Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Alife Economy, dedicated to exploring the intersection of technology, spirituality and consciousness.
Speaker: We are returning from a bit of a lengthy break, but we're excited to be back delivering some fun content for you guys.
Speaker: Before we get into the actual show, I would love to share a brief update on our website at alifeeconomy.com.
Speaker: I've updated it with a
Speaker: really cool next-gen health and wellness biohacking, neurohacking marketplace for some really innovative products.
Speaker: So we'll love to have you guys check it out and share your feedback with us.
Speaker: This week's episode, we are speaking with Christina Heller, the CEO of Metastage, which is a really fascinating and innovative technology company that is creating a volumetric video.
Speaker: And we get into...
Speaker: what that means and for the future of entertainment and VR.
Speaker: And I just love Christina and was so grateful to have her on.
Speaker: So please enjoy this new episode.
Speaker: For people that have never heard of Voluminous Radio, how would you share a little bit about what it is at a high level?
Speaker: I think that a way to think about it is it's 3D performance capture.
Speaker: You know, it doesn't have to be more complicated than that.
Speaker: You know, it's, you know, when we're capturing something at Metastage, you know, we'll have an athlete, a musician, or just, you know, someone's grandma, for instance, you know, go out on the stage and they are surrounded by cameras, which are all facing inward.
Speaker: So, you know,
Speaker: We actually use 106 cameras at Metastage, all facing inward at a performer.
Speaker: And then we say action.
Speaker: And that person does whatever they're going to do.
Speaker: So if they're a dancer, maybe they do a pirouette.
Speaker: If they're a baseball player, maybe they take a swing.
Speaker: Or if they're your grandma, maybe they're telling a favorite family story.
Speaker: And we capture that performance, if you want to call it that, or whatever happens on stage from every possible angle.
Speaker: And what you get on the other side is a fully 3D asset, not unlike the holographic displays we've seen in sci-fi movies from the past where, you know, if you have the right viewing devices, you can walk around that person, you can stand in front of that person, and it is if they are standing right in front of you.
Speaker: And
Speaker: it's truly magic because you can, obviously right now, you're looking at me on Zoom, you're getting this framed view of me from one perspective, which I can angle to make sure is just the right view and all of that.
Speaker: But you're not necessarily capturing the fullness of my life essence, the way that I carry myself, the way that I move.
Speaker: And so we are really trying to capture a person with as much integrity as we possibly can to create
Speaker: the truest thing to real life as possible.
Speaker: Really cool.
Speaker: Thank you for that explanation.
Speaker: I think that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker: And for me, this is the stuff of like sci-fi dreams meets reality today.
Speaker: And you've been doing this for a number of years, even though it is still a relatively new technology.
Speaker: But I mean, I would say you're among the first
Speaker: major vendors or companies that is in this field that has a studio that is available for use for people to actually come and visit.
Speaker: What does that look like in terms of your clients that are using this?
Speaker: What are they actually using this technology for?
Speaker: Well, as you mentioned, it's new and it's pioneering tech.
Speaker: So we often work with pioneers themselves, you know, creators who are, you know, at the cutting edge of mixed reality, virtual reality, augmented reality, or, you know,
Speaker: love to take new tools and do innovative work with them.
Speaker: So, you know, a great example would be, you know, we do a lot of work with Trigger Global.
Speaker: They're a really amazing interactive agency and we worked on a project throughout 2020 with them and going into 2021 called
Speaker: AR Pro Interactive, where we, you know, had athletes who were at the top of their game.
Speaker: So, you know, Tony Fanow for golf, Sloan Stevens for tennis, Ray Allen for basketball.
Speaker: We had them come in to Metastage and then teach their, you know, how they do their signature move, that they're able to teach that.
Speaker: And then actually on stage, as well as a number of other fun, you know,
Speaker: components that are part of this whole AR Pro interactive app.
Speaker: And what that allows you to do is kind of learn from the greats
Speaker: and get to see what they would be like if you were standing right next to them close up.
Speaker: And when would you ever get a chance to, you know, you know, walk around Ray Allen and actually see him in his full amazing, you know, it's like six foot six or six foot seven stature, that kind of thing.
Speaker: So that's a great example of a, of a, like an episodic augmented reality, um, series that we've been working on with our partners at trigger and also Verizon who, who are the sponsors and who are distributing the app.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And together we've been, you know, cracking the code on how to do, you know, training using volumetric and AR.
Speaker: And I have countless other examples.
Speaker: I mean, we've been working with so many wonderful clients in the past, you know, almost three years now.
Speaker: And, you know,
Speaker: I just, you know, from fashion, you know, we've done some really cool stuff where, you know, people are capturing their, their fashion and, you know, using three dimension and doing like catwalk type work we've done, um, you know, musicians and influencers offer for the platform Jadu.
Speaker: I mean, we had little Nos X come just a couple of weeks ago and do something for Jadu.
Speaker: So, and then, but then, like I said, you know, all the way down to, I had, I got to bring my mom on stage and had her sit in like my grandmother's chair.
Speaker: And I asked her some questions about, you know, what brings her joy in life, what her life lessons are.
Speaker: And I, you know, and, and I, it was such a, like a privilege to like keep that for, for, for posterity.
Speaker: That's so beautiful.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: That's amazing.
Speaker: Yeah, so there's a few, I mean, there's so many use cases, it kind of boggles my mind.
Speaker: And as Summer was mentioning earlier before we jumped on, like this has been an interest and a passion of mine.
Speaker: I actually have a few of the new Azure Connects
Speaker: And I've been experimenting a little bit with a volumetric video with that and haven't gotten too deep into it, unfortunately, yet.
Speaker: But that's sort of a little bit somewhat more on the consumer end of things, right?
Speaker: Because like anyone can go out and buy them.
Speaker: Now, granted, they're very much dev-
Speaker: positioned or marketed as dev tools or technologies.
Speaker: Whereas your studio, I guess, or capture stage is for the businesses and companies to use.
Speaker: Do you see this technology making its way into something that an average person, a consumer will be able to engage with?
