Gadgetory

welcome back to the show we are very excited to welcome our next guest this man is the chief creative officer at barco escape he's also the resident futurist at 20th Century Fox how do I apply for that job yeah we're so excited to have ten shillin was here with us we might have some openings you never know I'm interested you need an assistant future right everybody third assistant futures in fact we have a whole team of people that are kind of on the on the curve with us that are figuring things out so this is the futurist so we'll talk about that and then we'll talk about barco because you have some really exciting stuff happening a whiff to start Trek beyond this weekend um so let's talk a little bit about the the title futurist because to me this seems like a really cool sexy mysterious job and I want to know what the day-to-day entails because to me the idea of being a futurist means you're sort of a think tank about the future and you go listen 20th Century Fox I think the future is going to have way more robots than this so you need to put more robots into this movie sort of um it's a little more pedestrian than that I I often refer to myself as a glorified lab rat um I'm a guy who's constantly we have a bunch of labs one of our labs is called the bunker the VR bunker or it's like this little staircase and I wanna live in the bunker you can we rent it yeah is it ready come over visit over to visit now and when you talk about it it sounds like we built the Batcave you know it's like the most amazing place in the world when you go to it there's a bunch of technology inside a room a bunch of VR and AR stuff a bunch of monitors a bunch of future thinking stuff but it's just a dark room we're really come from with that but then we're sort of spread out all over the lot we have a big theater on the lot where we experiment with stuff with the barco escape stuff we have an area in the the tower you know the not the Nakatomi tower is the Fox innovation lab where are you alone Bruce Willis over and over again to repay our adjusted perfect so you're not it's not that you are advising filmmakers about what the future is going to be to put in their movies it's that you are developing technologies to expand and improve the ways we appreciate yeah they all kind of dovetail together but but it's more the second one it's more looking at what is around the next corner like what's around the bend here that may become important relevant and extraordinarily valuable for the entertainment industry and what we've done over the past few years since I've kind of taken on this very odd and interesting job is really driven Fox into the forefront of the conversation of being the studio that is the most forward-thinking the most what I call lean forward as opposed to lean backward not afraid of taking risks not afraid of figuring things out not afraid of seeing what are the things that people are working on in the dark corners that are going to become things and interestingly enough the timing of me joining fox when I left this movie camera company read when I retired from that and my one of my friends at 20 Century Fox is the president of post-production there who's part of this little posse of pioneers as in Ted Galliano said come and be the futurist at the movie studio and just you know you kind of have your eyes and ears on a lot of things and you've always been sort of on the forefront of this stuff share helping build stuff and start companies and figure things out would you be willing to do that for the movie studio and essentially help guide us a little bit into what might be relevant right what's and the timing was really interesting because a lot of this VR stuff started to happen right around that time so I was very early on with the oculus guys very own element the valve team and HTC team and the Sony team and the Samsung team and Microsoft and haul ends and the small group called odg that's doing next-gen a our stuff that we're working on and that those are just the highlights and there's drawings more out there that were so excited but all day long I just experiment and have these various things on my face or in an immersive cinema experience with barco the first two movies we did with barco escape or to fox movies the first two major run of movies now we're really successful and now of course we're on the cusp of Star Trek beyond an escape so let's talk a little bit about barco escape because I think a lot of people probably don't know that a it exists because there's so few theaters that can play barco escape content and then on top of that you know what what you guys have planned for it's a little bit like I max where it's sort of a cinematic experience you know just never going to get it home and so it's one of those things that you have to see sort of appreciate but for those people out there who are not familiar with bar escape explain a little bit about what that is and why it's so intense as a film as a moviegoer to to see it so you're right so the footprint is relatively small it's a it's a new format so those you know a generation from now we'll be telling our kids and our grandkids remember when they were just like 30 or 40 theaters around the world that you could see this in before it became the thing right brand so that's where we are now which is kind of a romantic time to be involved in something new and exciting but in terms of what it is what what what you will see when you go to a movie theater so it's a three screen experience instead of a one screen experience