 Hi, guys. Thank you so much for having us here today. So thanks for the invite and the intro. So as Roy was saying, I'm the Chief Creative Director at Warrior 9. We are a content creation house based in Singapore. And we are currently working on a series called the Phoenix, which is the first animated sci-fi series in VR. So it's quite unique in terms, at least as far as we know, nobody in Asia is working on VR fiction content or content that is fiction and animated as well. So what I'm going to do today is just talk to you a little bit about what we've been experiencing when we've been creating this content and some of the learnings that we've been getting out of this. So before we started on anything, earlier this year we completed a proof-of-concept teaser just to see if you could, in fact, tell a cohesive narrative story in virtual reality. And what I'm going to do is just to make sure we're all on the same page, I'm going to show you a 2D version of this teaser. And afterwards you can just grab any one of us wearing this t-shirt and we can show it to you in VR. We have the headsets with us. All right, so just give me a sec. Let me just pop this on for you. Okay, sure. We've completed the teaser, obviously, and we are currently in full production of Episode 1. The cool thing about the teaser was that we were able to try out many different techniques and styles in a very small time space and we were able to experiment a lot. And I'm sure you were able to see some of that in what we did. When you see it in VR, and I highly recommend it, if you have not seen it then you should, you will be able to see how immersive the story is. So let's talk a little bit about the production and what went into that. We actually did it on the Unreal Engine. A lot of people are using Unity, but we decided to go with Unreal. And we're going to actually do the entire series in Unreal as well. Because animation, we did the 3D models, created the 3D environments. And for the movement that you saw, the characters there was all motion capture, facial capture. And of course, we used a local artist, Mesh Manukar, to do the voiceover, which fit quite well. And then we finally got the music. And obviously, individually these aspects are great, but it's only when we put them all together into VR that we knew that we had lightning in a bottle. Okay, so what have we been doing since we finished this? So we went on the road for several months and we went to a number of events. We were at, around the region, we were at Innofest Unbound in Singapore, in Etchelon. We were at Rise in Hong Kong. And we even went to the Indonesia Comic Con in Jakarta just to show it to people from inside and outside of the industry. We showed it to more than 850 people. And for a majority of these guys, it was their first time viewing it. Overwhelmingly, we got positive response, which was great considering like it was different segments, different ages. It was a huge learning point for us. And we got a lot out of it. Okay, so what did we learn? Well, specifically, what did I learn from creating this content and working on it? Some of these may seem obvious, but when you delve down, you'll see that there's more to it. So the first thing is, let's talk a bit about the differences between virtual reality, storytelling in virtual reality and 2D. All right? What we have today are, a lot of people obviously know that VR is a relatively new technology, but what they don't really realize is that it is a new medium. And a new medium requires a new cinematic language. So the things that we do in 2D, you just can't replicate it into VR because it just wouldn't work. So for example, if you just take this opening sequence, if you look at the images there, when we slowly moved into the planet, if you were to do that in 2D, you would have cuts, you would have close-ups, you know, people, they would want to show it, guide you and show you how to view the narrative. We don't have that option in VR, and we shouldn't be trying to force people to do it. That's a conscious decision that we made. The content that we create is so that you should be able to watch it multiple times. One of the points that was raised to me was that, you know, when you do a dogfight in virtual reality and somebody fires a missile, the missile doesn't just disappear when it goes out of your point of view. It's still there, so you need to plan it out, saying, does this missile, what happens to it? It hits a rock, what have you, there will be people sitting there following this missile and just seeing what happens. That's what virtual reality is about. A lot of the content out there today is quite gimmicky. I think a lot of you will agree with me. You know, the usual roller coasters, et cetera, et cetera, which you've seen multiple times, which is great to experience VR, but in order to tell a story behind it, it has to be just more than these little cinematic gimmicks that have been put together. Ultimately, if you are a VR content creator and you're trying to tell a story in VR, you have to be able to straddle the technology and the ability to tell a good story, and that's what we are doing in Warrior IX. So, as I said, we showed it to 850 people, more than that actually, and the resounding thing that we got was that people are ready for VR. We were in countries where we met with established studios and they were like, oh, you guys are doing VR. We're not. This country is not ready for it. Flat out. That's what they told us. But when we went out to the events, it was a totally different story. Once you get people past the technology, once you get them into watching VR, they totally got it. They were like, wow, that's great. I want to know. I love this. I want to see more of it. What they didn't know was that, okay, basic things. You need a headset to watch VR. A lot of