Speaker: And what would that look like?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, I think that we already can see, as you said, with like connects, there are, you know, consumer level volumetric setups that you can do from your office or your home.
Speaker: And, and then obviously what we're doing at Metastage right now is like,
Speaker: the most premium high quality volumetric that you can get.
Speaker: And I think, and I think there's always going to be a place for both, you know, obviously what you're doing at home will continue to improve and, you know, you will be able to get, you know, more coverage, more accuracy when reconstructing your face and body for, you know, for display.
Speaker: And that, but there will always also be a place for the, you know,
Speaker: AAA kind of type companies who want to bring in, you know, A-list talent and want to have a professional white glove experience at a, at a, at a professional sound soundstage.
Speaker: And, and to be honest, you know, you know, Mike, we work, we work with the Microsoft technology stack, the Microsoft mixed reality capture suite.
Speaker: And we, and, and they spent 10 years developing the software that, that we,
Speaker: work with at Metastage, which is, it's a real like, you know, privilege to be able to commercialize that.
Speaker: Yeah, you were the first, right?
Speaker: We were the first in, well, second in the world and the first in North America.
Speaker: Yeah, first in North America.
Speaker: Congrats, that's awesome.
Speaker: Yeah, thank you, thank you.
Speaker: I mean, it was, it's one of those things, yeah, I just like, you know, so lucky.
Speaker: But Metastage hopes to be able to offer
Speaker: like in the near future, a broader range of solutions for creators and people who are interested in working with Volumetric that aren't all just at the most premium and commercial level.
Speaker: And I'll be able to, I actually am excited.
Speaker: I'm going to announce one effort towards that today.
Speaker: And in the next, you know, six months, definitely, you know, stay like, you know, follow Metastage, stay tuned because we're going to be continually kind of
Speaker: making efforts to offer other solutions that might be more accessible to consumers across the board and not just the, you know, the Verizons of the world.
Speaker: I'm wondering about, that's so cool that you're offering this to people on a lot of different levels.
Speaker: I'm curious about where volumetric capture comes in as far as the future goes.
Speaker: Like I can imagine so many use cases like for communication or health, education and other types of training, like you mentioned with pro athletes.
Speaker: What do you think the future of volumetric capture is going to look like?
Speaker: Well, I mean, I think our hope is that volumetric will become just a more prevalent form of media across the board.
Speaker: You know, that it will, right now, I still think that, you know, when you look at like the Verizon 5G apps that we've been helping to build, you know, there is that like astonishing wow factor.
Speaker: People have never seen anything like it.
Speaker: And I, but I think if you look, you know, five years to the future, you know, I think that we will be more
Speaker: familiar with seeing, you know, holographic representations of people in our hopefully broader media experiences on, you know, mixed reality headsets and devices everywhere.
Speaker: So as I, you know, I think we're, gosh, Cosmo, we've been in the scene for a long time.
Speaker: We've both, we've been, we've been obsessed with mixed reality, virtual reality, augmented reality for many years.
Speaker: And it, and it's been, you know, this gradual increase in user adoption,
Speaker: But I think certainly with quarantine, we've seen that accelerate.
Speaker: And so as we have more devices that enable us to have spatial media and spatial computing, volumetric will be a key component of that.
Speaker: And so I think the future of it is just more of it in various applications.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: I think more of it, more prevalent and also higher quality.
Speaker: And I think it'd be important for you to share a little bit with the audience and people listening to go into a little bit more detail and paint a picture on what this actually looks like and what it feels like.
Speaker: Now, of course, people can visit, I believe, metastage.com and they can actually see images and videos.
Speaker: But it is really, really cool.
Speaker: very fascinating in that what you're able to do is capture, essentially digitize people, put people in a computer in a way that in a computerized form,
Speaker: not literally put people on a computer, but make essentially like a clone or a copy, right?
Speaker: In a way that is very, you know, very similar to what, you know, movies like Star Wars and many sci-fi shows and media have been imagining for decades, right?
Speaker: This idea of like projecting a hologram out into the space.
Speaker: And
Speaker: Of course, you can view this file on a desktop or on a phone, but where it gets really interesting and exciting for me to imagine, well, not even to imagine.
Speaker: I mean, it is here today.
Speaker: It is present with us that we can engage with these technologies.
Speaker: But AR and VR, being able to interact with these 3D models,
Speaker: either in a fully immersive situation with a headset on or on your phone where you can have a virtual human standing in front of you or on your desk.
Speaker: And I guess this leads me to an important question, which is I could ask about AR broadly, but also for volumetric video as well, which is...
Speaker: where do you see this technology being genuinely useful versus being used as sort of a gimmick, like a marketing gimmick that looks cool.
Speaker: And it's like, oh, we have AR and we can have something that looks like it's in the room.
Speaker: And that has like a cool factor, you know, to see that and evaluate the technology.
Speaker: But yeah,
Speaker: Where do you see something like volumetric video?
Speaker: And I suppose I would add AR along with that because they kind of go hand in hand.
Speaker: Where do you see these technologies being applied in a practically useful context that shows that this is something that is really meaningful and here to stay?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I do think that
Speaker: when we move to head mounted displays, you know, in a way where there's more people able to use them.
Speaker: So that's like HoloLens or Oculus Quest.
Speaker: That is when you're able to engage with volumetric holograms, if you want to call it that, at a level that is more functional, I think, than what we've seen with just the phone-based stuff.
Speaker: And my hope is actually that these glasses won't... They're not just going to cut the phones out of the equation.
Speaker: They're going to work with the phones.
Speaker: The phones will be the device that powers the glasses.
Speaker: You know, I feel like, you know, right now, because we're having to do everything through the phone, it can feel, I don't want to say the word gimmicky, because I still think that there is like, a lot of excitement and
Speaker: you know, magic to see, you know, being able to see your favorite celebrity in the room with you.
Speaker: But now imagine when you don't have to view them through the tiny device and instead they are standing right before you in their full majesty.
Speaker: I mean, I have had the chance to do so on a HoloLens and it took my breath away.
