Latest from Next TV in Virtual-reality-2020

VR 20/20 2017: CNN’s Farkas Says VR Is a Natural for News

Mike Farrell — Tue, 17 Oct 2017 15:50:00 +0000

New York – Virtual reality may get most of its attention from gamers, but CNN vice president of premium content video Jason Farkas believes the technology is opening up a whole new aspect for television news, allowing networks and reporters to convey feelings as well as facts to their audiences.

At the Multichannel News/B&C VR 20/20 event here Monday, Farkas said VR allows viewers to more deeply identify with programs and news items by “giving witness” to them. And that can range from stories on climate change and war, to putting viewers behind the wheel of a Formula 1 race car, running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, or traveling back in time for an immersive look at historical events like the dismantling of the Berlin Wall.

Read More: Complete Coverage of VR 20/20

Farkas said VR is a natural and logical extension for news organizations that for centuries through print, video and digital means strove to give their audience the experience of being there.

“With VR, we have that tool,” Farkas said.

VR 20/20 kicked off NYC Television Week Monday (Oct. 16); read more #NYCTVWK stories here.

VR 20/20 2017: Storytelling Is All in the Edges

Mike Farrell — Tue, 17 Oct 2017 14:41:00 +0000

New York – Creating virtual reality content requires a different approach to storytelling, but content providers have to be mindful to let the technology enhance the story, not overpower it.

At a panel discussion entitled “The Medium and the Message: How Do We Tell Stories in VR?” at the Multichannel News/B&C VR 20/20 conference here, moderated by Jeff Jacobs, MTV senior VP of production planning, strategies and operations, panelists said that one of the biggest advantages of virtual reality programming and its ability to make viewers feel they are part of the experience is also one of the most overlooked.

Read More: Complete Coverage of VR 20/20

Moth+Flame VR founder Kevin Cornish said the idea that a VR experience has to constantly introduce new elements and encourage viewers to look around them is kind of missing the point. While a 360-degree view is essential, Cornish said the benefit isn’t in getting people to constantly rotate their heads to see what’s around them, but instead to feel like what they are looking at has no edge like a traditional TV, computer or phone screen.

Cornish added that VR storytellers use all the same techniques used in linear storytelling, including being consciously aware of the viewers threshold for boredom.

“Attention spans are just as short or shorter in VR,” Cornish said. “The more you can look around, the easier it is to get bored.”

Espii Studios founder and executive creative director Sadeh Espii Proctor said perspective is essential in moving a story forward.

“The things around us help inform,” Proctor said, adding that while it is the viewer’s natural tendency to look forward, encouraging them to see what is around them, even peripherally, gives additional clues to what is going on.

Theatrical designer and director Victoria Pike said giving viewers different perspective views also informs the story, adding that using apps as well as virtual reality and augmented reality layers are ways to give audiences a more unique experience.

“We’re all trying to capture how to connect with people, how to bring the stage performance off the stage and into the audience,” Pike said.

Discovery Networks has been a pioneer in the VR space -- it launched its VR app in 2015 and earlier this month announced a VR series in partnership with Google called TRVLR. Discovery Networks director of branded experiences Kyle Ranson-Walsh said content makers have to come to grips with the idea that VR isn’t a genre.

“You’re in a moment,” Ranson-Walsh said, adding that a documentary with a talking head can be just as good a VR experience as one chock full of action and rushing zombies. “You want it to be immersive,” he said.

Cornish, agreed, adding that one of his favorite VR videos is a simple conversation with singer Taylor Swift.

“It felt like she was talking to me,” Cornish said. “That can be impactful. The thing that VR is going to do, it’s not about the places it will take us, it’s about the people it will let us meet.”

VR 20/20 kicked off NYC Television Week Monday (Oct. 16); read more #NYCTVWK stories here.

VR 20/20 2017: Virtual Reality Can Enliven ‘Dying’ Sports

michael.malone@futurenet.com (Michael Malone) — Mon, 16 Oct 2017 20:59:00 +0000

Personalizing the VR experience is essential for virtual reality’s increased role in sports, panelists said at Virtual Reality 20/20 Monday (Oct. 16).

