 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering NAB 2017, brought to you by HGST. Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We are live at NAB 2017 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. 100,000 people, all kinds of gear. And if you're into video and you're into fun, this is the place to be. And we're really excited to have Brian Frageron. He's a VR and AR creative producer for Technicolor. Welcome, Brian. Thank you. And in all your bio, you have all my new vocabulary words that I picked up. Photogrammet, I can't even say this, people, word. Photogrammet. Grammetry? Grammetry, photogrammetry. Awesome. So, first off, welcome. Thank you. You've been doing this VR thing kind of since the beginning, early days. It's still early days. Still early days. But yeah, I've been, you know, basically have a film background in traditional film production. But when I saw these new workflows emerging and these interactive stories, and really the whole spectrum of storytelling opening up from what was traditionally, you know, either a film or a video game, now there's this whole spectrum of experiences in between that are very much a hybrid between the two. And you, as a user or an audience, have some agency and some control over how you affect the experience. You know, I was just all in on that. So, took a deep dive into coding and development and the game engines and, you know, landed at Technicolor within the last few months. And that's really the volumetric video kind of response to you, right? Because you're creating a space, or correct me if I'm wrong, and then now you interact in that space. Exactly, so you're building a whole environment and the idea is that the user, rather than, you know, most 360 experiences that we're seeing right now that are being shipped as VR are really just from a fixed point. And so even though you can look around and that's a little bit innovative, it's still very restrictive in how you can interact with the space. And so, yeah, we focus on real-time rendered game engine experiences where you build the entire environment. And so really you, as a user, can go walk around the whole room, look at anything, inspect things, and you just have a lot more freedom to explore. And then on the storytelling aspect of that, how does that now get stitched into, you know, what's basically kind of a video game engine? Yeah, that's a great question. It is a paradigm shift because rather than, you know, dictating the sequence of events or the linear story and, you know, force-feeding it to an audience, you're really creating an open world. And you want to design it in a way where they still take away a narrative experience or at least some kind of experience from it. But you need to give the user freedom to, you know, navigate that world however they see fit. And so, you know, it's about a lot of play testing, to be honest, to get early iterations out into user's hands and to see, you know, what their instinct is. You have an idea for how they're going to consume something, but until you see someone in the experience and see what their impulse is and what they want to interact with, then you can build towards that. And so it's a more iterative process that's more akin to game development. Yeah. Leonard, you can share any funny stories or surprises or something where you thought somebody was going to go left and they went right just completely counter to what you built into your script, if you will. Yeah, oh man, funny experiences. You know, so we've been to a few festivals. We've premiered it at Sundance and then at South by Southwest. So we've put hundreds of people through it. And there's one character that's very anthropomorphized and we had an idea that people would like to interact with it, but the minute it shows up, there's people getting on the ground next to this little water buffalo and he's just kind of chilling and looking around and there's people like sitting next to him and trying to pet him and do all kinds of things. And you realize, you know, people just, once they feel immersed in a space and they find something that they can emotionally connect with, they just want to hang out there and spend time, you know, with that as like a microcosm of the experience. Right, right. So we added some little, you know, interactive elements to him. So that was an insight. And then actually the funniest was when I showed it to my mom for the first time. They don't totally understand this new world. Right. And a character appeared and then she happened to be standing. You never know where the user's going to be standing in these paths. So she happened to be standing directly in the path where the character was going to run. And so she turns around and sees the character and it just starts running straight at her and she just screams and throws the controller and the character just goes right through you. But, you know, that immersion, you feel like you're about to get hit by something. Right, right. So, you know, a lot of us have played, I've got the Samsung, you know, thing I put my Galaxy in. What are some of the secrets that help people feel that immersive experience? And in terms of is it, clearly it's not, you know, the super quality view because a lot of times you don't have that. But a lot of times it's the softer things is what pull people in. So what are some of the things that really make it connect with people from VR? Absolutely. I mean, there's a lot of elements because really you are recreating reality, right? Sense by sense. And so the nice thing about VR is that our visual system is so overpowering in terms of how we interpret the world around us that luckily, you know, that's been the access point and the entry point to this whole VR boom that we've seen is that finally mobile screens are at a point and the sensors are all packed very tight. So we can really ship at a low cost, you know, Google Cardboard, for example, being the widest distribution and give people a pretty compelling visual experience. So that's really, you know, step one and I'd say that's pretty well established and distributed. Visuals and audio have been married, but really it's about bringing the other senses into VR. So for example, the agency of being able to move around a space and interact with real things in the space. So that's more commonly termed mixed reality. And that's going to be the next wave that you're going to see, which is, you know, highly interactive spaces that are more of a mixture of the virtual world and physical elements. So that even though I'm in a headset and I see a pen in the headset, when I reach out and touch it, there's really a pen there that's tracked in the space. And that adds a whole another level of immersion that allows it to be social because that's a contract between you and I that this is a physical thing that one of us is holding and it allows for just a whole new world of opportunities of what can be done in VR. How important is the social aspect in terms of adoption? You know, yourself or your mom, you know, kind of cruising around on her own versus the opportunity to bring other people in. I mean, is that some of the stuff that's going to make this really the killer app to get it over the next time? Or what is the killer app, I guess, beyond kind of cruising around and having fun? 100% I