Speaker: It really did.
Speaker: It was amazing.
Speaker: For me, one of those moments, those like immersive moments that we've had, you know, those immersive moments where like something shifts for you and you feel like you've had a glimpse of the future and it's, you know, too cool to not happen.
Speaker: And so that's how I felt when I saw one of our holograms on a HoloLens too, because the person was standing right in front of me and it looked like they were right there.
Speaker: And the whole thing about volumetric, you know, if you're not that familiar, it's not like,
Speaker: It's not like what you're necessarily used to with a video game character where it has that little bit of the uncanny valley happening.
Speaker: I will say we are getting the digital characters, fabricated digital characters have come a long way and we're...
Speaker: It's so incredible to see how the level of realism people are getting with animated characters.
Speaker: But what makes Volumetric different and special and important in my mind is that it is real.
Speaker: We're not trying to puppet an animated avatar.
Speaker: We are actually capturing the genuine real human performance in almost like a documentary type fashion.
Speaker: And so...
Speaker: it has, you know, all of those little quirks and nuances that people do.
Speaker: Like if I twitch or something, you know, that, that, that comes through.
Speaker: And so when I was looking at the person in the HoloLens and, you know, I did, they just had that naturalness about them and I could tell it was that real person.
Speaker: It was so cool.
Speaker: So to answer your question, you know, I think that we did like training is, is so the opportunity is so big there because, um,
Speaker: We've already, they've already done countless studies about how training, immersive training leads to like much, much higher retention and better results.
Speaker: And so having, you know, being able to learn from masters of the craft or from, you know, experts in, in, in a way as if they were in your own home and being able to then replicate that and send that out to people all over the world to learn firsthand from the, from the masters themselves.
Speaker: I think is, you know, training, education, all of that.
Speaker: I think that is a huge and exciting vertical that we're just going to continue to see grow.
Speaker: And then, but then I think there's, you can't deny the, the power of, of celebrity and fan and fan experiences to, you know, getting to getting to
Speaker: watch your favorite musician do a live performance in your, in your home, as if it was like an acoustic set for one, um, you know, could be an incredible, will be an incredibly powerful experience for, for people.
Speaker: And I think allow artists this, this new and really intimate way to connect with, with people without having to
Speaker: you know, necessarily go on the road all the time, you know?
Speaker: So it could be good for the fans because they get a little closer and more personal with their favorite artists.
Speaker: And it could be great for the artists as well because they can maintain maybe a little more of a normal life.
Speaker: Do you know, is there any way using maybe like multiple platforms or technology to create volumetric videos or experiences with celebrities who may have already passed away, who may have not been scanned or captured fully, but like with combining what video that does exist and other people like body doubling for them?
Speaker: Is that something you've ever thought about?
Speaker: No, I, you know what?
Speaker: We actually did a test.
Speaker: with this, with another team that was, you know, a very sophisticated team with deepfakes.
Speaker: And we did actually successfully project a deepfake face onto a volumetric body.
Speaker: But keep in mind, it would be...
Speaker: it's not the body of the person.
Speaker: It was like, it was like you take a body double and you, you project a deep fake onto their, onto the face of a body double.
Speaker: But I did, it did work.
Speaker: And, uh, no, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I'm just imagining like, we could see David Bowie live again.
Speaker: We could see Michael Jackson live again, you know?
Speaker: To that point, I actually would love to give a shout out to Remington Scott and John McInnes, who did a wonderful David Bowie animated recreation, which again, when I speak to the advances that we've seen in an animated digital recreations, I mean, that David Bowie avatar is like still one of the best
Speaker: the best animated avatars I've ever seen.
Speaker: And, and, and so I will say that while you can do that, and that, that is a little different, I would say than what Metastage is kind of core vision is and what we're here to do, you know, which, cause I think if you want to bring, you know, somebody back from the dead, you should, that, that, that approach is, is what like they did with the David Bowie avatar, for instance.
Speaker: And they, there are great artists
Speaker: out there that you can go to talk to about that type of work.
Speaker: Where we, I think, really shine is when you want to capture somebody who is here now and you want to capture them with as much realness and integrity as possible.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, there's kind of the narrative, fictional side of things where we can use this technology to tell stories.
Speaker: And you guys have been working on that.
Speaker: And then also the real life component and the memory capture is also super compelling as well.
Speaker: You did this project called The 100% and also you captured a Black Panther.
Speaker: Could you talk a little bit about those projects?
Speaker: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker: So, um, the hundred percent was actually our very first project and that a stage we did it with a company Springbok entertainment, and it was funded by HP and, uh, we, it was the odd, it was an autobiographical narrative told through dance, um, of a woman who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Speaker: So she talked about her diagnosis and, um, but, but it was a staged performance.
Speaker: And what was so cool was they did a scan of the Orpheum Theater in Vancouver and then placed these volumetric ballerinas on that stage.
Speaker: So you were actually looking at beautiful, high-quality volumetric performances on a stand stage.
Speaker: stage and bringing kind of the most true to life experience of seeing that ballet that we can bring into the virtual form.
Speaker: And that piece actually got nominated for an Emmy.
Speaker: And yeah, and it was just like visually stunning.
Speaker: And that actually is a good segue to something that I wanted to talk about in this program, which is that we are
Speaker: as of now, also moving into environmental scanning at Meta Stage 2.
Speaker: So in addition to just doing volumetric human capture, we are also beginning, as of now, I'm announcing it, here it is, doing super high quality LiDAR scanning of physical environments as well.
Speaker: And for us, it's just like this really
Speaker: organic extension of the work we've been doing for the past three years, capturing real places and bringing them into virtual environments.
Speaker: And then if we can just do that on its own, if that's what you need, if you just need a scan of your venue, for instance, we can do that.
Speaker: But if you wanted to bring an artist or a performer into that venue, then we can do that capture as well.
Speaker: So it kind of continues that theme of bringing the real into the virtual.
Speaker: Um, and then just touching on the iconic Black Panther XR project, um, that was with a production company called Crux.