Making it unique for the user is key to making it special, they said during the session "Moving the Goal Post for VR and Sports" at the Stewart Hotel in New York. VR 20/20 ispart of NYC Television Week.

“Personalization is really important,” said Meredith Kinsman, digital strategist and group director at Octagon. “You’re not trying to lock someone into a headset.”

Read More: Complete Coverage of VR 20/20

Dipak M. Patel, co-founder and CEO of Zeality, said VR is a key way to get the younger generation more involved in consuming sports. “Personalization is going to be a huge part of that,” he said.

Patel said several sports are “dying,” mentioning boxing and golf. “The challenge now is to make it relevant,” he added.

VR may be the thing that best brings millennials to the party. “It makes us feel like we’re closer, more a part of it,” said Vince Cacace, founder and CEO, Vertebrae. Consuming sports through a headset, he said, is “engaging and exciting.”

Read More: Complete Coverage of #NYCTVWK

The panel was moderated by tech exec Joanna Popper, who mentioned how the Golden State Warriors put together a VR presentation when Kevin Durant was considering which ballclub to join. The Boston Celtics, for their part, had video of Patriots QB Tom Brady pitching Durant. The Warriors’ pitch worked.

“VR is more impactful than Tom Brady,” she quipped.

Kinsman said the NFL translates particularly well into VR. Hockey and tennis, not so much. She discussed the next iteration of the VR sports experience, including looking into a 360-degree viewing dome.

“You’re in a sports bar,” she said, “but you are live on the field.”

VR 20/20 2017: Virtual Reality a Game-Changer in News, Entertainment, Marketing

michael.malone@futurenet.com (Michael Malone) — Mon, 16 Oct 2017 14:44:00 +0000

Lisa Martinez Gilpin, global head of news and publishing at Google Play, broke down the attributes of both virtual reality and augmented reality at the VR 20/20 opening session, and spelled out the roles both will play in the media going forward.

Augmented reality (AR) offers the user a “push and pull kind of dynamic,” she said, whereas virtual reality (VR) is more immersive.

Martinez Gilpin detailed Google’s history in VR, including 2014's Google Cardboard viewer, which she described as “simple with a lot of meaning.” She said a New York Times partnership a year later delivered more than 1 million Cardboard viewers to Times subscribers.

“Talk about coming into a really personal space,” she said. “We’re right there at your front door.”

Next was Daydream, offering a more breathable material than Cardboard. “There’s lots of great content to snack on,” said Martinez Gilpin, “as well as episodic content.”

VR 20/20 is happening Monday (Oct. 16) at the Stewart Hotel in Manhattan as the kick-off event of NYC Television Week.

Read More: Complete Coverage of VR 20/20

Martinez Gilpin said VR has a significant role in realms as varied as news and commerce. She spoke of “educating journalists to user VR cameras to tell their stories.”

Martinez Gilpin talked of ARCore, a platform for augmented reality apps. She described AR’s role in helping a consumer virtually try on clothing, or see how a coffee table fits in a family room, or check out a new car in different colors.

Read More: Complete Coverage of #NYCTVWK

Google’s Visual Positioning Service (VPS) can offer on-the-go consumers a look at a store’s layout before they visit. “It’s a great way to think about user flow,” she said, “and where products sit in store.”

VR, and AR, are part of the present, Martinez Gilpin suggested, not the future. “What used to take months now takes hours from a production standpoint,” she said. “It’s a lot more seamless and frictionless.”

Baobab Studios Lands $25M ‘B’ Round

Jeff Baumgartner — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 18:12:00 +0000

Get complete coverage of NYC Television & Video Week.

Baobab Studios, the startup focused on VR animation, said it has wrapped up a $25 million “B” round led by Horizon Ventures, along with help from with Twentieth Century Fox, Evolution Media Partners (backed by TPG and CAA), China'sShanghai Media Group, Youku Global Media Fund and LDV Partners.