your of course familiar with going to the movies and the movie is essentially from when movies have been created up until now a hundred years have basically been something like this some geometric form whether was a small right to my face or a really big box of fun of your face sure which are very exotic and great and you know I max is aware barcode does all the underlying technology for but for imax projection and so we're a big fan of that and collaborate with them a lot this is something even more different and more special than that for an out of the home experience so instead of the movie just being in front of you it actually surrounds your periphery and we bring you into certain scenes of the movie when it's appropriate to really take advantage of this let's go all the way and not just be watching a screen but actually kind of inside the experience so the film's actually have to be shot with this in mind right not necessarily in the case of Star Trek it's actually because it's such a CGI VFX heavy movie all of the most there's some augmented stuff with cameras but most of the material is actually created in post-production vs mr. thing with all the space battle scenes and all the epic action scenes and all the stuff that you know so all the things you expect when you've seen a regular screening of the movie imagine all those key moments when it's not just this it's this is this something that later on can be then applied into a VR environment yeah that you can then be looking around you later on at home yes in fact it's very often referred to barco escape is very often referred to in the trade now that we have a trade for this stuff as bricks and mortar VR we know that you still like to socialize we know that people like this they like real connection and they like to sit with their popcorn in their candy and enjoy the experience and VR is you know somewhat isolating experience although we're working on social is right of course that's a bit of a telling you one story but there's actually another story there to where your will become a very social thing which is part of my facebook would be interested in having VR around as a as a technology sure but within the theater environment this is sort of the most immersive most VR like experience and we know that with modern audiences once you get a taste for something that what we call breaks out of the rectangle well that's in something you're going to put on your face or some sort of glassware or some sort of theme park style experience you want more of that you say I want something that separates from the home experience I can get really good big screen at home yeah I want something different I want literally something that's more like I went to a theme park but I could go every friday night every said Saturday afternoon every Sunday morning with my family don't have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get on a plane and go to orlando or you know or Los Angeles from far away but go to my local multiplex and have this kind of immersive theme park style experience in a movie it's interesting that you mentioned that because I think that's one of the things the movie industry has struggled with I think a little bit historically as televisions have gotten bigger and cheaper and higher def and we have seen more and more streaming content come into homes people go well why should I go to the movies why it's I can get that on my 70-inch TV that I bought a Best Buy last week for two grand you know um and I think it's really interesting that you're out you guys are always looking for the the what's next of bringing people into the theater not only as a like you said a social experience because that's always when I like to go see movies where you go in on opening weekend and people are cheering and there I mean they're just having a great time people who are really into that movie are there to see it buzzed right it's the buzz you get to experience that the highs and lows of you know and with everybody else a very collective social experience really interesting um but you're also kind of now having to not only give movie overs that experience but also the visual experience to go with it and that make people say hey I want to come back to this or I want to do this more often because it's not something I could get in my house I know that you know going to see a Chris Nolan movie in imax there are those moments which yeah yeah van onto the screen is that kind of the same experience here is that there are certain scenes where I'll just in develop you yes similar but way more intense than just going from here to here because they were just expanding the square it spending which by the way I love and it's part of the information there's nothing wrong about all these other experiences instead of expanding vertically or you go swing weight all around you right so essentially a 180 view all around there was a moment at comic-con a few years ago where that was done in all age is that this is similar similar and there and they're doing that again you're going to see some stuff around movies because in areas other than a movie theater other than a multiplex where you can expand that vision and you have the budget to expand that vision like a theme park like a big convention like comic-con this happens big trade shows do this all the time like if you go to the e3 gaming show you'll see they'll set up fig.3 set up a bunch of barcode projectors in the do this kind of thing our mission was to take that to everybody so not just people that