Speaker: It is currently in the works being built.
Speaker: We're actually working also with our partners at Magnopus on it too, because it's not just AR volumetric.
Speaker: It's going to be an interactive experience as well, where you can actually ask questions and that will trigger different responses from the...
Speaker: from the subject.
Speaker: So that is a project, you know, we're super excited about it.
Speaker: We interviewed, you know, someone who was involved with the Black Panther Party back in the 19...
Speaker: 60s and he talks about his experience and lends his wisdom for the next generation and hope you know hopefully that is an educational project that will you know live on and serve a you know a meaningful purpose for generations to come.
Speaker: Beautiful.
Speaker: And actually, while we're on the topic of announcements, that's actually a good segue into another thing I wanted to announce today while I was chatting with you.
Speaker: So again, big announcement.
Speaker: Haven't talked about it publicly before, but we have been basically...
Speaker: workshopping in beta since the beginning of COVID, something we're calling our Metastage Volcap Access Program.
Speaker: And the idea is we wanted to lower the barrier to entry for independent creators to use Metastage to do works that, for instance, like the Black Panther Project have great social impact or are perhaps really just innovative, unique uses of the medium.
Speaker: What we are offering is for independent creators that fit that bill, you know, and we're going to be limiting it to think about four projects a month.
Speaker: We will waive the stage fees.
Speaker: So at that point, you're only going to pay for processed content and other the other like necessary line items that you might need to do the production.
Speaker: And so it's great for projects that have some budget, but maybe are under some budget restrictions.
Speaker: And so, yeah, we did one other project this year with an artist named Lynn Marsh, where we did this dance project for an art installation that's happening this summer.
Speaker: And it was just really cool.
Speaker: So
Speaker: So, yeah, this is the official announcement of the VolCap access program.
Speaker: I hope that encourages people who think that Metastage might be, you know, out of their price range to at least contact us and we can we can discuss and see if it fits the profile of what we're looking for.
Speaker: But yeah, I'm, you know, because being a former independent creator myself, you know, I just.
Speaker: I'm eager to try to be more accommodating for people that are doing really great work and want really high quality volumetric.
Speaker: Amazing.
Speaker: That's exciting.
Speaker: And that's so generous.
Speaker: That's amazing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Beautiful.
Speaker: And it's so much I want to touch on.
Speaker: The first thing is, yeah, something you said earlier about the
Speaker: the humanness of these captures, there's something that is qualitatively different about watching a volumetric capture of a human versus, you know, an animated avatar, right?
Speaker: And it's not necessarily like one is better than another.
Speaker: There are different technologies and use cases.
Speaker: But when I watch a recorded person, there's something about the way that they shift their body and like the way their clothes move that just feels like
Speaker: I don't know, I'm able to connect with it a little bit more.
Speaker: And I just think that that's an important difference for people to be aware of in what you guys are offering versus some of the other technologies out there.
Speaker: And then I think another fascinating thing
Speaker: dimension of this conversation is within the the layering or the combination of all the various new and kind of pioneering technologies that are available volumetric video to start augmented reality location capture with lidar scanning deep fakes it's like my head starts to like
Speaker: explode a little bit in terms of the possibilities for storytelling, for marketing, for education.
Speaker: And where we're at right now is, it reminds me in some sense of kind of where VR was, say, in 2013, 2012-ish when...
Speaker: in the earlier days, quote unquote, when Valve had this super high-end VR headset that everyone was talking about, and it was in this room at Valve.
Speaker: And I was lucky enough to go there around 2013, 2014 with my VRLA co-founder, Johnny Ross.
Speaker: And that was the moment for us where
Speaker: Like, you know, we hadn't seen that high quality VR up until that point, and it just blew us away.
Speaker: It was just this magical experience.
Speaker: And I bring it up because it reminds me in some ways of kind of where we're at with volumetric video capture, where it's this, you know, giant room of tons of cameras, very expensive process.
Speaker: And we're, but at the same time, we're, I shouldn't say, I mean, it depends on your budget, right?
Speaker: It depends on who you are, right?
Speaker: No, it depends on who you are, yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: compared to building a super high animated avatar, volumetric actually can be a very affordable version compared to that.
Speaker: But if you're comparing it to shooting on your iPhone, it would just be a little different.
Speaker: I wanted to be fair to you.
Speaker: But at the same time, we can...
Speaker: see this, we can see, I mean, at least I can see, and I'm sure you can as well, as you've been talking about this very clear path and trajectory towards how this technology will evolve and become something that will be in wider use and become more popular
Speaker: And it's fascinating to me because it's truly like science fiction creates reality.
Speaker: Because we've been seeing this, it's been in our minds, it's been in our awareness for decades and decades and decades.
Speaker: And it's like, we want that, we want that, we want that, we're going to create it.
Speaker: And so we're going to do whatever it takes and figure it out to actually make it real.
Speaker: And you guys are making it real right now.
Speaker: Among many other companies and people, of course.
Speaker: But it's amazing.
Speaker: It's really cool.
Speaker: And then I also think about Apple and they're rumored to be working on an AR headset.
Speaker: Have you considered when that comes out, which has been rumored to be in the works for many, many years at this point?
Speaker: how that will impact AR and volumetric video in your business.
Speaker: Yeah, I consider it on the daily.
Speaker: I really do.
Speaker: I think, you know, I believe Apple is going to do a wonderful job with whatever they unveil.
Speaker: I'm not attached to which company develops the product.
Speaker: What I really want, though, is AR glasses that
Speaker: You know, are functional on a consumer day-to-day level that because then, like I said, the work that we do and have done for the last three years will be given this new life in this way that I think is much more true.
Speaker: to the dreams of the generations that have been wanting this to come into fruition.
Speaker: So yeah, AR glasses will revolutionize the experience of volumetric holograms.
Speaker: But I think it has to be, well, certainly already businesses are already using HoloLens 2.
Speaker: It's a great enterprise headset.
Speaker: But it's funny, I'm a big VR nerd.
Speaker: And I remember the first time I did robot repair on the Vive.