They join Baobab’s original investors Comcast Ventures, HTC and Samsung.

RELATED: Comcast VC Backs Another VR Startup

Baobab Studios said the new round will be used to develop more animated VR movies and help the startup grow on a global scale.

In addition to the funding, the company also announced the hiring of Larry Cutler as chief technology officer (CTO), and the exec who served as Pixar's technical director for Toy Story 2 and Monsters Inc., and later became global head of character technology for DreamWorks Animation, which was recently acquired by Comcast.

Baobab also appointed Chris Milk, founder and CEO of story-focused VR firm Within, to its advisory board.

The funding follows the release of Baobab Studios’s INVASION! Episode One, an interactive animated VR short narrated by Ethan Hawke. The company has also released a “first look” for ASTEROIDS!, the second installment in the studios’ INVASION!, with the full episode scheduled for release in 2017.

Maureen Fan, CEO of Baobab Studios, and Eric Darnell, Baobab’s chief creative officer, joined Jane Rosenthal, executive chair for Tribeca Enterprises, for a keynote on VR storytelling Monday (October 17) at VR 20/20, VR 20/20, the first event for NewBay Media’s NYC Television & Video Week.

#VR2020 keynote speakers CEO Maureen Fan & CCO Eric Darnell sat down with @janetribeca to talk #VR and #storytelling pic.twitter.com/ItTAAIXxoA

— baobab studios (@baobabvr) October 17, 2016

VR 20/20: AltspaceVR CEO Predicts The Road Ahead

Jeff Baumgartner — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 00:11:00 +0000

Get complete coverage of NYC Television & Video Week.

New York – Predicting the future is a tricky thing, but it was a task taken on here Monday by Eric Romo, the co-founder and CEO of social virtual reality startup AltspaceVR.

Romo, the closing keynoter at VR 20/20, the first event for NewBay Media’s NYC Television & Video Week, offered his view on how key elements of the virtual reality (and augmented reality) market look today, and how they will evolve and change in the next three-plus years.

“The big challenge [for the industry] is too much looking forward,” Romo said, before reeling off this quote from Mark Twain: “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

RELATED: NBC News, AltspaceVR Team on ‘Virtual Democracy Plaza’

Today, he noted, many investment firms have a "VR person,” the individual who understands what all this new stuff is about. He noted that this similarly played out during the early days of the Internet, “Web 2.0” and mobile, for example. Today, the notion that one person at any one company encapsulates any of those is “ridiculous,” he said, because they eventually became huge, enabling technologies.

RELATED: VR 20/20: Unknowns Abound in Virtual and Augmented Reality Market

“And VR is the same,” Romo said, noting that companies will embrace and use VR as a foundational technology “or suffer.” In 2020, there will no longer be “VR companies,” but companies that use VR to solve a problem, he said.

Today, Romo said, 360-degree video is the dominant form of “passive” VR content that happens to work across all platforms. “People sort of know how to make it already,” he said of that category of content. In 2020, he predicted, new forms of “semi-passive” content will emerge and VR itself will become a new medium under which purpose-built content will flourish.

Today, everyone shows the “sunglasses slide,” representing the merging of VR and AR in a way that resembles a pair of Wayfarers. In 2020, he said, the sunglasses slide will be dropped as VR and AR “diverge” further and become more useful and support more markets and specific applications.

Today, Romo pointed out, consumers receive VR content by pairing viewers with mobile phones, gaming consoles or high-powered PCs. If the industry is being honest with itself, it will admit that this is a “broken” model for most. Romo predicted that in 2020 stand-alone platforms “optimized for VR” will become dominant and outsell today’s approaches, offering up Oculus’s Santa Cruz project and the Qualcomm Snapdragon VR820 and Intel’s “Alloy” reference platforms among examples of standalone-facing projects that are already well underway.