work in the industry or if you're lucky enough to go to comic-con and be an all age and weight eight hours to do that experience right with your luck unbelievable yeah I'm lucky to be working in the industry and I can go and do that stuff and I just I'm so impressed with those people that are so committed to that entertainment those are core customers that want to see Blanco sk sure they don't want a normal experience right they want a special experience right they wanted to go to see it the best possible way and in the most fun environment and what we're doing is is expanding that footprint to every city around the world is the plan so we'll have we have a little over 30 theaters now for barco escape worldwide so essentially what i like to say is if you're a fan super fan you can get likely anywhere in the united states now you can get on a less than an hour flight and find a barco escape or likely drive less than an hour to a couple of hours which people will easily do if you live in any major population area give or take you're going to find one with an easy striking distance we have two in LA we have a couple up in the bay area in northern california we have one in palm springs area we have a bunch in texas we have one in Minnesota we have you know and and all over the US if you go to a website called ready to escape so ready the number to escape okay just Google barco escape it'll give you you'll see a listing and then you can click and go to your local theater and buy tickets and it'll tell you which one because it'll be the regular version the IMX version the big screen digital version and then the barcode escape approach is the end goal to have the entire film shot like this it's one of the goals so we're I think it works better as shorter moments I think it's project a project just like any other sort of creative entity there's no one right way to skin the cat there's no one right approach to it so with Star Trek what's a little over 20 minutes those key battle action scenes which totally lend themselves and try not to give it anyway but you know the big climax scene in them I knew what happens there if so imagine that visualize yeah just like we were doing our final QC what's called QC quality control screens last night at three in the morning because these things are coming in hot like finishing up the last day with the team from bad robot and it's just insane right when that music kicks in I imagine if it's are all around you it's no at 3 45 a.m. last night I'd say they're like this is the best there's only five hours like I'm up at three four out two creations of the producer this is worth it it was awesome if you could retcon any movie in tabarka escape what would you do whoo well we're working with Jerry Bruckheimer okay we've talked about redoing Top Gun an escape route oh my god that would be awesome we've been talking to Michael Bay we've been talking a lot of really big a level filmmakers we've had them all into the theater they've all seen stuff all the major studios are interested you know because they're Explorer it's so immersive yeah I now as you said I mean everyone's looking for that next thing and it's really interesting to see sort of barco taking the lead in terms of saying hey guys like we've we have got this locked down we're experimenting on everything and we feel this is the way for this is the really cool thing that people want yeah sorry I said we would tell you that we're not the ones that know all the answers to any of this right it's a creative process we take in lockstep and hopefully fall one half a step behind the creator's behind the people in at bad robot in this case and behind the people at Fox in the other cases where we want to make sure that the technology drives the story not the other way around right it's sorry the story drives the technology not the technology driving the story shall and its really really important and when you see Star Trek you'll see how that works the other thing that's really critical I think is that we're taking this and putting it in normal movie theaters all around the world so there'll be 100 by year's end and then we move to thousands in a couple of years and it's just one of those formats that you're like this is the movie see working as you're asking about production and stuff we're working on two new movies now one that's shooting in South Africa called 24 hours to live with Ethan Hawke in it in his big movie they're shooting big action scenes and a moving up in Canada called recall there's a bunch of cinemas in canada with cineplex theaters and imagine theaters so canon has also got their share to france or an experience yeah totally yep so we're all over the footprints quite large I can't wait to see it and in person myself I guess sounds really really cool and it's uh I get to go see it this weekend yeah you're initiating Marcus key tomorrow so I'm very excited I can't wait to see it well I know yeah Tetzel what's everybody thank you so much for being here um where can I you already said it's what's the website again for ready to escape remember chamber the number two or just google barco escape you'll find it and likely you're within striking distance of getting to one of these theaters now and for the next couple years are out there'll be one in every day there'll be more there'll be more you guys uh so that is it for our interview thank you so much for stopping by and we'll send you our resumes for those assistants you for this job is good be right back guys with more tomorrow daily so stick around