VR/AR for Media, Business, and Social Impact

Summary: Facing increasing financial headwinds, many news and media companies are asking whether or not to incorporate virtual reality - and more recently, augmented reality - into their offering. Mia Tramz, Managing Editor of Time Inc.'s LIFE VR, launched a new immersive brand for the media giant in September 2017. Her insights into the development of both content and strategy for these two new mediums take into account the risks and real hurdles media companies of various sizes might encounter, and the variables a company should weigh before investing in either technology.

Speaker(s): Mia Tramz, LIFE VR/Time Inc.
Mia Tramz is the Managing Editor of LIFE VR, Time Inc's company wide virtual reality initiative. Since joining TIME as an Associate Photo Editor in 2013, Mia has embraced immersive digital storytelling in many forms, culminating with her involvement shaping the editorial voice of Time Inc.'s new VR brand, developing and producing VR and AR content across the media company's 30+ titles. LIFE VR launched as a multi-platform virtual reality brand in September 2016.

Summary: James Fong, CEO of JauntVR China, will discuss key topics about the VR market in China. In his presentation he will go over a brief overview of VR history and the progressive evolution of VR market in China, the market difference between China and rest of world including distinct uniqueness of the Chinese VR market, how JauntVR defines the new era of VR in China and their business strategy to meet those requirements.

Speaker(s): James Fong, JauntVR China
Since August, 2016, James Fong has been appointed as the CEO of Jaunt China, heading up Jaunt VR's operation in Greater China. He knows entertainment, sports as well as hi-tech well with more than 20 years of leadership and management experience in these industries. Before working at Jaunt China, James Fong was the CEO of Oriental DreamWorks. During his tenure, Kung Fu Panda 3, produced by Oriental DreamWorks, became the first animated film co-production with an American company in China. Previously, his contribution to the development of seller service and advertising of Amazon China, has attracted thousands of Chinese online retailers to the largest global internet-based retailer in the world. From 2007 to 2010, James Fong served as the Managing Director of NBA China, responsible for performance venue and the development of NBA league game. Before 2007, as the Managing Director of Microsoft China, James Fong was in charge of 165 million investment funds of Microsoft in China, as well as sales and promotion in 32 cities among 17 provinces.

Summary: A live-action coming of age story, "Wonder Buffalo" follows an overweight first-generation Thai-American teen who dreads her duties as a daughter. She runs away from home to attend a local cosplay event at her favorite comic book store. Along the way, in her imagination she battles monsters, superheroes, and annoying school bullies, ultimately preparing her for a battle against her most powerful nemesis—her mother.

Wonder Buffalo: The VR Experience is an interactive, room-scale HTC Vive experience that incorporates photogrammetry, volumetric video, responsive audio and interactivity with CG assets. The piece centers on the social message of body positivity and using artistic creation as a means of personal empowerment. After witnessing an overweight Thai-American teenager suffer verbal abuse from her overbearing mother about her weight, the user is challenged to transform the space around her into the fantastical realm of her imagination, which is fed by the cosplay culture and comic book art that she both idolizes and creates herself mixed with her Thai heritage.

The majority of VR experiences are either multi-camera 360 video or a volumetric computer generated environment. The goal of The Wonder Buffalo project was to combine different photo realistic volumetric capture techniques and bring those results into a game engine to create a fully immersive walk-around experience of a storytelling narrative. This was achieved by incorporating the latest techniques in photogrammetry environment capture, light stage actor performance capture, and positional VFX. A new workflow was developed to bring all of the assets together in tandem with a traditional 2D short film production; the same sets and assets were used from the short film production.

