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"The Conference that Defines the Future of the Industry"

The Digital Hollywood Experience

 

Thursday, March 8th, 2018

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

Session B: Prague Room A, (3rd Floor)

VR-AR Production on the Edge - The Amazing Journey of Imagination: Storytelling in Content and Advertising

Eduardo Yeh, Co-Founder, CEO, Selvz

Thomas Wallner, CEO, Liquid Cinema Inc. and DEEP Inc.

Ewan Johnson, Chief Creative Officer, Arcturus

Debra Anderson, Co-founder & Chief Strategy Officer, datavized

Alina Mikhaleva, Co-Founder & Managing partners, Spherica

Lynn Rogoff, founder, AMERIKIDS USA

Alejandro Dinsmore, CEO, EEVO

Moderator - Edward Button, “Artist in Residence,” Technicolor NY

 

Ewan Johnson, Chief Creative Officer at Arcturus: Ewan Johnson leads the creative output of Arcturus¨ an XR studio he co-founded in 2016. He drives the creation of compelling and engaging experiences across all aspects of creation from story¨ through environmental design¨ staging and the new technology needed go get there. Ewan applies his extensive experience as a digital cinematographer to the creation AR/VR worlds. Starting with Toy Story¨ he formed and designed Pixar’s cinematography department. He led creative on the cinematography for A Bug’s Life¨ Monster’s Inc.¨ Toy Story 2 and a slew of

other Pixar films. He joined Dreamworks Animation in a similar capacity for the Madagascar films¨ How to Train your Dragon¨ and others. Throughout his career he has been responsible for both creative design and pipeline development. Discovering a passion for an emerging format¨ Ewan focused on developing live action and CG virtual reality experiences resulting in projects for the Denver Broncos¨ NBC Universal and Björk. He is an active presenter giving talks and moderating panels at Siggraph¨ international animation festivals¨ and various VR¨ content¨ and technology conferences. Arcturus is an XR studio that creates virtual and augmented reality experiences and helps others navigate extended reality. We have released games for Steam and Google Daydream as well as live action 360 videos for music and entertainment for HTC Vive and Oculus platforms. We are currently producing a VR adaptation of Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings.

 

Debra Anderson is based in New York and is Chief Strategy Officer and Co-founder of Datavized Technologies, Inc. a NYC-based WebVR startup building a data-driven publishing platform for the 3D Web. She is a Producer/Director specialized in digital storytelling and media impact for immersive experiences for WebVR, Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR).  Her pioneering VR film In\Formation, is a two-part 25 minute 360° 3D live action immersive documentary about the potential of VR to inspire empathy in its audience.  Debra founded the innovation consultancy Culture Shock in 2007; presented groundbreaking interactive works with NFB at Sundance New Frontier, Tribeca Storyscapes and curated arts/tech projects at Volta Art Fair NY & Switzerland. Debra designed and instructs the first Big Data: Consumer Research course at The New School for Public Engagement and developed the first Digital Development: WebVR curriculum in Immersive Storytelling at Parsons, The School of Art, Media and Technology (AMT). She is the Founder and Co-organizer of NY Women in VR Meetup group which now has over 600 members.

 

Thomas Wallner, CEO, Liquid Cinema Inc. and DEEP Inc.: Over the past ten years, Thomas Wallner has pushed interactive narrative to its limits. He developed the story concept for Canada's first-ever interactive feature drama Late Fragment, and his genre-bending, Emmy award-winning works Fallen and Regenesis brought the underground genre of alternate reality gaming genre to mainstream television. Thomas has written and directed eight award-winning feature documentaries, which have been broadcast in more than 30 countries and met with critical acclaim. He is the recipient of two Emmy Awards, three Geminis, a Rose d’Or, two SXSW Interactive Awards, two Webbys and two CNMAs. Today, Thomas brings together his expertise in production, direction, screenwriting, filmmaking and game design as the founder and owner of DEEP Inc., a cross-platform production company developing the language of cinematic storytelling in VR. To meet this exciting aesthetic and technical challenge, DEEP developed Liquid Cinema, a software platform and toolset that allows filmmakers, producers and broadcasters to create and distribute story-driven 360 and VR content across the web, mobile and VR devices.

 

Alina Mikhaleva, Co-Founder & Managing partners, Spherica: After ten years of successful career in broadcast media, Alina Mikhaleva moved to lead a virtual reality startup Spherica. Spherica is an independent VR production studio based in Los Angeles. Founded by a small team of VR enthusiasts, Spherica aims to create truly engaging cinematic VR experiences for viewers worldwide. Spherica's proprietary technology demonstrates to the industry professionals the potential of virtual reality filmmaking when it is freed from the limitations of a static camera. Spherica has been working in VR industry with clients including HBO, CBS, RYOT, and many others on both fiction and non-fiction content, as well as developing and creating original VR content. Spherica is an award-winning independent VR studio based in Los Angeles. Since the early days of 360 video, Spherica has been pioneering virtual reality filmmaking by developing proprietary technologies to enhance video capture. Spherica was the first company to introduce a revolutionary stabilization technology — quickly establishing a new standard for VR filmmaking: smooth camera movement.  Today, Spherica continues to pioneer cinematic VR by introducing new, even more advanced solutions, including proprietary state-of-the-art rovers, cable cams and drones. Spherica’s patent-pending stabilization technology provides for a comfortable, natural user experience by completely eliminating the problem of motion sickness for the viewer. VR content created by Spherica demonstrates the full potential of virtual reality filmmaking when it is unhindered by the limitations of a static camera. Spherica has produced dozens of VR experiences for clients - including HBO's Westworld VR, Lexus, Google, AP, RYOT, NBC among others - as well as Spherica’s original content – the first action series in VR “Immersive Combat” scheduled to be released in early 2018.