Today, Romo noted, the “Metaverse” – generally defined as a collective, virtual shared space -- is viewed as a place someone will build, based on what’s been proposed in books such as William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One or Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. The Metaverse that will emerge in 2020, Romo said, will embody “the evolution of the Internet” and will become something different than anything being imagined today. It will not be purposefully built, he said, but will instead materialize from the hard work of disparate groups, all trying to deliver great experiences.

“It’s organic…it’s an evolution,” Romo said.

Tribeca Enterprises’ Jane Rosenthal Headlines NewBay Media’s Inaugural Virtual Reality 20/20 Summit

MCN Staff — Mon, 12 Sep 2016 13:25:00 +0000

NYC Television & Video Week today released the list of keynote speakers, panelists and participating companies at the inaugural Virtual Reality 20/20. Technology, content, finance and marketing executives from dozens of top companies will appear onstage Monday, Oct. 17, at NYC’s TimesCenter (detailed list follows below).

To purchase tickets for Virtual Reality 20/20, visit https://nbmedia.swoogo.com/TVandVideoweek.

Virtual Reality 20/20 attendees can expect a deep dive into VR/AR content and technology as these new media affect a broad sweep of industries, from sports and entertainment, to advertising and gaming, to science and education.

The storytelling keynote session will feature Jane Rosenthal, executive chair of Tribeca Enterprises, in conversation with the co-founders of Baobab Studios, Maureen Fan and Eric Darnell.

In addition to the keynote speakers, the topics will feature perspectives from Comcast Ventures; Time Warner Investments; Intel Capital; Alcatel; VOKE; HTC; Pepsi Beverages North America; Hulu; CNN; Disney | ABC Television Group; ESPN; Fox Sports; IMAX; National Basketball Association; Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A, Inc.; The New York Times Company; Red Bull Media House; Taco Bell; NVIDIA; First Round Capital; GoPro; MaxPlay; Avegant; Time Inc.; Condé Nast Entertainment; Felix & Paul Studios; STRIVR; NextVR; Selhurst Media Ventures; Refinery29; Deep Focus; Luma Partners; Smithsonian Media; Specular Theory; Sketchfab and Surgical Theater, among others.

“2016 represents a tipping point for virtual and augmented reality,” says Greg Kahn of GK Digital Media, who is executive producing the event. “VR/AR is poised to have significant business, creative and educational implications. New York City is the ideal place to gather so many thought-leaders and practitioners who will accelerate the adoption of VR/AR technologies.”

Virtual Reality 20/20 will draw industry executives, investors, retailers, educators, and business leaders alike. The event format will range from networking sessions with creators and investors to panel presentations where the latest trends will be discussed and debated. Attendees will also be able to test out cutting-edge hardware and content through hands-on demonstrations.

To see the full list of speakers and events, visit http://www.vr2020summit.com/speakers/.

This year’s Virtual Reality 20/20 features several major sponsors: platinum sponsor Alcatel; gold sponsor HTC; silver sponsor VOKE; bronze sponsors Verizon Labs and New Age Electronics; exhibitor InstaVR.

The Virtual Reality 20/20 advisory board includes Michael Yang, Managing Director at Comcast Ventures; Scott Levine, Managing Director at Time Warner Investments; Arjun Metre, Investment Director at Intel Capital; Cary Tilds, Chief Innovation Officer, GroupM; Neil Carty, SVP Innovation Strategy at MediaLink; Ian Schafer, Founder & CEO of Deep Focus; Evan Kraut, Managing Director at Grey AdVentures; and Hardie Tankersley, CEO of Reality Fabrication Inc.

Visit http://www.nyctvweek.com for a complete schedule of the 4th Annual NYC Television and Video Week, which includes the 26th Annual Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame, Advanced Advertising, Next TV Summit, Hispanic Television Summit as well as Virtual Reality 20/20.

For information on 2016 NYC Television & Video Week partnerships and sponsorship opportunities, contact Charlie Weiss at 212-378-0478 or cweiss@nbmedia.com. Broadcasting & Cable, Multichannel News and Next TV are published by NewBay Media.

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