think it's making it social. How to open up that world because right now it is a very isolating experience. And there's no reason that it has to be necessarily. It's just that the user base is not congregated around individual platforms. So Facebook made a big opening salvo last week when they released their Facebook Spaces. And that allows you to bring in people from the real world into your virtual experience by being able to through Facebook Messenger. I can call out while I'm in VR, I can call out to anyone who has Facebook Messenger's app installed. And then I get a little video feed and they see me as an avatar on their phone screen. And so it's those kind of hybridizations of connecting people in VR to people who are outside in the real world that's going to really hit the inflection point of wide adoption. Now there were some early versions of that in the past, where you had kind of these virtual reality spaces inside the computer, but they were not nearly as immersive as the ones that we have today. Why did those not really take off? What's the one, I can't think of the name right now. Let's say second city, but that's not it. Oh, second life? Second life versus kind of today's world, what changed? Sure, well I wouldn't characterize second life as a failure. I mean, you know, it had its heyday. No, I'm not a failure, but I mean, it's not, you know, it was kind of an early attempt at where you just described really in the Facebook Messenger. Yeah, absolutely. Which is what triggered the thought. And funnily enough, the second life team is now creating the virtual version of that called High Fidelity. Okay. So, you know, they have their own attempt. There's a couple others like Alt Space, but nobody has the install base of Facebook. And so once you plug into that community where you're already connected with your friends, it just takes away the friction. And the friction of VR is really what's holding back people. That and the isolation, I'd say, from wide adoption. Which is that, you know, it's just not a seamless experience going in, finding the app I want, connecting with people easily. So, you know, being an early adopter, I've tried to run meetings through the Oculus social spaces. And there's just a lot of friction with technical issues and people dropping in and out. So, until it gets, you know, and it improves, you know, they do releases all the time. So, all those issues are being worked out. And the friction's just slowly going to go away to the point where it will be more convenient for us to take a meeting where we can sit face to face, you know, and read each other's expressions. Then it will to, you know, try to get the same amount done over the telephone or something like that. I have to laugh, because every time where you're on, you know, WebEx, pick your favorite meeting tool. And then it's still technical issues. Just try to get it. I was thinking that YouTube video, one of the greatest YouTube videos ever. New medium, same problem. Yeah, same problem, you know. Bob even here, you know, he checks in at the end of the meeting. So, that's very cool. So, as you look forward, and I know it's a fast moving space, you know, kind of, what are some of your priorities? What do you see as some kind of short term changes that are going to make a big impact? And what about, say, a year from now? I don't even want to guess much further out than that, that you see coming down the pike that's going to have a huge impact on the adoption of VR. Sure, so at the low end, we're starting to see inside-out-tracked mobile solutions, meaning that you can get that same kind of freedom to wander around a space that you can on a Vive or an Oculus, but with a mobile headset. So, because the price point and the barrier to entry is so low, everyone already has, or will have, soon enough, a phone that's capable of running an experience like that, I think that will be an important first step. And then, so at the Technicolor Experience Center, which is Technicolor's new VR and AR and Mixed Reality focused wing, they're really betting that, you know, these immersive stories are the future of entertainment and how that will trickle across different market adjacencies and verticals to apply to, you know, medical and education and sports and fitness. I mean, the applications are just endless. So, I think we're seeing early enterprise adoption right now. And then, you know, on the consumer side, gaming is really where they found the early niche and, you know, there is a monetization model. But what we're personally interested in is showing people the very, very high end of what VR can be. Because once we show them the high end, you know, they have a compelling reason to familiarize themselves with whatever it can be to them today. And so, we're working on very high-fidelity track spaces where we're social and networked and we can be geographically together or, you know, remotely beamed in together. But we feel embodied in that space in a way that's more immersive than currently available in terms of, you know, being able to move limbs and interact with the objects around us. So, that's kind of what we're trying to prove out at Technicolor is how do we build high-end entertainment experiences around those kind of technical infrastructures that are not widely deployed today, but they will be coming. And I think for monetization on those models, you're going to see a lot of installed spaces that people will hopefully flock to to get these high-end experiences. So, what's your favorite high-end experience right now? Well, I did get the chance to do the void, the Ghostbusters VR experience after Sundance. And that was pretty incredible. It was a lot of fun. Just because you're in it with someone else, you know, it's kind of like a new version of laser tag. And so, it can apply to other areas. That was just kind of a shooter game, but just that kind of shared experience where we are both in the space together and we just know that we're getting access to this virtual world that no one else is seeing. You know, it is a really special thing. Yeah, it's just amazing how powerful the social aspect is to all these things. So, to really... You want to talk about it with people. You want to talk about it. You want to do it with somebody. You want to share it, right? It's really just such a powerful impact. Yeah, and I think even on the mobile side, that will help open up the world a lot because right now, you know, if it's on a Vive or an Oculus, you can plug it into a monitor or a TV and I can see what you're doing in it. Right, right. And so, that's easy enough for me to feel like I'm at least participating in your experience. But when you're in mobile right now, you're pretty much locked in and I really have no idea what you're doing in the experience. Right. So, I think making it easily shareable across, you know, traditional channels or just me being able to opt into your experience or jointly share one, those are all things that are going to make it much more compelling for us to just say, hey, we have 10 minutes, let's dive into VR and do something together to be fun. Very cool. All right, Brian, well, thanks for stopping by. That was a busy day. Great to talk. All right, Brian Frager, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE from NAB 2017. Thanks for watching.