The (R)evolution of film and photography
The video above is a 360° video, be sure to use your mouse to look around, for an in-depth view of the San Francisco stage.
In 2010, I was part of an innovation incubation group at Microsoft. We had just shipped an avatar puppeteering app as part of the launch of Kinect*, and I had recently had the chance to experiment with a prototype of what would later become HoloLens. It was in the middle of all this that I was shown an early prototype of volumetric video, and that’s when I knew that I had seen the future.
Video by James Battersby
Funnily enough, the prototype of volumetric video was awful—the subject looked like a melted wax candle, but it was clear that it was based on a real person. I knew though, that just as stacking multiple stills creates motion, and adding sound and color makes things more believable, adding depth creates a level of presence that can only otherwise be found by being in the same room. It’s no exaggeration that working on this technology has felt like a chance to follow in the footsteps of giants like Marie Georges Jean Méliès, and the Lumière brothers.
The best way to introduce a little of what I’ve been working on for the last dozen years, something that I’m incredibly passionate about, can be seen in this Story Labs feature on Microsoft’s volumetric video technology, featuring yours truly:
Our group in Microsoft was treated as a start-up (albeit with a completely different runway than other true start-ups have), with a goal to ‘graduate’ the tech to somewhere else within Microsoft. As the creative lead, my job was to show the value prop (especially through scenario development and demonstration proofs), contribute to strategy overall, and push engineering to elevate visual quality.
Getting in on the ground floor meant being able to investigate a wide range of scenarios and capture subjects, from the serious to the silly.
That breadth of diversity in what we captured ultimately built a level of expertise in the new medium that enabled us to develop and support a creator focused pipeline that has scaled to a global collection of studios licensing Microsoft’s technology.
The opportunity to work with so many different people over the life of this project has been an incredible blessing, and as a team, we have helped define what it means to be best in class in the volumetric capture space.
I’ve gotten to work with amazing and diverse talent. I’ve directed hundreds (more than a thousand?!?!?) of shoots, with well over a thousand people (not to mention some amazing animals too!) and worked with global brands and bootstrapped artists alike. You’ll see a lot of work product from those years here on my portfolio page, and I’m incredibly proud of the work we’ve done. The core value prop is clear in even the oldest material, and in many cases, brands and creators have brought high quality versions of those early prototypes to market.
A singular highlight for me has been working with creators who are responsible for meaningful social change. I contributed to Breonna’s Garden (both an AR and VR experience that celebrates the life of Breonna Taylor, as told by her family, with an outlet to share your own memories and thoughts), and to the Queerskins anthology (a series of experiences focused on telling the story of a young gay man who died of AIDS in the 80’s, and the impact his death left on his family), along with a host of other experiences that use the authenticity of volumetric video to create impact on immersive stories.
For me, it’s been a joy to be able to use my experience in this space to help those creators realize their dreams, and I’ve learned more about storytelling from the people I’ve worked with than I ever thought possible.
If you’ve made it this far down the page, here’s a link to an experience featuring the same break dancers featured at the top of the page. We ported a portion of a complete VR piece to this web enabled version to give folk a sense of what’s possible. It lacks some of the lighting and full six degrees of freedom of the original piece, but it’s still entertaining on its own, I think.
*Regarding the Avatar Kinect link I posted above… I‘m using it because the audio is me and my partner, and I adore her, so any chance to show her off is great. Plus the story never fails to crack me up.
What sucks is the person posting it had no right to do so publicly (it was an internal proof-of-concept piece), and that same person also claims to have been the “art director” for it (NOT TRUE), and the technical artist who managed to translate our tech to the existing Xbox avatar system (which was a BRILLIANT design) was not credited. That was far from the effort of a single individual, but the story tickles me so much, I’ve posted it anyway. :)