Speaker: And that was another one of those big VR moments for me where I was like, oh my gosh.
Speaker: But I only use the Quest now.
Speaker: And because for me, I just want the ease.
Speaker: I want the comfort.
Speaker: I want to be able to just throw it on.
Speaker: And at this point, I actually like that I am...
Speaker: consuming the VR that the masses are consuming because it gets me, it allows me to be more in touch with what the like actual common VR experience is for people out there.
Speaker: And so, yes, I'll be very, very excited whenever we get whatever the quest for AR glasses is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, and actually, so the fascinating thing about the quest, you know, with the cameras that it uses for tracking, Facebook is apparently working on an API for developers to basically enable like an AR mode with VR headset.
Speaker: So if you can imagine, you put on the VR headset and instead of like a virtual world, you see a black and white version.
Speaker: of your real world, wherever you are in your living room, your bedroom, etc.
Speaker: But then because you have the tracking of the of the cameras that they use for VR, you can put virtual objects, menus, whatever it is that the developer creates in that world.
Speaker: And that is really
Speaker: a compelling idea and i would imagine or it's been rumored that apple is working on something similar that's sort of like a cross between an ar and vr headset where you put it on and you can use it for both vr and be completely immersed in the world but then there are also super high quality cameras that just replace the whole field of view with whatever the cameras are seeing plus uh whatever ar experience you want so
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so imagine like a, yeah, a training scenario where you can go between AR and VR, where, you know, maybe somebody is, it starts off by showing you, you know, in your home, how to put something together.
Speaker: And then at some point you transport to the factory where it was created and they actually walk you down the aisles of the factory.
Speaker: Like, yeah, I think,
Speaker: Yeah, it's very exciting.
Speaker: The future for mixed reality is bright and very weird, fun, and hopefully will bring true value to people's lives.
Speaker: I think that there's a lot of fear around technology because we've seen the ways that it has isolated and in some cases, you know,
Speaker: It's like disrupted institutions that we once thought were infallible.
Speaker: So it's one of those things where there's a lot of mistrust around technology, but I'm hopeful that virtual and augmented reality could bring a lot of value to people's lives.
Speaker: And when I think about being old, like elderly, for instance, I'm greatly comforted by the fact that we will have
Speaker: AR and VR by that point, because I will still be able to, well, I'll be able to inhabit any avatar I'd like, and I can travel to conferences and I can see people, you know?
Speaker: So I just, I hope that if anyone here is listening that is a skeptic,
Speaker: They just can imagine like being elderly and being able to have this fun, exciting, dynamic life from wherever they are.
Speaker: Totally.
Speaker: That's really awesome to think about.
Speaker: And, you know, you made a good point earlier when you were talking about cost with productions for independent creators.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like you were saying, it is less expensive to use Metastage than it would be to create a huge high-level production with a lot of different locations or crazy CGI and makeup and things like that.
Speaker: Are there other specifics that you could share ways that help someone who's an independent creator stay budget-friendly or ways that Metastage can enable independent creators to do more than they would be able to do normally?
Speaker: for less cost?
Speaker: Well, for sure.
Speaker: I mean, the thing that's always pricey is the processing of the content.
Speaker: You know, we're taking data from 106 cameras and then we are processing it into a, well, not tiny, but like a compressed,
Speaker: that can stream on mobile devices and just that level of compute is pricey.
Speaker: And then on top of it, we'll put it through multiple iterations to get to like the highest quality point.
Speaker: So again, like the processed minutes can be where your costs rack up.
Speaker: So I encourage people to think about,
Speaker: innovative ways to do their content with less minute count.
Speaker: So, you know, maybe you can, maybe you can, you know, so for instance, with 100%, one way that they kept their project more budget friendly was they had like some of the dancers in the background on loop.
Speaker: So the dancers, they were just doing five second loops, but they made them like, it was like a natural loop.
Speaker: you know, where they would like go down and then come back up and then come down and back.
Speaker: So they were like doing stretches behind the main performer who was doing the, the, the scene.
Speaker: And that was a way of getting, you know, more volumetric dancers in the scene, but not having to capture minutes worth of each.
Speaker: Um, and so, um,
Speaker: And maybe there are components of your project that need to be volumetric.
Speaker: And then other parts of your project where they're not really going to be moving around the subject.
Speaker: So you could just shoot them on a green screen.
Speaker: I think a great example, if you're a VR person, is Supernatural.
Speaker: Supernatural is a workout app on the Oculus Quest.
Speaker: That's super fun.
Speaker: And they, the trainers in that were not shot volumetrically.
Speaker: They were shot just flat against a green screen, but you never move around those characters in the experience.
Speaker: So it doesn't, you don't, they don't need to be in full 3D.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: Again, thinking about parts of your experience where having that full 3D presence is key and then maybe parts where it isn't.
Speaker: And if you can boil it down so you're not processing a lot of volumetric content, you can still get the power of the volumetric without necessarily having to inflate the budget.
Speaker: Yeah, I saw in some of the videos on your website, it was really cool.
Speaker: There was an instance where they were using background actors and they had just changed their clothes and it looked like you could do it rapidly in succession.
Speaker: And then there were some shots where the people were sitting at a table or at the couch and they weren't really moving around.
Speaker: But it seems like you could get a lot without having to do a lot of changes and you're not moving around a different location.
Speaker: So it seems really efficient in a lot of different ways.
Speaker: Yeah, that's actually a great point.
Speaker: We have, if you look at the Unity Asset Store, we have a number of volumetric assets that are available for purchase and you can do whatever you want with them.
Speaker: And they were intended to be background assets.
Speaker: You know, you can, if you were doing, let's say like an architectural visualization, or maybe you're even building a movie scene, but you wanted to throw some extras in the background.
Speaker: We captured actors in
Speaker: casual and business attire.
Speaker: And then we did some medical specific captures as well on like 15 second loops.
Speaker: And those are just in the unity store.
Speaker: I think they're like $40.
Speaker: And then we have like a bundle that's a little bit, you know, for like 169 or something.
