 There's lots of seats. Does anyone want to sit over there around here? Yeah, so the Khan Film Festival was in May. And I just thought it would be nice to share some of the things that are happening, that we saw that are happening in other parts of the world. Some things were new, some things we know. So, just to let you know, as you can see, it's a beautiful setting. Most of the festival happens where those tents are. Those tents have beach access, which is amazing. A lot of events happen along this coastline. So it's a really beautiful place to do business. So, of course, the 70th Film Festival, this is the main festival part. There's the staircase where you see all the famous people's pictures. They hadn't put the red carpet out yet when I took this picture. But the festival split into two things. There's the main festival and then there's the market where all the deals are done. And VR was part of the market, not the festival. So they had a section where there was a bunch of things you could do, a lot of content to watch. It's all cinematic and narrative content. So that's the vertical I'm talking about. That's my colleague, Abhi, pointing out the phoenix. So that was all content you could watch. So I just want to tell you the first thing I learned. Lots of beautiful experimentation is happening. This experience that we did was basically you get into a hospital bed, you put on a headset, and then you watch a story from the perspective of someone who's in a coma. Someone opposite you watches the same story, but from a different perspective. And the endings of these two stories are different. So the point is afterwards that you talk about it. And I guess I can give you a spoiler because I don't know if we're ever going to get to see this in Asia. One person lives and one person dies. But the amazing thing about this experience was that it's a 360 movie. Well, it's actually 180 because, as you noticed, you can't really look behind you. Beautifully shot, really interesting techniques. But the biggest thing they do is they make you feel physical sensations. So in that picture down there, there's a moment in the story where you feel like you're dying. So somebody presses your chest and having that sensation sounds really crazy. But having that sensation, it just notches up the immersive feeling like beyond belief. So that was one. Okay. So this was another project where it's based on an Aztec death ritual. So in this ritual, you go from hell to heaven. You rise. So that's what the person lying down is watching. And I play the shaman who has to like beat this drum. And he feels the vibrations of the beats. But the beating is a game. So there are these lights and it's like super stressful because it gets faster and faster. And, you know, and you have to beat on the lights. It was interesting. But there was basically, it kind of sealed for me this concept that rising when you're in VR is a very gratifying experience. It's like flying up, moving up somehow. I don't know. It's a psychological thing, I guess. The final one, I don't have a picture, but I'm quickly going to explain it. We, four of us went into a room to take off our shoes. We were then led into another room and had to walk through these tents. And it was like dark. We came to like an eskimo-like tent. But there were these two monsters lying on the floor. And we got left there. And suddenly they started to move. They put headsets on us. Samsung Gear headsets. And then we had to sit in a circle and have this transcendental experience where we swapped bodies. It was the amazing thing about it was that you would see a graphical representation of someone in front of you. But that image mimics the real movements of the person sitting opposite you. So I don't know how they did it. It was some AR VR mix. They used the cameras on the phones as well. So yeah, it was pretty crazy. Now the thing is, made me feel like, wow, they're doing so much more experimentation and exciting things compared to what we're doing in this region. You know, we're still pretty new for all of us content creators. But there's a reason for that, which is my number two learning. There's public funding and education. So much of it. So we sat on this, we attended this panel where basically there's people from the UK, from Canada, from France. And all of these countries have masses of public funding. I mean, I say masses compared to what we have here. But when you talk to them, they're like, oh no, it's not that much. But we met someone who was doing a project, 20 minute VR piece, which is a mix of CG and live action, which is costing $1.6 million. And he got $900,000 of that funded through government funding. So you know, there is money there and people get a chance to experiment because they believe in just pushing the arts and culture of it. And then the universities. So two of those projects I just showed you were done by uni students. They spent a couple of years doing them, you know, with the full support of their unis. So, you know, that's also, I think, a leap then compared to Asia. Oh yes. So one of the things they covered quickly was what is your funding strategy? So a lot of this, you know, is pretty known and obvious, I think, to us. But just interesting to see how people are viewing it, because I think there is money in all these areas in the US and Europe for content. So having said that, of course, there was lots of panels about monetizing VR and they were super popular, as you can see. It was a full house. And they don't have any answers either. So we're all in the same boat. Some of the things that were a bit different though is that, you know, on that panel there was a venture capitalist. There was a Penrose studio person. There was someone from Technicolor who are like big into VR. I didn't even know that. And their approach is very much that, you know, the money is going to come in two or three years. So until then our role is to really get good at what we do and afford funders to help companies get good at it. So let's give them the money they need for two or three years. So I was like, wow, I wish people like that felt, you know, like that. But I feel that there's a big difference in how people think about it, hear investors and such. And then interestingly, you know, Cannes film, not the film festival, the market is meant to buy and sell films. So we actually met the first sales agents for VR. So one of them was from a French company called Wide Entertainment which is really massive into film. So they've just started a VR unit. They've acquired a few things. It's very experimental. The other one is MK2, also a massive French company who've started a VR side of things. They're looking to acquire content. They don't know what to do with it yet, but they're buying it. So interesting. And so the one thing people were talking about a lot was OHEs, out of whom entertainment centers. So what they're saying is that basically cinemas are going to die and people are going to want to go to an entertainment center where they can do a variety of things, watch a film, but also have VR experiences and other types of experiences. So