Episode 01: Welcome to the 2nd Level
In this first episode, Marcie Jastrow and Christina Heller bring you into the ever changing world of immersive media. As industry leaders, they will explore content creation, VR, AR, MR, and other fields of interest, as well as discuss the shifts within the industry and where it is heading in the future.
Episode Notes
Mike Matzdorff: There's a lot that we don't know. There's a lot that we don't know about technology. This particular technology the quote "R" quote technology. The letter R that is VR, AR, MR. I don't even know how many R’s there are, but Marcie Jastrow and Christina Heller do. Let me introduce them here on the second level podcast, talking about making the jump from where we are, to where we are going.
00:00:36:05 - 00:00:59:29
Marcie: Welcome to the second level. This is Marcie Jastrow and I'm Christina Heller. So if you're listening right now you're probably a supporter of Marcie or me and it really means a lot that you're taking time out of what is I'm sure a very busy schedule to listen to what we have to say. We're excited about this. Marcie why don't we talk a little bit about why we wanted to start this. It was about a month and a half ago I think Christine and I were at UCLA and we had done this amazing panel.
00:01:00:01 - 00:01:12:14
Marcie: And what happened was I had been listening to all these podcasts and listening to all these people talk about immersive media, VR, AR, MR and I didn't really feel like I was getting any real information.
00:01:12:16 - 00:01:25:19
Christina: We kept getting asked to do speaking engagements together and we have fun. Yeah, you know, we have fun and I think we overlap in interesting areas, but then we also bring different areas of expertise, that we can lend some experience and in conversation too.
00:01:25:24 - 00:01:56:01
Marcie: And I think we're also in areas within content creation, that are extremely different. Christina is really forward thinking in Volumetric Capture which I think is ultimately where we all are hoping and planning on going. And I'm in traditional content creation as well as game engine workflows. And so I think that we bring a level of expertise that not a lot of people really understand within this whole world of immersive, but we're definitely in a fun weird emerging technology space.
00:01:56:03 - 00:02:30:27
Marcie: The whole concept let's let's first talk about the second level and why we decided to actually name at the second level. I have been in or around immersive media now for the last five years and really feel like we have come out of this newbie stage and are moving into what is the second level and I believe that over the next decade starting from 2020 to 2030 there are going to be so many changes in traditional content creation, immersive content creation, interactive content creation and I really felt like documenting that and really understanding who those people were who really lifted it off and gave it its wings would be a lot of fun to do. But you know what enough about me. Christina go, let's go.
00:02:34:06 - 00:03:12:17
Christina: Well I'll start why I like the name the second leve,l so we were talking about reality and I was doing some research on the concept of reality and we stumbled on Plato's various levels of reality and the second level of reality is the reality of form, is that which we perceive which is ever changing and ever shifting. And so, I thought that that was a nice theme because it's the tangible, it's the here and now. But the here and now it's constantly shifting and changing and hopefully on this podcast we can begin to bring to light the things that are coming, that are here and and all of the fun pivots and changes that happen all the time in our industry.
00:03:12:22 - 00:03:18:25
Marcie: What I think is you're going to find most is that Christina is very deep and very fucking surface.
00:03:18:27 - 00:04:12:18
Christina: Well that's good. That's good. And I've got the like quiet radio voice and Marcie is full of life. That's right I'm very loud and obnoxious. I have been in the entertainment industry and MNE for the last 20 ish years I don't want to date myself too much and ended up, at a time in post, when standard definition was switching over to high definition. What I learned about that, was that was the start state of new technology. And so everybody kind of was leveling up at the same time, everybody had to understand going from standard definition, traditional assembly to color correction to titling to deliverables. How do you do that in high definition. I was a salesperson. That's what I was really good at. That is my gift I can sell anything. And lived in and around post-production with the leaders in post for most of my career. And once you talk about the Technicolor part because that's where you really made the shift into immersive media.
00:04:12:26 - 00:04:51:26
Marcie: It was Sundance 2015 where I was at New Frontier and started looking at what this thing called Virtual Reality was, my friend Shannon Gaines put cardboard in front of my face and said oh my gosh Marcie you have to learn this it's the new thing and I'm like What the fuck. But this was something new. Nobody knew. So I wanted to go back to that start state right. I wanted to be the person who understood as much as I could technically about game engine and kind of like when you went from SD to HD this was this chance we realized that the playing field kind of level right where it is you become an expert now now you can start,exactly, so everybody was starting up maybe we should call it start state now.
00:04:52:22 - 00:05:28:09
Marcie: But everybody was learning at the same time we didn't know what you know VR was really going to be, this was Google Cardboard you know and then it was like all these moments of oh my God the Oculus is coming out. Oh my God. Now we've got the new vibe. Oh my gosh. PS4 that's going to change the whole level playing field. So we were waiting for all these moments but ultimately what was happening with Technicolor is they were really looking at what their future was going to be in and how could they take traditional content creation and move it into other markets other than entertainment and media. So they decided to create this thing this place called the Technicolor Experience Center and they asked me to run it.