Speaker: So those are some super affordable volumetric assets that you can do whatever you want within your projects and are a great way to start experimenting with what's possible.
Speaker: I actually have always fantasized maybe somebody would take
Speaker: those like almost like dolls and put them in a project and like, you know, do voiceover for whatever's happening with those actors.
Speaker: And you could actually like make a whole volumetric scene with just these, these background assets.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, a lot of productions actually do that with their background actors.
Speaker: They will do voiceover for them.
Speaker: So that it looks like they were actually talking, but that's really amazing that you can do that because you can't even hire an actor for one hour for 40 something dollars.
Speaker: So that's pretty incredible.
Speaker: Again, it's like we are, we're not trying to be inaccessible at Metastage.
Speaker: We are really genuinely trying to make
Speaker: It adds available to people who want to learn and grow and experiment as possible.
Speaker: And I think, like I said, I think this year we're going to see some really interesting shifts and hopefully, you know, it won't just be something that's for the biggest corporations and companies.
Speaker: Yeah, so you mentioned some of these volumetric assets available on Unity, or the Unity Asset Store, which is awesome.
Speaker: That leads me to a point that we wanted to discuss around NFTs, or non-fungible tokens.
Speaker: Super hot right now.
Speaker: Fascinating information.
Speaker: We got it.
Speaker: We got to talk about NFTs.
Speaker: We got it.
Speaker: Because we're not.
Speaker: Are we even talking?
Speaker: No, we're not even using words.
Speaker: Even a person, you are talking.
Speaker: We're not talking about NFTs.
Speaker: So in case you are not aware of these at this point, which is totally...
Speaker: Plausible, or maybe not.
Speaker: Essentially, an NFT non-fungible token is a way of accounting for ownership of a digital asset.
Speaker: So that could be an image, it could be a movie, it could be some kind of file, and it's all stored on the blockchain.
Speaker: And one person can own it, multiple people can own copies, and it's a really fascinating space right now.
Speaker: You may have heard about...
Speaker: various crypto art being sold for millions of dollars.
Speaker: In fact, in the last month, I remember reading a headline, something like $100 million worth of crypto art has been sold, which I don't know what it's at more recently, but that is really impressive, really fascinating and has caught my interest and attention.
Speaker: towards creating some sort of crypto art.
Speaker: And one of the ideas actually that I had was imagining what it could look like or what it would be to sell volumetric video as an NFT.
Speaker: So have you considered that?
Speaker: And do you see a possible intersection of using volumetric video content as something that could be sold as an NFT?
Speaker: I 100% think that volumetric holograms and NFTs are a
Speaker: They make a lot of sense.
Speaker: It's like a natural marriage.
Speaker: I will say that NFTs are not only just the hot topic, they're also very controversial at the moment too.
Speaker: There was an article that was, I think, published yesterday, or at least making the rounds yesterday, about how blockchain and NFTs are a disaster for our environment and use a tremendous amount of electricity.
Speaker: So
Speaker: You know, I just certainly think that there will be a lot of ongoing conversation about that.
Speaker: You know, it was interesting, like three days ago, everything was all, at least in my world, it was all good and positive about these.
Speaker: It was just like, how cool that we can finally like really protect and monetize digital art.
Speaker: And then all of a sudden this article came out and it was like actually...
Speaker: it's going to ruin the world.
Speaker: So now we're like, oh, what do we think?
Speaker: But let's like moving aside the concerns about energy consumption, which are real.
Speaker: And I think we should continue to talk about it and continue to look at alternative energy.
Speaker: I think that, yes, I mean, imagine if you owned one of 10, you know, holograms of, you know, LeBron James or, you know, one of these
Speaker: you know, an iconic, you know, performer, you know, I think that being able to have holograms or, and I mean, it works out.
Speaker: We're perfect with athletes because we, you know, the trading cards are just such a established practice.
Speaker: Imagine having super rare holographic trading cards of, of, of athletes or, you know, celebrities of, of any kind or, or just,
Speaker: you know, I really endless possibilities, but yeah, owning a likeness, a holographic likeness that is unique and that you're one of the only people that has it.
Speaker: I think that, you know, we're having some really interesting conversations with people right now about some ways that we can do some use cases and proof of concepts with NFTs and volumetric holograms.
Speaker: And then, you know,
Speaker: a little bit of a tangent, but I do get excited when I picture like the future future, perhaps where we don't even need AR glasses to view these holograms where you can just, you know, truly the sci-fi dream where there's just like a 3D hologram beaming out of a, you know, some kind of a holographic display.
Speaker: Then imagine having, you know, that unique and rare hologram in your home, like on display where people could see it.
Speaker: So-
Speaker: Yes, I think, you know, people, it was interesting.
Speaker: People have been like mentioning NFTs
Speaker: for years to me and I was kind of like listening but kind of not and then all of a sudden and then kind of all of a sudden doesn't it feel like all of a sudden in the last two weeks it's just been everywhere yes somebody hit me up and they were like they were like dude stuff is happening on Clubhouse you better be paying attention and I was like what's happening on Clubhouse there's always something happening on Clubhouse isn't that the whole thing about Clubhouse yeah
Speaker: Yeah, I love that.
Speaker: That's super compelling.
Speaker: And I'm glad that you're exploring it.
Speaker: And yeah, I mean, it's fascinating.
Speaker: For one, the intersection with sports, right, is kind of a no brainer.
Speaker: The creators of CryptoKitties started Top Shots, which is like the NBA version of NFTs where you can buy and trade and sell.
Speaker: essentially like virtual basketball cards and they're kind of cool i mean it's a little bit like silly like is like the and like the actual thing that you're buying is just a it's like it's like an animated movie of a cube that rotates and it has some pictures on each side and it's like very basic it's kind of neat like it's well designed but oh man if you could have a volumetric video of the athlete in the cube and they're like
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Doing some cool moves.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's going to.
Speaker: Or the shot of the last game they won.
Speaker: Like sinking that hoop or like tiger hitting that ball.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.
Speaker: I'm about to say something that's probably like in the no-duh category, but people just love rare stuff.