people we met didn't realize that, which is fair enough. The education is still lacking. That's part of the things that we're working towards as well. A lot of misconceptions. We would tell people this is not a game. They would watch the teaser and be like, that's a great game. Where can I play it? It's not a game. The misconception, of course, is that VR is only for gaming. And it's not their fault because initially, when the VR push occurred, it was all about gaming. That's something that we're facing as well. We met a lot of people who were like, oh yeah, I know everything there is to know about VR. And then we asked them to put on the headset and they were fumbling around. So to me, there are no experts in VR. If anybody tells you that I'm an expert and I know it and I can get this done, be very cautious because most likely they don't know what they're talking about. Right now VR is all about experimentation and it's all about patience. So for those of you who are meeting with clients like we did as well, who are looking for VR content, there's a few things you just need to clarify to them. Like what are the limitations of VR? What is it that they want to do? Why do they want to do stuff in VR? If it's just to have a gimmick, then it's probably not worth your time, to be honest. The whole point of it is to do something creative, immersive. Virtual reality is an immersive technology. You need to utilize that beyond just what everybody else is doing. The other thing about client interaction is cost. So a lot of the client base that we met from corporates to what have you are interested in VR because everybody's talking about it, but they don't want to spend too much money on it because they don't believe that they're going to get back what they're going to put in. Again, that's your call when you're having that conversation, but you need to be very clear on what your cost point is. Again, it's all about experimentation. You're not going to get it right the first time around when you're creating the content for them. You're going to have to play around quite a lot and the clients need to be aware of that. The final thing I want to talk about, which I'll just spend a few slides on actually, is as content creators in virtual reality, you need to be able to think about it from end to end. It's not just about inception, creation, production, post-production. Here you go. No, because the industry is too nascent. How is the client going to be showing this to their users? How do you want people to view this? Those are the things that you need to be thinking about. It has to be an end-to-end thought process. Okay, so let's talk about distribution and what we're doing with the Phoenix. When we created the teaser, at that point, it was still, I mean, it still is early days, but it was even earlier back then. So we decided we're going to create it in virtual reality and 2D. So if you go to our website, the 2D version is there. We're going to do the same thing for the series throughout as well, just so that people who do not have access to virtual reality will still be able to enjoy this content. In terms of the devices that you want to look at, Warrior 9's philosophy is that we want as many people as possible to see our content. So we're not going to be restricting it as much as we can to any kind of device. Mobile VR is one of the fastest growing, and that is the most easily accessible at the moment. So that's what we decided to focus on. This doesn't mean that we're going to be cutting out the high-end headsets, but they come with a different bunch of issues which I'll talk about in a bit as well. Once you figure out the devices that you are focusing on, let's talk about the platforms. So there's a number of growing distribution platforms of VR as well. The space I'm quite confident is going to change by this time next year, but so we are also being very cautious. One of the great things about these platforms is you don't have to, you just give them your content, and they will figure out how to get it working on their devices as app-based, right? So some of these, which we're looking at for our distribution model right now, YouTube 360, Jaunt, Veridio, Little Star. YouTube, Veridio, and Little Star are quite similar in terms of you have a channel, you upload your content, there is minimal supervision, and only if somebody complains about your content will they look at it. Jaunt will actually ask you to submit the content, and say, yes, this meets our quality standards, and only then will they upload it. So I mean, we quite like that in terms of it's not just anybody putting up stuff. So for example, when I looked at Veridio, their top video was Two Spanish Girls in a Bikini, and that was there for like six months or something. So I mean, you know, you get what people put up there. And of course, the other option is you create your own app. A lot of people are doing that as well. Depending on what specializations you have, you probably need a programmer, you'll need to host your own content, so there's a whole bunch of stuff that comes in with that, which you need to be aware of. Of course, if you're creating your own app, you also need to make sure it works with every single device that you want it to work with. So there is quite a lot more overhead on that. One of the final points I wanted to make, and this is one of the reasons that we are not focusing solely on like the high-end headsets, if you'll notice I never spoke about the Oculus Store or any of these major stores, which is quite common. A lot of people just go and submit it to them to upload. One of the things that we found in our research was that you need to be very careful, you need to check the terms and conditions that each of these guys are posting. So for example, with Oculus, there's a little section under section