00:05:28:12 - 00:05:52:16
Marcie: And so for the last four years that is what I did at Technicolor, I ran the Technicolor Experience Center which was a place where creators, researchers, developers, artists from all over the industry really kind of came and learned and did and curated content for them. But in addition to that really looked at the brands of Technicolor and taught them where we thought immersive was going.
00:05:52:18 - 00:06:00:21
Christina: If you had to describe yourself in like a sentence, What would you, how would you describe your focus or your, I mean that's tough but I'm just saying like that's a lot of information so.
00:06:00:27 - 00:06:35:24
Marcie: Well you know what. That was a problem. There was focus in the sense that I wanted to be the person that understood immersive media and that was really it. I wanted to understand how to make it. I wanted to understand how to tell a story for it. I wanted to be able to explain it for other people. I wanted to sell it as a service. I wanted to understand the hardware. And I think ultimately what happened was, you end up having so much knowledge that you can't distill it down. And, and I made so much content there, so many different pieces of content that at the end of the day it really was like OK now what.
00:06:35:26 - 00:07:06:27
Marcie: And so for me I know like the center is no longer. And now I'm moving into a whole new chapter into my career. You know you always say you forget what you know because you've done so many different things. I want to remember, I want to document. I want to be able to impart information and knowledge that I have and what I've learned just in content creation, new technologies and new hardware and I want to meet more people that maybe I haven't met. There's so many interesting people out there. And so bringing them on this podcast I think will be fun.
00:07:14:06 - 00:09:35:07
Christina: So, I met Marcie through the Technicolor experience center because I also have been working in immersive technology for a number of years. Now for me, that shift happened at New Frontiers in 2014. So I got one year on you Marcie. I come from before that the world of radio, journalism, independent documentary filmmaking. So very much the world of nonfiction media but multimedia. I had done almost everything in the form of production and radio TV and film that you can do, camera, editing, hosting, producing. 2014 New Frontiers I was also looking for for something new. I was hungry to see where technology and media were possibly intersecting.
And like magic I stumbled on the DK1 at New Frontiers along with a number of creative colleagues of mine, Ian Forester, Dylan Southern who that I then created VR Playhouse with, the genesis of that was New Frontiers 2014 when we tried the headset. We came back and you know Ian immediately started looking into how to make this stuff. And I started looking at the business landscape and I was like this is really interesting, I can totally see the potential of being able to immerse yourself in a new world, to be able to look around as if you're there and all 360 degrees who's doing this.
And the answer was only a couple of people really at the time, you know shout out to two Weaver who was then called Wemo and Verse which came within. And those were the only two companies I could really see that were doing this and I thought much like you, Wow what an incredible opportunity. Here we have a level playing field where Steven Spielberg doesn't know more than I do about creating for this medium necessarily. Granted there is a little bit of a little bit of arrogance in that. You know I didn't realize that there was a lineage of VFX and and workflows that a lot of this content creation was building upon.
But that perfect blend of confidence and naivete came together and off off we went and I led VR playhouse for three years with Ian and my amazing team there after running that company for three years and doing over 60 projects in the immersive landscape that fell into all different kinds of use cases and verticals and approaches. I wanted to specialize, I was tired of having to be the expert on all the tools and all the various hardware and all the various software it was it was a lot.
00:09:35:09 - 00:09:47:04
Marcie: And didn't you find everybody who found out about VR or AR or MR, all of a sudden wanted to be the person with all the knowledge. Of course everybody wants to be the smartest person in the room.
00:09:47:06 - 00:10:03:24
Christina: They needed it from us because because our potential clients were coming in with dollars and drive, but no knowledge and so they were looking to us to be that that liaison into this new world. And so if you didn't know it, you better learn it fast. Right.
00:10:03:26 - 00:10:24:19
Marcie: The whole idea was if you're going to build you should be producing your own content. So you obviously need cameras and a motion capture stage and a way to shoot, so that you can be creating on your own content rather than having to rely on other people sure and see if you can create a tool, see if you can create something that would go along from immersive.
00:10:24:21 - 00:10:38:06
Christina: We're gonna get a lot more into immersive. We're gonna talk about the hardware the software, given Marcie and my five years of boots on the ground we would be silly not to devote one episode of just getting into it hardcore. Man I got some stories.
00:10:41:23 - 00:10:59:02
Mike Matzdorff: The show notes for today's podcast are available on our Web site. 2ndlevelpodcast.com. Transcripts are also available courtesy of our good friends at Simonsays.ai. And at the end of the show there will be a few highlights of the next episode. Thanks.
00:10:59:04 - 00:11:31:19
Christina: Last year at the beginning of 2018 I was approached to start Metastage and it is, I got approached, asking, Would you like to launch and lead a new Volumetric Capture facility here in Los Angeles that is using and is the first in the United States to be commercially offering the Microsoft mixed reality capture software stack, which is which is amazing, which is incredible, an incredible software, holographic software essentially that allows you to capture somebody in full 3D but not like motion capture.