MK2, the company I just spoke about, started a center like that in Paris recently. So this is a picture of it. It's got a lot of fun stuff that we always read about, like the flying thing. I don't know the name. Yeah. And then of course IMAX is kind of leading that charge. So we heard from Richard Gelfand, who's like the big wager at IMAX. And he talked about his, you know, they opened these two entertainment centers. So the good news is that they far, so they claim, sort of did a lot better than they thought. So they got a lot more crowds, a lot more people, and also they sort of realized that people are willing to pay for things they can actually get at home because they don't have the equipment at home. So things that you can actually buy on Steam and stuff, they'll come and pay to do at IMAX. They'll bring their friends, it'll be a social occasion, and then they'll spend some time doing whatever VR things they want to do. And they're pricing it around a dollar a minute, which seems to be working in the market. So the other thing is IMAX does have a big creators fund, which they announced a while ago. But he kind of said all that money is going to the big studios because they're making these experiences which will align with the movies that we're showing. So we were like, oh, but what about the indie people? And so this is what he said. He said the answer for mass adoption of VR is more likely to come from the indie people, yay, because they're more open to experiment and failure. So my slides are gone. So anyway, so, you know, I was like, well, that's great. So hopefully, you know, you can sort of walk the talk soon. So we'll see. So he was like open to, okay, let's figure out a way to get more in touch with indies and all of that. So having said that, indies can lead the way. There are two things coming up in October, which are sort of among the first of their kind, I would say, they are VR specific content markets. So they're getting VR creators in front of people with money, whether they want to invest in your company, or they want to invest in your content, kind of following the film market way of doing things. But the good thing about these two is that they're looking at, you know, they're kind of expanding it. So it's not just invest in your content and co-produce, but it's also, you know, try and meet investors who are interested in VR. So also, we just found out today that the Phoenix was accepted for cross-video days. Very exciting. So we'll be going to that in Paris. Thank you. Yeah, so you know there's hope because these are like purists. We met the people who run both of these things, and they're really purists. They're like, VR has a future. We're going to try and make it happen. So the other, you know, the thing about it is that the whole talk about VR from a mainstream perspective was about the thing that Alejandro Inaritu made. So he's the guy who directed the Revenant and Birdman. So he had made this thing, which was debuting at Khan. But nobody in the entire VR section knew anything about it. So it was being housed at an airport hangar 20 kilometers away, and it was by invite only. So every day, the dailies would come out of what's happening, and we would read, you know, some new journalist had been, and they would give their review. Of course, all the reviews were stellar. But I was kind of like, it's a bit weird because all the industry people can't watch it. So I have a theory about that, and I'm happy to tell you offline. But, you know, but I would say in the grand scheme of things, it's good that all these big names are getting into VR because it helps the industry as a whole. And this will be available eventually for public viewing. This is the only screenshot I have seen, I mean the only picture. So every media outlet has this one picture. I haven't seen screenshots, I haven't seen anything. I have no idea what it looks like. But it's some sort of experience about being an immigrant at a border crossing, and that's all I know. So I just want to, I'm kind of at the end. So what I will say is, yeah, the biggest film festival in the world hasn't cracked the code on how to share content with people on a mass scale. So they had a cinema. They had these kind of personal viewing things. We watched something in the cinema that was half an hour. After about 20 minutes, my phone died because of overheating. Someone else's phone died as well. They came and gave us replacements, but we kind of missed whatever had happened. You know, so I think that's one of the biggest issues that we need to crack somehow. But also they were selling tickets, and by like the second or third day all the tickets went out because of course every experience takes like a while and there's so few places to watch. But the fact that they did it is awesome. There was a lot of people there. A lot of interest, curious folk, then a lot of creators. One thing I will say about that is that I could count the number of Asians on one hand. So it was all US, Europe, a smattering of content from China and one person from China. There was us. There was a Korean team who was there only because they're an offshoot of a big movie studio. There was another single guy from India who had his set up. That was it. And you know, we met more than 50 people and had sat, sit down, face-to-face conversations. I asked them all about what do you think about VR in Asia? What do you know? And all of them kind of their reaction was like it is a mysterious and far away place. We have no idea what's going on there. Apart from China, of course. So there's an opportunity for us to make our mark. We just need to be more vigilant about what's going on. I think submit content, you know, try and be seen as much as we can because there's definitely interest from people there. It's just that they don't know anything and they have no access. That's all I had to say. I will leave you with these exciting pictures we took. Touristy pictures. But you know, I'm happy to talk more, offline, share contacts, whatever. Abhi... Oh, it's gone. It's also here. So yeah, you can find us in the network. It's okay, you don't need to... Yeah, so thank you. Thank you for the very insightful talk about what happened in Cannes. Any questions? Well, thank you very much. I'd like to find out from you. Did you meet anyone from Future Rose School? Because they are the first IMAX in France. So I haven't been there for a long time. So I don't know what's the latest going on. Because the VR there was really long time ago and they have VR the whole room. Yeah, no... Yeah, this was since 2000. So the biggest Future Rose School is the biggest VR experience in the world then. So I'm just curious in Cannes. I don't know, I didn't speak to everybody so they could have been there. Okay, thank you. Any other questions? I have one question. Where's your Phoenix? So we got really useful feedback from the people we showed it to. So we're fixing episode one. So once we do that, we are happy to share it. And now we're working on episode two. And we'll be going in October to cross video days and see what happens. It's great. Yeah. Okay, thank you so much.