1) We continue to battle amid the resolution arms race. The advent of stereo 360 VR projects has bought a whole new level of complexity to our productions. This comes with some challenges but it has been fantastic to see veteran artists genuinely stumped and ultimately excited about having to try workarounds and try things for the first time.
We are starting to see clients ready to dig a bit deeper into true applications of VR and Mixed Reality formats. In 2016 we saw a lot of surface level content that felt like it was created to pacify executives looking to jump on the trend. I think a lot of production companies will look back on last years projects and feel some regret for what they did in efforts to feed on and benefit from that spike in demand. ]
Clients are increasingly aware of the incredible culture of waste that has somehow become accepted in the production space.
2) In 2017 we totally overhauled our studio with 70% of the spend going into a room the size of a two car garage. The result is one of the newest and evolved production engines we could get our hands on. Interestingly we are currently running at over 1.1 Petaflops which is higher performance that the worlds most powerful supercomputer from 9 years ago (IBM Roadrunner which cost $100m and was used to render Ironman) We made this investment to protect our creative process. The increased complexity of our projects has the potential to totally disrupt our creative process.
We are going right to the end state. Educating clients on the where the path we are on with regard to immersive formats will lead us in 2022 and beyond. The Three R’s (AR, MR & VR) are limited today and will continue to be so until further advances in Realtime Rendering, Volumetric/Light-field live action capture and playback hardware. We deliberately engage in some projects that have long delivery horizon (beyond 2020) this enables us to develop applications that can imagine the end state without being too watered down by the constraints of the current generation of the technical solutions.
We have developed a process for generating content referred to as LAB Assets. LAB stands for Living Asset Base. It is a process that focusses on eliminating the waste in traditional production processes by applying focus to the downstream flexibility and lifespan of what is created.
3) We had a Project right at the start of the year called Moodroads for Acura. It explored a whole series of concepts in one experience from Biometrics to Realtime rendering and immersive superformats that used robotics to create small footprint Theme Park rides. Not only was it a great consumer experience but it demonstrated the cultural cache for brands that use technology in a really relevant way. We had 1600 riders who actually experienced the ride during Sundance in Park City but the live 360 stream attracted almost 3m viewers. It was a big investment for Acura to attempt something that had never been done before but it paid off in an experience that crossed the paths and resonated with all the right target audiences.
We are currently working on a project that we can’t talk about until early next year. It involves the post biological existence of a cultural icon still alive and active today. The project has required us to bring together leading expertise in AI, VR and VFX and has completely opened our minds to a world of possibilities we had never even imagined before we started going through this wormhole.
4) A total disruption as new technology changes the rules and conventions of traditional production methods. Consider the impact of a drone pilot with a flight case replacing a 6 man crew with a pursuit vehicle equipped with a Russian Arm. Or the impact of light field camera’s where the DOP has control both focal and positional decisions as part of the post process. Or Realtime rendered content that is indistinguishable from “the old technique’ of capturing images that are locked in frames and can’t be modified to meet downstream needs. In those three examples alone there is not only elimination of long established roles but a complete change of the guard.
5) My New year’s resolution that will also impact the way the agency operates is to instigate not educate. We spend much of our lives educating clients about the value of new ideas. My ambition in 2018 is to spend much fewer hours telling them about what is coming and instead show them. We are currently working on a project that perfectly illustrates this approach. In the same way we did with our Moodroads project we have invented an idea that will bring together a number of ingredients into a perfect use case. We are starting by calling our R&D efforts Research and Deployment.
