becomes new again, one thing that I also really noticed and we talked about it a little bit is that there's that shot where they're walking across the field. And the camera is moving on two axes at the same time.
Speaker 2:It's like breaking three rules. Yeah, and it's something that we've talked about.
Speaker 1:We're like oh, absolutely never do this. I mean last episode. I said yeah, only one axis at a time. Even Eli says this.
Speaker 3:That is still true, like one axis at a time, absolutely like a fair bit. But you know, like all rules, rules can be broken.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And what makes that piece work is that you have an anchor point, you have the characters on the screen that you're following and they maintain the exact same distance and the exact same screen like position point in space for the majority of that move and even at the end, when we whip over the door, you still have your it's your eyes that go to quinn at the door and your eyes that go to Quinn at the door, and your eyes are going with the move. Everything that we did with this show, the important thesis was where is the audience looking, anticipate where the audience is looking and where they want to look and where you need them to look, and as long as your camera motion affirmed that audiences won't get sick, it's when you do a move like that but then you like create action on the other side of the frame that causes someone to turn back. That's where nausea comes into play.
Speaker 1:You know what that was. It was great. I thought the color on it was fantastic. I hope it looks as good in MetaTV as the clip that you gave us.
Speaker 3:I mean, I think it does when we do our color. We work with Jeff Sousa from Dungeon Beach in Brooklyn. He's a phenomenal colorist.
Speaker 3:We had a really cool pipeline on this show where we actually converted it all to an RE log 4 pipeline which I think just has some nice highlight roll-off, and we did a full real grade in DaVinci Resolve on this and it looks really, really nice and it's formatted Sorry, it's colored specifically for the Quest VR headsets, so P3 color space with Gamma 2.2. It looks the same when we're doing our color session, as it does in Horizon Worlds, as it does in MetaQuest TV. If you watch this in Horizon Worlds, it's a different experience because there's obviously avatars and a 3D environment around it and it's lower resolution. If you really want the full cinematic experience, head to MetaQuest TV as well, where you can see it in its 8K glory and it really feels good awesome, matt.
Speaker 1:I think we're coming to the end here. Thank you so much for being here. You're really a pleasure to have on. Do you have any last thoughts for us?
Speaker 3:no, I really hope. I'm not sure when this is dropping, but Faceless Lady comes out April 4th on Horizon world. Subscribe to it at it, talk about it and if you have any thoughts, please get in touch and share them with me, because I'm really. I think we've pushed the envelope here. I think we did some really unique things. I want to know what people think, because there's not a lot of narrative series that have been done in VR and I really want us to keep doing more, so I hope we get the opportunity.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, super excited about it. Yeah, thank you so much, matt.
Speaker 3:Yeah, cool, thank you both have a fun time today.
Speaker 2:Adios. Thanks, man.
Speaker 3:Take care Bye.