six, which is user content, which I'm not going to read it out to you. I mean, you can go and have a look at it. You can see it's available for everybody on the website. But ultimately, they own your creative content. If they accept what you've submitted, they have the right to do whatever they want with it. They can use it for their own marketing. They can give it to other people to use as well. I mean, it's very clearly listed out here. For example, it's royalty-free, fully sub-licensible. They can do whatever they want with that. To me, as an indie VR content creator, it's quite disappointing. Oculus is somebody, is a company that I looked up to initially because they were the ones at the forefront of virtual reality. Their tactics, some agree with them, some don't. I don't agree with them. But it is what it is and we decided, okay, we're going to focus on mobile VR and that's what we're going to do. Question. Sir, can you clarify, is that for promotion purposes or they can do so? They can do whatever they want. So you grant Oculus a worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free, the whole, the legal jargon is that they can do whatever they want with it. You wouldn't expect them to monetize it and cut you out, but they have the ability to do that. So I'm not saying that that's what they're going to do, obviously, but they have the ability to do that, which is quite, can be quite scary for indie VR creators. So essentially that is what I wanted to cover with you guys. Please do feel free to come and have a look at the VR version afterwards. We have our website, which is thephoenixvr.com and I'm going to open it up to questions. Yes. How are you going to monetize? That's a good question. So our, again, this is going to be a very, it has to be a flexible distribution methodology. So the first, so right now we're planning to create nine episodes. Each one of these episodes will be five to 10 minutes in length and we're planning to complete all of these by end of next year, 2017. The first episode we'll be coming out in Jan is our plan. So our intention is to have the first three episodes for free. We're going to put it on YouTube, those channels which I just mentioned, YouTube, John, et cetera. It'll be there available for free. And I believe that will take us close to halfway point of the year, at which point we'll know what the distribution, well, we'll have a better idea of the distribution model. After that, we're going to ask for a very nominal fee for access for the entire season. That's our plan right now. Whether it's going to make guarantees of significant revenues, we can't tell because it has to be on the merit of the story itself. The content is what's going to create your fan base. So it's going to be an experiment. We're not sure, to be honest, at the end of the day. We have a monetization model in place, whether it's going to be significantly profitable or not, only time will tell. Yeah. There's a bunch of YouTube, does it run ads? YouTube 360, I have not seen any ads on that at the moment. Sorry, question. Oh, sorry. It does because of the sound and the music. Ah, okay. So based on the music royalties. Yes. So there is an ad component to it. Any, oh, yep, back there. Sorry, Zagan. What's the camera rate that you use to capture content? And what's your, what has been your experience with selection of these? So our, I'm going to bring up Reis, who is our tech, our VR creative director, one sec. He can talk a little bit about Hassan. What was your question again? Basically, what camera rate do you use to capture content? For the motion capture. Yeah. We used a combination of techniques. Obviously we're not a huge studio and I'm responsible for almost all of the production of the assets from the animation, the artwork, to rendering and everything. We were fortunate enough with my previous company that we actually had a 26 camera opt-a-track system. And so for the guy in space that was actually me wearing the Spandex suit with the tracking markers, the girl was a friend also using opt-a-track. And then for the end character, the eye patch, that I put 32 markers on my face and we had a camera setup for doing that. And then actually we used the Kinect 2, the Breckle app for that for a second face. I forget which one that was in it, but a combination of both. Moving forward, we're going to try to keep it with the Kinect as much as possible. We think the cost point is pretty effective for what you're able to do with it nowadays. Obviously it's not a one-stop solution and as with doing anything with animation, it takes a bit of time and tweaking and cleaning up. But for what we're doing, it then comes back to maybe try to limit what you're doing in the script to something that works better on the Kinect. No crazy three-person fight scenes obviously. So it's about tuning your content to work with the tools that you have. So episode one is actually, the motion capture on that is going to be done fully on the Xbox Kinect. We're experimenting with that. Question? As a new medium, what do you think is the best kind of content to produce? I just want to know. You saw it right on. I think for me it has to be episodic. It has to be an episodic I think all of us are here because at some point we had that VR experience where you were just in awe. You saw something which just blew your mind. And that happened to me and that happened to pretty much all of us in Warrior IX. And that's what we wanted to portray with the series. The reason we're doing the series is to show everybody, not just gamers and people who have access to high-end VR headsets, how amazing virtual reality can be and how immersive it can be. That's what we're focusing on mobile as well. So we thought about it and we were like, okay, I've seen stuff which is like 5-10 minutes long and it's great, good