00:11:31:21 - 00:12:07:02
Christina: It is volumetric video someone goes on our stage does a performance and we capture them using one hundred and six cameras. Half our G.B. cameras, half infrared cameras and when we put it through the software on the other side we get a fully 3-D lifelike asset of whatever transpired live on stage and it has that integrity, the nuances. It's the closest thing to real life, next to the real thing, I deal with real actors, real performers and we take that likeness and we bring it into VR AR and I often say that I think Volumetric Capture is the real person's seat at the virtual table.
00:12:07:04 - 00:12:38:02
Christina: So coming from documentary and coming from journalism coming from live action 360 video this feels like a very natural evolution and the things that I care about. So being able to actually sit here, have a real conversation about all of these things and be very transparent about what worked, what didn't work, what could we be doing better. How should we be doing it better and also hearing from all of you guys. We really want to hear from the community out there and what do you want to hear about.
00:12:38:04 - 00:13:05:01
Marcie: What are the what are the different things that you think are important for us to talk about. Because it's not just about Christina and I it's about all of us because we're all trying to be the the beginners of something really new and something exciting and at the forefront of it all. And sometimes it's lonely when you do that. What I've really found about this community is it's probably one of the most inclusive communities that I've ever been involved with.
00:13:05:03 - 00:13:35:23
Christina: I love this group of people I mean you listening are probably one of those people. It is a great group of smart, progressive, open minded, passionate, creative, transparent, Yes I mean it's a wonderful a wonderful community you're so right. And this allows us to have a direct line of communication to folks who are interested in learning. If this can bring some insight into your process in your own explorations in media and technology then I think we've served our our purpose here.
00:13:35:27 - 00:13:50:19
Marcie: And I also think that ultimately when we move into this next phase, this next decade, there's gonna be a lot of stuff that won't even matter, right? Like we've learned stuff that we're probably just going to throw away, like stitching, exactly.
00:13:50:21 - 00:14:33:19
Christina: Goodbye forever thanks. Stitching three HD video together saved that one for next week. Someone was wearing a shirt recently that said "learn all the software every day then you die".
I read that that is true.
And I also heard another thing that stuck with me which was the most important skill you can have in your career in this era is to enjoy problem solving. Yeah. And it's not just that you can problems off you have to enjoy problem solving. I'm sorry. The problem that's gonna be so much of what you do is it's problem solving and if you can learn to embrace that then nothing will come in front of you that you can't tackle and overcome and achieve. But it's never, it's not going to be easy, but it will be an adventure.
00:14:33:21 - 00:14:35:05
Marcie: None of this ever is.
00:14:35:07 - 00:14:41:08
Marcie: And don't get cocky. Whatever you do because the minute you get cocky, the technology will bite you in the ass.
00:14:41:10 - 00:15:10:24
Christina: Marcie shared with me a video of Bill Gates on David Letterman and he was, they were talking about the Internet and and Dave was being like very patronizing and was like was like OK. So you're telling me I can listen to a baseball game on the internet. Have you ever heard of the radio. And he was just being really funny about it. And Bill Gates just spoke with such clarity of vision on on what the Internet would be and how we matter of factly.
00:15:10:26 - 00:15:41:02
Marcie: Yeah I mean that's what I just thought it was so relevant about what we were doing because actually at the end of the day 10 years from now when we look back on what really started this whole thing. Yeah 15 years down there saying well it seems so crazy how if we make the tools useful, I say it all the time whenever I'm on a panel, I'm like then why isn't everybody adopting it. I'm like well it's not really useful right now because nobody's built the tools. For example you know I love Oculus venues. I think that's useful. Yeah I think that's awesome.
00:15:41:04 - 00:16:05:27
Marcie: If I can't go to post Malone but I can watch post Malone in my headset. Yeah I'm not crazy about the Avatars around me but he is right fucking in front of me. That to me is useful. Yes. And so that's what I think we should be looking at and focusing on is what is the most useful stuff. What are the best stories and why do we want people to get back into a headset into a wearable, over and over again.
00:16:06:00 - 00:16:16:12
Christina: Please feel free to contact us on the social media or directly on our socials and let us know the kinds of topics you would be most interested or the type of people you'd like to have on. I'm excited for this journey.
00:16:16:14 - 00:17:10:25
Marcie: I'm watching Christina. She's smiling from ear to ear and it's so exciting. Thank you for doing this with me Christina I really appreciate it. And Joel thank you for recording it for us today. Thank our other our other controllers. And then so we have Abby Tate who's our producer who's managing our social media. And then Mike Matzdorff who's going to be cutting all of our episodes and who's also going to become our voice and you will hear his voice at the beginning and the end of every podcast that we do. So, Thank you everybody for getting involved and doing this with us and have an awesome day. Have a great day out there. It became the rabbit hole because I was creating this entire ecosystem that didn't exist.