Connections

M&E Journal: New Tools Needed for New Forms of Storytelling

By Mario Kenyon, Head of Production & Daniel Kenyon, Founder and CEO, Furious M

Immersive technologies like virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed are the next major growth area for studios, broadcast networks and omnichannel digital content providers, OTTs and MVPDs.

Those firms that implement scalable infrastructure platforms specifically for interactive immersive experiences will succeed; entities that try and force fit existing, conventional production and distribution platforms will become obsolete when it comes to immersive.

The tech for an immersive experience — from capture/create to consumer delivery — is revolutionary and is fundamentally disrupting the M&E content lifecycle. Massive capture arrays or “wrapped” cameras, never-ending CG story worlds, high-fidelity interactive headsets along with location-based, multi-sensory devices for VR, AR, and MR are just the beginning of the challenges facing immersive production/distribution. In fact, immersive experience production and distribution represents the most complex media content lifecycle ever created.

The brave new world of immersive content is already here. Tech and story worlds must align to ensure the success of studio and broadcast networks venturing into VR, AR, and MR. Existing supply chains, workflows and the entire ecosystem that delivers conventional digital content to consumers needs to radically transform and advance to enable the new immersive M&E world.

As manufacturers continue to improve and provide more accessible high-fidelity, consumer- friendly VR, AR and MR devices and installations, studios and broadcasters are starting to slowly migrate from the experimental stage of immersive content into the next phase. What the next phase will include depends upon several factors; arguably, the migration towards immersive will be the most complex tech revolution studio and broadcasters face over the next 10 years.

At the same time, omni-screen providers have reached mainstream audience penetration and are growing at an unprecedented pace. How does immersive content integrate into the future of OTT and MVPDs to further engage audience and create brand loyalty?

Business model disruption will inevitably follow the technological transformation. The content lifecycle for immersive, from creative planning through production, distribution and delivery including interactive audience engagement, will most likely require vertical integration. Directly engaging transaction with consumers fundamentally alters the studio-broadcaster distribution model and favors OTT/MVPDs.

Most high-end film and episodic studios have been experimenting with high-quality immersive entertainment and promotional content for some time now. In addition, there are literally tens of thousands of VR, AR, and MR production teams, in small studios, popping up around the world today.

For the larger content entities, the inclusion of VR, AR, and MR will push the boundaries of what’s possible way past conventional 2D/3D screen technology. With 16K (8K x 8K) capture and the potential for 8K playout, scaling VR and MR experiences will push existing production, post-production and supply chain systems well beyond their limits. OTT/MVPDs will quickly find the limits of their relatively new infrastructures as they realize that immersive M&E is vastly more complex than any media they have dealt with thus far.

New strategies are required if studios and broadcasters, as well as OTT/MVPDs, are going to continue to deliver exceptional entertainment that includes interactive, vertically integrated immersive entertainment targeting millennial and Generation Z (e.g. GenZennial) consumers.

Already underway

The gaming industry and sports have taken an early lead in the race to entertain via VR and AR, including some live immersive experiences using high-fidelity AV (audio-visual) headsets enabled for individual, interactive consumption on mobile, tethered and installation- based experiences.

Studios have had some early success stories as well; specifically, with installation- based, immersive experiences that have been popping up in theaters, museums and storefronts all over the world. Providing an early glimpse into the power of the medium, these installations can provide valuable consumption data and a slight hint of profitable monetization.

Examples of major studios pushing deeper into the immersive storytelling medium with both VR and AR experiences, include:

– Disney’s Star Wars joint project with location-based VR company The Void, as well as its AR Star Wars project with Lenovo;

– Legendary Entertainment’s support for Carne y Arena, a VR installation from award-winning director Alejandro González Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, which received a special Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

These outstanding examples represent a starting point. As more studios and broadcasters begin to push the boundaries of what is possible from capture to consumer, they must push the production cycle into new realms and they must plan for an entirely new ecosystem of capabilities and partnerships to merge physical and virtual consumer worlds together. To be successful, they must find and bring new audiences to consume immersive.

A green-field, end-to-end immersive platform for delivery would be ideal. There are some in place today, delivering single-channel, 360-degree experiences for sports, music and interactive video games. Next VR and Littlstar VR are examples of this.