Speaker(s): Christine Berg, University of Southern California
Christine was born in Thailand, raised an army brat, and served eight years as a Russian linguist and Blackhawk helicopter crewmember in the American Army. She holds an MFA in Film and Television Production from USC. Her current film "Wonder Buffalo" was developed by Christine and her partner Simon Shterenberg at the Writers Guild Foundation's Veterans Writing Program and granted the 2016 Innovative Technology Award from the Entertainment Technology Center at USC which gave them an opportunity to make a short movie and an additional VR project. Wonder Buffalo: The VR Experience was a finalist in the Television Academy's new juried Emmy category for 2017 - Innovation In Interactive Programming for an Emmy. It premiered at SXSW and has also shown at Tacoma and AFI film festivals. Netflix acquired the dramatic feature BURNING SANDS co-written by Christine, which premiered at Sundance 2017.

Summary: You only protect what you love. You only love what you know. This is the drama for our oceans. Covering 71% of our planet, they are ignored, feared, trashed and abused. 99,9% of us have never dived. Now is the time... Never has a tool been so apropriate than VR to reconciliate Humans and Oceans.

Speaker(s): Sophie Ansel, Oculus VR for Good Film Director (2016)
Sophie Ansel is a storyteller and adventurer, delivering stories through the medium of film, Virtual Reality, journalism, books and novels, radio and documentaries. She has a deep love for exploring different cultures and defines herself as a human rights & environmentalist advocate. Her many experiences in places all over the world have led her to discover values of courage, solidarity and nobleness in people deprived of power and of voice, yet armed with an incredible resilience and will to survive. Sophie has investigated issues such as human trafficking & slavery in South East Asia and has campaigned & denounced the genocide of the Rohingya in Burma within French media coverage since 2012. To denounce the atrocities of human trafficking and boat slavery, authority corruption and human rights violations against refugees, Sophie wrote graphic novel "Lunes Birmanes" She has written 'Nous les innommables, un tabou birman', the biography of Rohingya Habib and an exploration of the genocide taking place against the Rohingya people, who she followed for six years from Burma to the detention centres of Australia. Sophie has also written 'Forbidden Tears' ('Les Larmes interdites'), the true story of a 4yr-old girl forced into resilience during Pol Pot genocide. Sophie birthed a great concern for the environment as a result of seeing the destructive activities of humans on the natural landscape as she explored oceans and tropical rainforest. After directing TV reports for the French Television in Indonesia, Burma, Cambodia and Thailand, Sophie co-produced with Seaview 360 a series of 5 films for the Great Barrier Reef Foundation in 2015 before working as a field producer and camera operator on the 'Chasing Coral' documentary. She produced another film in Monaco before directing VR Film ""Out of the Blue"" narrated by legendary oceanographer Sylvia Earle.

Christophe Bailhache, The Ocean Agency
Christophe is a cinematographer and photographer, Co-Founder of The Ocean Agency, an innovative Not-For-Profit based in Australia that specializes in technology-driven disruptive ideas. He is also Co-Founder of Seaview 360, set-up by The Ocean Agency in response to the growing need for virtual reality 360 content. Seaview 360 has quickly become pioneer in underwater 360-degree content production. Christophe co-invented and led the development of the revolutionary SVII camera — a camera that takes underwater 360-degree panoramic images for both Google Street View and scientific monitoring purposes. This unique camera developed for the XL Catlin Seaview Survey has allowed him and his team to do surveys of large area and collect a huge amount of critical imagery on a scale never done before. The invention was claimed by Time Magazine to be one of the top 100 new scientific discoveries in 2015. As the 360° lead photographer, he also heads up the Special Operations collecting 360° content around the world primarily for outreach programs such as Google Street View Oceans. His respected work associated with successful marine conservation program allowed him to be granted access to some of the most preserved area in the world amongst them: the Chagos archipelago, Aquarius, Rose Atoll, and recently Palmyra Atoll. Christophe’s work has been featured in CNN, NBC, BBC, National Geographic, TIME and in the recent award-winning documentary feature Chasing Coral and Chasing Coral VR. His 360 VR films and photos have been exhibited in prestigious museums worldwide, including the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco, the Natural History Museum, London; and the United Nations, New York.