Speaker: It doesn't matter what it is.
Speaker: If it's rare, people want it.
Speaker: And so, yeah, I don't think that NFTs are going away.
Speaker: And I just, yeah, I hope we can...
Speaker: remedy the concerns about all the electricity, though.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Well, like you mentioned, I think it is it's a it's an issue more of energy where what our sources are of energy more so than I don't think we can blame NFTs for our energy problems.
Speaker: I think that that's right.
Speaker: Again, highlighting the progress that we need to make in that area.
Speaker: Yeah, right.
Speaker: True.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And the fact that it's being seen as an issue is actually a good thing because there's an awareness of it, right?
Speaker: Is kind of the first step towards addressing the problem.
Speaker: And I believe I know the article that you're referring to.
Speaker: I didn't have the chance to read it thoroughly yet, but I am really fascinated about it because I was like, oh, like, what if we could do NFTs that could help, you know, improve the environment in some way or restore the environment, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: of the of the sale goes towards a charity that, you know, for example, is helping clean up the oceans or plant a tree like that kind of stuff.
Speaker: There's an example where of like crypto trees where you can buy a virtual NFT of a tree and then they'll donate some portion of the money from that to plant a natural tree, which I think is really fascinating connection between.
Speaker: the virtual world and the physical world um but i i have to say the you know you guys are very well positioned to do like uh like a like to make the harry potter trading card yeah dream come come true you know what i mean like in the first movie he like has little the little dumbledore character and it's like he can rotate it and then he's like 3d and they're like oh man
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, totally.
Speaker: I mean, if you're, if you're out there and you've got the talent or the IP, you know, contact me, we've got the, we've got the magic machine, which can, you know, capture them in, in 3d.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then absolutely.
Speaker: And then, then another really amazing cutting edge piece to this, um, you, you were mentioning like, you know, in this, in the far future of like,
Speaker: You know, not even needing glasses.
Speaker: Well, actually, I don't think it's the far future at all.
Speaker: I think it's actually June, which is when Looking Glass is shipping their personal holographic displays, which I'm super excited about.
Speaker: I have one ordered.
Speaker: It's only like $200.
Speaker: No, me too.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: Are you kidding me?
Speaker: $200 for a little 3D glasses-free display?
Speaker: Really exciting.
Speaker: And I'm sure you're aware of this as someone that is into AR and 3D, holographic, everything.
Speaker: Being able to see and view your...
Speaker: 3D captures on a display that is meant to display 3D content.
Speaker: That's next level because now you're marrying the 3D capture with a display that is able to actually show you the full depth of it.
Speaker: Oh, for sure.
Speaker: And if you have your very rare...
Speaker: hologram, then you can display it on a looking glass.
Speaker: That's a great point.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And show it off to all your friends when they come over after COVID.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I think we should wrap up soon, but I definitely want to ask you a few more questions if that's cool.
Speaker: Of course.
Speaker: So I, Summer and I, I've watched this movie, The Congress recently.
Speaker: Have you, have you seen that?
Speaker: I'm sure you've seen it like three times.
Speaker: I would be shocked if you haven't seen it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I saw it recently.
Speaker: It came out in 2013, actually.
Speaker: It's really fascinating.
Speaker: And essentially it's about, was Robin Wright.
Speaker: She, it's very meta.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, it's about her and basically they scan her likeness, 3D scan her, I believe, which was actually at the MXR lab at USC.
Speaker: I'm pretty sure it's like where they filmed it for real, that capture stage.
Speaker: And then they turn her into like an avatar that can be used for movies without her having to, you know, actually be there, which is.
Speaker: interesting and happening now actually to a certain extent, right?
Speaker: Where we can bring back certain actors from the dead and put them in movies, which is wild.
Speaker: But so that leads me to want to ask you about your, you know, do you have any ethical concerns or like, have you considered like the moral or philosophical implications of what it means to be, you know, digitizing humans and putting them into a computer and what that means for, you know,
Speaker: the rights that we have as an actor or just as a person to, you know, like if I, if I get scanned, is someone going to be able to do something with that scan that maybe I wouldn't appreciate or like, or have you considered that, that sort of thing?
Speaker: Oh, for sure.
Speaker: You know, I, I would say that what we're doing, the volumetric
Speaker: process that we're doing at Metastage is sort of the antithesis of that.
Speaker: Well, first of all, the way that we're capturing talent at Metastage, it's not intended to be
Speaker: rigged and puppeted, you can go on Metastage, do a T-pose, and then add a skeleton and make that T-pose do things.
Speaker: But it's not the same as going to a professional light stage where they are using extremely high quality cameras to capture every detail of your face, to have you go through a variety of facial expressions and gestures
Speaker: with the express purpose of creating a extremely high quality animated version of you that can be puppeted to say and do whatever.
Speaker: That I do, that it's like, I'll put all that in the category.
Speaker: I'm not gonna make a judgment on whether that's ethical or not ethical, but I'll put that in the category of fake.
Speaker: It's fabricated.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: What we, when, when, when we display, um, you know, the content that's been captured at Metastage, that is real.
Speaker: When you watch somebody do a cartwheel front that was captured at Metastage on a device and you're amazed at how the flexibility and speed at which they were able to do that cartwheel, you can know that that, that, that was something that somebody actually had to physically do.
Speaker: Um, and that that was real.
Speaker: And I do think that that's an important distinction to make, that we need to be able to identify things that are real and things that are fabricated.
Speaker: And again, I don't think there's anything wrong with fabrication.
Speaker: I think fantasy and art in all of that is totally cool.
Speaker: But I also want to give the platform to the real that it deserves because for me, there's always that
Speaker: something a little more like that, something slightly, not only say more compelling, but something that is just innately compelling about knowing that it was real and that, that, that was real.
Speaker: And that when that person said it, they actually said it.
Speaker: And when they did it, they actually did it.
Speaker: And that this is the most accurate representation of them that I'm able to
Speaker: enjoy.