The drawback with these models for studios, broadcasters and OTT/MVPDs, however, is that they require an intermediate distributor and delivery agent. That means there is a hand-off of the relationship with the consumer to a third party, essentially disinter-mediating creatives and other stake holders from the consumer.

Additionally, as the tech capabilities for VR, AR and MR increase, more complex objects will be required. From volumetric capture and photogrammetry (the process of using multiple photos of the real-world objects to author game-ready assets) for visually impactful experiences to spatialized audio (directional, positional, 3D sound), a single immersive experience will generate extremely large, complex master files that dwarf current digital masters in size and required functions.

Developing compelling immersive experiences with these technologies requires specialized applications and tools beyond conventional storage and editing. These tools may include traditional gaming engines like Unity, Unreal or similar interactive platforms that enable real-time volumetric rendering and simulation, and real-time integration of data streams of different formats that automatically transform seamlessly into common data structures to achieve virtual integration with real mixed-reality and real-time simulations of physical phenomena.

The complexities are numerous and require extraordinary processing power and rendering capability — and still need the type of file portability for collaboration that drives the creative process all while ensuring every approval sign-off is secured.

While an entirely new supply chain infrastructure is required to handle immersive, a dramatic and immediate, wholesale change is not practical. Existing businesses need to continue to rely on the current infrastructure, as a new system would be very expensive.

What is required is a direct-to-consumer platform that scales out globally, integrating multiple systems and channels with flexible, autonomic services to address the dynamic nature of integrated immersive content supply chains and corresponding user-generated feedback loops, data collection, measurement, analysis and engagement re-starts.

Studios, broadcasters, OTTs and MVPDs need to create high-quality VR/AR/MR content with contextually consistent story worlds to drive immersive experiences, including:

–VR/AR/MR ecosystem

–Promotional services/strategies: social networks

–Persistent story worlds (persistent platforms)

–Embedded services, seamless transaction

–Capture user data, analyze

–Business management, analytics

The move to a production environment for immersive requires a staged approach, with a primary infrastructure that merges all services of studio, broadcaster and OTT/ MVPD media operations. Production managers can create a plan that coordinates and controls the entire production for an immersive project life-cycle, including:

–Create planning scenarios for immersive masters or versions of immersive experiences, including workflows, integrations and content create job assignments.

–Preset all metadata categories before the production cycle, track and capture data, measure and analyze, and be able to find anything at any time in the finite or ongoing immersive creative generation process.

–Own the immersive distribution ecosystem studio/broadcasters/OTT/MVPDs need to manage contracts, royalties, distribution and content delivery, and target audiences across social media to creating an engaged consumer base or fan base that returns.

–Build and manage immersive content and entertainment brands with an intelligent content platform.

From development to production to distribution and engagement, studios and broadcasters must focus on the creation and management of next-generation entertainment and immersive experiences. Next-generation entertainment requires data intelligence. Intelligent content platform services drive content intelligence by generating, assigning and managing metadata to more efficiently connect content with viewers, convert viewers to consumers and develop loyal audiences.

Studios and broadcasters should manage and drive their own direct-to-consumer content distribution, providing valuable audience engagement data back to the stakeholders while helping keep more of the creative earnings.

Immersive media production services should empower studios, broadcasters and OTT/MVPDs to generate intelligent content creation and storyboard building, with data driven workflows utilizing secure and interoperable services.

A global content platform

To stay competitive in immersive storytelling, studios, broadcasters, OTTs and MVPDs all must continue to push the boundaries of what is possible: from capture to consume.

Studios and broadcasters must consider vertical integration of immersive ‘storytelling’ assets. OTT/MVPDs must consider the costs of pushing their production and distribution project cycles into new realms.

All must consider the upside and downside of immersive, starting with how productions are designed and how projects are finished — and they must consider the entire ecosystem of capabilities and partnerships to merge physical and virtual consumer worlds together. They must bring new audiences to consume tech natively.

The brave new world of immersive content is here. Immersive tech and story worlds must align to ensure the success of the studio and broadcast networks venturing into VR, AR and MR. The new audience is waiting.

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