quality, but what else is there? So that's the reason we're doing it as a series. It has to be episodic to bring in people to keep them coming back. So as a viewer, I want you to be watching each episode multiple times. See first of all, what did you miss? And then I want you to look forward to the next episode so you can do the same thing and just keep watching it and let the story go. So episodic would be a big part for me, yeah. Yeah? Audio, while creating in Unreal, do you use any specific plugins or just use the default solutions for audio in Unreal? So this one, we just did it in stereo, but there are solutions which I can let Grace talk about. Yeah, there's a few different plugins that offer spatialization for it the problem with doing that then I think is kind of the problem with adding any type of plugins to stuff that you're doing is then are you limiting who you can help experience that. I know YouTube offers a pretty standard spatialization plugin now. I'm sure that's coming to everyone and as the programs progress, that I think will just be a built-in feature in the future. But just to give you an idea of the dynamic between the two of us, I'm the guy who writes all the stuff and drives him insane when I'm like, I want this to happen. And he will just look at me and then it's a process from there onwards to see what can we really do. Yes? I'll create a plan, et cetera. Here I guess you have to reinvent everything. Yes. Do you have, or do you do that? Do you have a community where everybody try a bit or is that considered as your IP where you develop it yourself and you don't share it or do you want to share it and create knowledge based on that? For the Phoenix, it's our IP. We are not, I mean, we haven't actually thought about sharing it out at the moment just because we want to build traction and get people behind it. As far as I know, there aren't really any major communities built around experimentation with this. So for example, if you look at what's, the major stuff that's coming out, fiction based in VR is really driven by the big studios out in California and Silicon Valley and stuff like that, Oculus Labs and all those guys. If you see any of the live action series that are out there which are episodic of their live action, I find them very confusing personally because they seem like, because first of all you have a big Hollywood director or some big Hollywood personality involved in it and it seems to me that you would get the same effect in 2D because they actually cut in there which is very jarring for me when I'm watching it. And they are trying very hard to say you have to look here. You have to look here. I'm going to cut so that you look here. The first thing that came out was Invisible. And in that one, if I remember correctly in the opening sequence, it would lock to where you're looking. So the title sequence would follow you around. Even if I wanted to just look around and see, it would just be stuck to me. So again, it's an experimentation and I did read a lot of the articles behind it and the work they did, but it seems that it was more technology based experimentation rather than storytelling based. And of course people have their deadlines, but the reason we pick animation as well is because live action, to me, is too much detail. You really want to look at the street and look at a lamp post or something like that, whereas the story is going on. Whereas with this, we can control it. We can control the level of detail so that you can more naturally follow what we're talking about. Yeah. Have you had one last question? Why did you use a new MG? Why? I will let you know. That was a choice from the beginning. I think mainly because technologies to the point where video cards are powerful enough to give you what I would consider 90% photo reel. If you really push it, you can get there. But it's running in real time. So when we compose a scene, it's like a sandbox. You can put your camera rigs in. You can build your setting and environment. You can change the lighting in real time. And then you can put the headset on and immediately see what it looks like. And now when Unreal, they have editing in VR. So you can actually manipulate the environment while you're wearing the headset and you have your motion controllers and see firsthand what the effects are in real time. And I think the final output, because it's going on YouTube, we have to render frames. And we're doing 4K lat-longs. And those still take about two minutes per frame to spit out on the machine that we have. That trailer would have taken months to render had we done it in a traditional pipeline where you got to do the whole scene every time. So I think real time is pretty hard to at least not consider for your projects just given the rapid prototyping ability. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, as I said earlier, because we're a small studio, we don't have the resources and availability. Unreal is also free, yes. So because we're a small studio, we don't have the leeway to spend months rendering out stuff. So really, we did a lot of investigation in saying, like, what is the best and low-cost resource effective, et cetera, et cetera. What are the best ways of doing it? And that's why I mean, I remember he was talking to the Unreal dev guys who were asking him, what are you creating exactly because this is not what the engine is made for. And we were like, yeah, we know, but we are creating this. So, yeah, I mean, it's... And the experimentation is going to go on. I'm going to give him a few things from left field and Ray still have to figure out with me, yes? Yeah, exactly. So... Okay, that's all the time, right? Thank you so much, guys, for listening. And check out the website, sign up for the newsletter. Come and watch the VR version later. Okay? Thanks, Avian.