Speaker: So Metastage, you know, I'm not making, I can't make any bold declarations about where we'll be as a company in a few years, but I can say that right now and for the foreseeable, we're committed to the real and bringing the real into the virtual.
Speaker: And, you know, I had, I come from journalism and documentaries before this.
Speaker: So I, I feel like
Speaker: there's uh there's actually like a mission about it for me too beyond just like the cool factor i'm like i want i feel passionate about representing authentic people and you know authentic skills talents and real life essence in mixed reality and in virtual reality and now also real places that that exist in the world um
Speaker: So, so yes, I think like when I watched the Congress, you know, I loved that movie even before I got into volumetric.
Speaker: I think it's just really interesting film.
Speaker: And, and I think that sometimes people get confused about like when, when they come to do something at Metastage, they, they worry that that, that someone is going to be able to take what they've done at Metastage and make it say anything.
Speaker: And I have to often, you know, um,
Speaker: like calm those fears say no, like that's actually not the point.
Speaker: And you really couldn't do that very well with the, with the content that we're currently capturing anyway.
Speaker: And, and so don't, you know, don't worry about it.
Speaker: This is, you know, if you want it, this, this, this is you don't, you know, and we'll, we'll only ever do and say what you, what happened at,
Speaker: the capture process, you know, that's, that's so cool.
Speaker: That is a really important distinction to make.
Speaker: And I think that's probably what makes meta stage so special.
Speaker: And it reminds me of one of our favorite quotes.
Speaker: It's reality cannot be simulated.
Speaker: Who's the artist?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's, he has a shirt with it on it, but it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's really important.
Speaker: And I think reality and what is real and all,
Speaker: and what is authentic is becoming more and more valuable and scarce.
Speaker: Yes, yes, it is.
Speaker: And I think it would, this, I guess the big challenge is going to be in, in, in being able to discern the real from the fabricated, you know, with, with deep fakes being as sophisticated as they are already, you know, we're going to have to, as a society, ask ourselves when we see stuff, you know, if we think it was,
Speaker: if we think it's real and authentic or not.
Speaker: And, you know, at least for the foreseeable, if it's got the Metastage stamp on it, you know, you can rest assured that it was real and that you're looking at something that actually happened.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: Wonderful.
Speaker: I have one last question in which I'm super curious about your logo, actually, for Metastage.
Speaker: It's, could you talk to us a little bit about the inspiration for it?
Speaker: Yeah, that's so funny that you mentioned that.
Speaker: So it's a common symbol in like sacred geometry.
Speaker: And I believe it also pertains to like the human form.
Speaker: Like we also follow the basic structure.
Speaker: Yes, exactly.
Speaker: Of the, of the sacred geometry of that.
Speaker: So we, we, we took, it was interesting.
Speaker: I had, I had been, we were trying to think of what the logo for Metastage would be.
Speaker: I had this, that image just in my mind, this like star type, you know, would say, and then
Speaker: Interestingly enough, Ben Grossman, who is the CEO of Magnopus and also our technical partners at Metastage and they helped us build and launch the stage and work with us to this day.
Speaker: I was talking with Ben and Ben was like, what about this?
Speaker: And sent
Speaker: the same image to me, which I had been thinking about too.
Speaker: So that was just, so that was too, too.
Speaker: I was like, all right, I guess that's it.
Speaker: Cause we both were picturing the same like kind of sacred geometry star.
Speaker: The only thing we added though, which is like a detail that I don't think anybody would really notice is there's a little line at the bottom.
Speaker: And so if you look at what the meta stage capture volume looks like, it's like a circle.
Speaker: And then we have this like curtain, this like,
Speaker: curtain at the bottom.
Speaker: So it's actually a little bit of an homage to the Metastage Capture volume with the sacred geometry star.
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Because I saw when you launched the company a few years ago, I was like, that is a Merkaba.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I was like...
Speaker: Wow, they're into that.
Speaker: That's cool.
Speaker: It's sort of, you know, it's a unique thing, right?
Speaker: And my interpretation of it, at least, is the Merkava is supposed to be like this light body, right?
Speaker: And so when I think of it in conjunction with volumetric video, it's like you're converting the matter, right, the physical into digital or the light, like you're seeing it in the light, the projection of the light.
Speaker: through AR glasses or the phone or through desktop or whatever.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: And the light body.
Speaker: Well, that is a better way of describing it than I did.
Speaker: So that's an absolutely beautiful and poetic way to describe the Metastage logo.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Light body, light bodies.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's like your stage is kind of like a, like a portal or like, um,
Speaker: It's like it's very I mean, it really is sort of like the Star Trek matter transport.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: But but instead of physically going somewhere, you're taking a clone of you in that moment into the computer that can then be seen across space and time.
Speaker: Yeah, for eternity.
Speaker: Yeah, so long as the servers are still around.
Speaker: Yes, exactly.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Yeah, well, this has been great.
Speaker: Thank you so much.
Speaker: Fascinating, fascinating.
Speaker: And there's so much more we could talk about.
Speaker: But I guess, where can people learn more about you and your work and Metastage and all that?
Speaker: Well, we're on all the social media platforms.
Speaker: You can find us, we're either MetastageXR or I think on Instagram, we're just Metastage.
Speaker: You can also check out metastage.com.
Speaker: And I'm Christina Heller on all the platforms.
Speaker: You're welcome to shoot me a note if you wanna chat more.
Speaker: I'm always happy to educate and have conversations and also learn from people who are excited about this technology.
Speaker: Thank you so much for having me on this program.
Speaker: This has been a really lovely, lovely conversation.
Speaker: That's our show.
Speaker: Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker: And thank you to Christina for joining us here on this episode.
Speaker: I really enjoyed the conversation as did Summer.
Speaker: If you want to learn a little bit more about Metastage, you can check out metastage.com.
Speaker: And if you are enjoying this podcast,
Speaker: please leave us a review on iTunes.
Speaker: Visit alifeeconomy.com to learn more about our brand new website and would definitely love to hear what you think.
Speaker: Thank you so much and have a wonderful week or weekend whenever, wherever you are in space time.
