Across a sparkling visit to Los Angeles I met with the innovation leads of three major studios and a number of interesting digital production services businesses.
What was striking was the significant strategic focus on the use of real time rendering techniques as a major production step change in the next 1 to 3 years. The ability to use games engine tools to generate CGI assets and effects in the words of one studio “moves the focus of decision making back to the heart of the production process rather than concentrated at the end in post”.
The creation of highly flexible production worlds at high quality generates massive efficiencies, with extended additional opportunities to reuse these assets in multiple secondary environments, for example next generation mixed reality uses or games.
Whilst I’ve discussed these techniques with others, the level of attention and investment was really notable.
Also of note was that not one conversation across the week was about VR as home entertainment. Where immersive tech did come up it was primarily a location based format – there has been a clear shift of energies.
In that vein I was delighted to experience the Bride of Frankenstein Holoride at Universal Pictures. I was part of brokering the collaboration between Universal, Holoride and Rewind – and the combination of a VR experience locked to the movement of a real vehicle driving around the site was both interesting and effective. Clearly this innovation was a first step in a future vision of entertainment in autonomous vehicles with “elastic” content delivered over 5G connectivity.
Jet lag means always seeing the sun rise – there are worse things….
mark leaver 