 

LYNN ROGOFF , FOUNDER AND CEO, AMERIKIDS USA: Rogoff, founder of, AMERIKIDS USA (http://amerikids.com/) is launching our VR 3D Endanger! game series for Razer’s Open Source Virtual Reality (OSVR) and . Samsung VR,. Now you can take action by playing our Endanger! game to end Endangered Species from extinction. Endanger! is the first 3D VR/mobile/PC game to virtually and socially find & save endangered species and their habitats. Experience their habitat loss and poachers traps from the animal’s point of view, immersing in forests and jungles, around the planet. Presently, we are developing an Endanger VR strategy game ; (http://bit.ly/AboutVRNews)   to engage players, in social media activism and branding while immersing  them in green planet issues. AMERIKIDS USA® began EndangerVR to design VR games focusing on conservation, environmentalism and social media engagement, connecting gamers worldwide to make change. Dr .E.O Wilson and Dr. Stewart Pimm, renowned Conservation Scientists organization, Saving Species.org (http://bit.ly/endangersponsor ), have partnered with us to enable citizen conservationists to become pro- active, globally. The EndangerVR! vision is on  Facebook, Flipboard, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Tumbler and Linkedin. We design VR games that are both illuminating and entertaining, focusing on 36 endangered species, worldwide. AMERIKIDS USA (http://amerikids.com/)has been in the game production business since the 1990's.  AMERIKIDS was awarded a prestigious challenge grant from ORACLE Corporation to produce a prototype of the  AMERIKIDS interactive, live action  game series. We raised $1.5 million in 1996 to become the flagship product for the launch of McGraw Hill Home Interactive (http://bit.ly/per_mhhi). .  AMERIKIDS USA'S    Pony Express Rider was the flagship product to launch the new division of McGraw-Hill Education.  This game, Pony Express Rider (http://bit.ly/PonyExpressRider) won numerous awards (http://bit.ly/perawards) and outstanding reviews

 

Eduardo Yeh was co-founder/President of iPing, Inc., and co- inventor of Integrated, interactive telephone and computer network communications system, which served as the basis for iPing's time sensitive notification platform. iPing pioneered the ubiquitous notification/messaging services by marrying the Internet with PSTN. Its highly publicized product that aimed to "humanize" notification, Mr.Wakeup drove the success of iPing, culminating with its acquisition by eCal Corporation in early 2000. After the acquisition, Mr. Yeh assisted Uproar CEO, Mr. Kenneth Cron, in the incubation of a wireless gaming joint-venture in Japan. In mid 2000, Eduardo joined the team at Innotive Inc., a South Korean company, pioneer in touch based interface authoring and development solutions. Eduardo helped establish the US subsidiary of Madhouse Inc, world's renown anime studio (Vampire Hunter D, Animatrix), and adapted Maple Story, one of the most popular free-to-play online game property by Nexon into a 25 episodic anime series. From 07~09, Eduardo made a seed investment in Conatus Energia Ltda., a clean and renewable energy (wind and small hydro) development startup, worked with the founders to help them raise strategic angel financing. In 2011, Eduardo co-founded his current startup, Selvz.

 

Edward Button is a award winning Director of Photography and Director.   He has shot around the globe for clients such as Gillette, Care International, Western Union, Sony/BMG and shot feature film work for directors such as Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, Doug Liman, Liz Hinlein, and Anthony Fabian.  Edward started his career working in the camera department for Emmanuel Lubezki ASC on Terrence Malick's "The New World" and the Coen Brother's "Burn after Reading." Currently, Edward has been working extensively in Virtual Reality having served as Director of Photography on Doug Liman's cinematic VR series "Invisible."  He shot and was Supervising Producer on the VR Music Video Reeps One "does not Exist" with The Mill, has worked with Emblematic Group, and is Technicolor NY's Artist in Residence where he is collaborating on a VR project with artist Shantell Martin and developing cinematic VR projects.  Amongst others, Edward's work has been screened at The Cannes Film Festival, The Sundance Film Festival, and the Brasov International Film Festival where he won the Best Cinematography award.  He holds Masters degree's from the American Film institute in Cinematography and NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program where he studied Virtual Reality, Abstract Gaming, Video Art, Computational Media, Spacial Media, Physical Computing, and Augmented Reality.