Bringing volumetric video to the world
First partners and customers, new leadership, and studio expansion
By Linc Gasking
May 1st marks the second birthday of 8i. As I look back, I’m amazed by how much the team has accomplished on our path to make VR human. When we set out to build 8i, our goal was to create a way to record humans and experience them in the most realistic way — this has been our north star as we developed our volumetric video technology. As the world moves beyond the flat screen to immersive platforms like virtual reality and augmented reality, it’s becoming evident that volumetric video will become the ultimate medium for creating high quality content at scale. After two years of R&D on our reconstruction software and codec, and countless demos we created internally to push the boundaries of our tech, I’m proud to share that as of April we officially opened for business and welcomed 8i’s first partners and customers. We’re excited to bring a new type of content to the world and embark on the next chapter of 8i.
Announcing our first content partners
When it comes to pioneering a new medium — one that gives you the freedom to move through the content, feel true presence, and emotionally connect in a way that far suprasses the flat screen — some of the old rules of content creation still apply but so much is unchartered territory. We’re honored to work with an incredible group of innovators, our initial partners and customers, to invent new rules and create the first wave of professional volumetric content.
Our very first customer is the iconic global beauty company L’Oreal USA. We’re thrilled to work alongside this team of digital marketing innovators on a pilot project that explores the potential of VR. We’re equally excited to work with several VR production studios to bring volumetric video into content that they’ve traditionally had to create with CG or 360 video. Earlier this month, the team was honored to welcome the “Godmother of VR” Nonny de la Peña’s Emblematic Group, and the VR trailblazers at River Studios as our first professional content partners. This month we also recorded a performance and special message from Reggie Watts as part of an exciting VR project that we hope to show you in the coming weeks. Look forward to sharing more on these projects, and other new customers, soon.
Introducing our first volumetric VR studio partner
In our first year in LA, we were fortunate to have Emmy-winning visual effects veteran Rainer Gombos (“Game of Thrones,” “Cosmos”) join our studio to help us test our technology, understand how storytellers will use it, and push the boundaries of volumetric content creation. Rainer’s groundbreaking work for 8i was featured at Sundance. Last month Rainer left this role and founded REALTRA, the world’s very first volumetric VR production company, along with Emmy-winning VFX supervisor Michael Gibson and producer Danny McNair. REALTRA will be the first commercial content producer to build a volumetric capture rig and provide volumetric studio services using 8i technology. We plan to enable many other studios to capture and create volumetric video with 8i software, and the birth of REALTRA is a major step towards that goal.
Growing our leadership team and studio presence
Now that we’re open for business and need to meet the incredible demand, we set out to build on our team and bring on someone with the right skillset to understand how to scale digital platforms and work with partners across entertainment, media and beyond.
I’m thrilled to welcome Steve Raymond as 8i’s President of Studios, a newly created role that will leverage Steve’s 15+ year career in digital media to help 8i transition from an R&D focused startup into a growing business. As founder and CEO of Big Frame, Steve had first hand experience in helping to create an entirely new economy and pioneer the development, marketing and monetization of new type of content: short form video. We’re excited to have Steve on board to help us grow and build a scalable business around the newest and most immersive digital medium. Steve shared some thoughts here.
Lastly, we realized we needed more space to accommodate our growing team and our business. This summer, we’ll be moving our LA studio to a larger facility in Culver City where we’ll be able to better meet the needs of our partners and customers. And as of this month, we’re excited to finally have a place to call home in San Francisco as part of the Upload Collective. Our remote SF presence started nearly two years ago with the addition of our CTO, Yu Pan (cofounder of PayPal, first employee at YouTube where he built its first player). Pan has since been joined in San Francisco by Fryd Ovcaric, head of business development, and Amy Sezak, head of communications. While our centers of gravity remain in Wellington, NZ and Los Angeles, we’re thrilled to be part of the Upload family and have a homebase in the Bay Area.
As a multitude of VR and AR devices come to market, excitement around the space will continue to grow. But once we get past the initial excitement around the devices themselves, everyone’s attention will shift to the need for more engaging and immersive content — material that truly leverages what these machines have to offer. The trouble is, there’s presently not enough content of this nature to keep consumers’ attention, and certainly not enough content that can be produced with a profitable cost structure. It’s going to take an army of content creators, with the right resources and tools to do it at scale and at a high-enough quality, to keep the momentum going. We’re here to enable them to do just that, and can’t wait to see what they create with 8i.
