Paul Nicholls: From Architecture to the Sphere, a BAFTA and the Future of Experiences

[01:00:00:00 - 01:00:17:11] Steve So Paul, welcome to the Experience Designers. Thank you for having me. Yeah, absolutely brilliant. We're here on day three of London Experience Week. You've been here for today. And it's just the day? Yeah. Just popping in for the day. What was it like walking in the doors of Ministry of Sound and entering the London Experience Week? [01:00:17:11 - 01:00:52:14] Paul It's definitely not like I'm normally here. It's a little bit different to when I normally come to Ministry of Sound, but I've been here a few times for music and gigs and stuff like that. So yeah, it's pretty cool to come here for a day event like this. And I kind of pimped out. I've not seen it since it's been revamped. So yeah, it's cool. And it's great. It's my first experience event as well. I've not been to any other experience event, even though we've worked kind of passively in the industry for 15 years. And we've not been to an experience-focused event. And for it to happen in Ministry and the kind of new kit out of it, I think it's very cool. Yeah. [01:00:52:14 - 01:00:53:17] Steve And extremely conveniently. [01:00:53:17 - 01:01:20:22] Paul Conveniently around the corner from my office. So it doesn't get much better. Lots of people come from America and all these other places. And we've just literally popped down the road from from Birmingham. Yeah, love it. In fact, our old studio is literally 100 meters away from here. Oh, no. And it's still got our logo on the building dilapidated from sort of six years ago when we left just after COVID. There's your legacy. And no one's moved in. So you can pop by it. You can have the after party there maybe. So [01:01:20:22 - 01:01:37:13] Steve look, Paul, I'm just anchoring because you had a talk today, her good things, and sharing some of your journey and of course some of the work that Factory 15 do. So I'm really curious to kind of dive into that. But let's start. Just give us a sense of the talk and the journey you went, you took the audience on. [01:01:37:13 - 01:03:58:23] Paul Yeah. Well, we did two things. And we really took advantage of the unique setup here in Ministry. So what we did was we put on an immersive arts piece in collaboration with Max Cooper. And what we did was at lunchtime, we kind of took over the box space, which has got all the LED panels and the LED box in there. And we exhibited a kind of deconstruction of something that we've collaborated on with Max called The Shape of Memory. And what that is, is a really beautiful kind of musical arts piece that premiered at the Royal Albert Hall a couple of weeks ago as part of his big, big show there. And it's something we're working on together to turn into kind of a touring and a massive experience. So it was great to practice that and reformat it into the setup here in Ministry. So it was an hour of quite a kind of meditative arts piece that was based on people's memories. The whole project is a crowdsourced project where we kind of sourced lots of photos from Max's kind of massive amount of fans and collaged it into this beautiful spatial animation that used a lot of kind of AI and Gaussian splatting tech to kind of turn those images into spatial environments that we could navigate in and cut between. And it was all about that kind of bleeding between one memory to the next and the kind of fickle nature of memories and the retelling of memories and what that happens to the memory gets more and more fragmented. And we played with that fragmented aesthetic throughout. And we turned, it was an arts piece, but then every sort of 10 minutes it would play the actual video with Max's custom score. And it releases on the 9th of May, I believe, as the title album track for his new album. So that's pretty cool. So we did that for an hour. And then we did our presentation on our journey to the sphere. So we contextualized a bit of my journey, the company's journey factory 15 from architects to filmmakers to experienced designers, culminating in working on the sphere in Vegas. And we did a lot of work on the sphere and working on the sphere in Vegas. Yeah. Amazing. Just a small project. Yeah. Very well, very big, very big building, very big project. Yeah. But again, it makes, our journey from being architects to the sphere was quite a weird one. We actually helped to concept the sphere back in 2016. That was the original link. So we got hired to visualize and concept what the feature of entertainment could look like. And that was [01:04:00:03 - 01:04:03:04] Paul to a four minute film that helped get the building funded. [01:04:04:12 - 01:04:13:17] Paul And then they came back years later to help with producing content for it. And here we are, seven years later. Question. Producing content for it. A question on that. [01:04:15:08 - 01:04:23:23] Steve Was it kind of sitting there, sketching, playing with different concepts, what it could look like in terms of its form, or was it more into the business form? It was always gonna be a sphere. [01:04:23:23 - 01:06:04:12] Paul Was it all, okay. Spoiler alert, it was always called the sphere. So the design of the exterior was pretty easy. But no, we did do a few concepts. And I was quite inspired by the atom building in Brussels, actually. So my original design was kind of more based towards that. What Populous ended up doing was a little bit different and kind of cooler in a way. But no, what they challenged us to do was to design the future of gaming, the future of esports, the future of music and performance, the future of live events and sports and music, and what that might look like. And a lot of it was kind of wishful thinking, holographics, and very kind of future tech kind of thing, because that's where we started. And obviously what it manifested into was a giant screen on the inside now. But I think the aspiration was there from the beginning to turn this into a new kind of cultural destination that centers around technology. Technology is the cornerstone of our culture right now. And what we did in that film was to almost contextualize the importance of pinnacle venues of that type in the history of human civilization. You think about the La Scala, the Shakespeare Globe, the Roman Colosseum. These are kind of cultural icons of our time and the kind of group experiences that were experienced. What happened then were kind of the sign of the time back then. And our time is a time of technology and that building had to represent that. So that was a big metaphor as part of our development of the film that hopefully helped get the building funded. But then since we've worked on the Bactri boys, the UFC, multiple brand projects for the sphere, and it's been super fun to go from visualizing it to reality of creating content for it. [01:06:04:12 - 01:06:31:14] Steve Interesting, you were mentioning with the design, it was a thought to having different applications. And fast forward today, anything from Wizard of Oz, Formula One of course, certainly on the external from that perspective, obviously concerts multi-use. Have there really been any surprises in that either for you watching it in terms of how it's evolved, in terms of, are that even better than we imagined or not as good as we imagined? [01:06:33:15 - 01:06:40:09] Paul I think I talked about this in a little bit in my talk in terms of does bigger equals better? And is it immersive? [01:06:42:04 - 01:06:43:15] Paul And for me, [01:06:44:19 - 01:07:52:04] Paul bigger does equal better. If I can answer that question, this would be yes. Because I think there's something really like powerful and almost like, I hate to use the word spiritual, but it reminds me of going into these massive cathedrals when you're younger and having that kind of moment of, wow, this is a feat of human engineering. And there's something quite spiritual about that, especially in that context, not spiritual at all. But there's something like a modern day equivalent of that is entering the sphere and seeing that fucking thing light up if you're not swearing on your podcast. You can, sorry. And it's just a next level kind of experience. And you wouldn't feel that if it wasn't for the size. So the size gives it a sort of sense of majesty that I think you can't really grasp unless you've been there. It is a sort of technical marvel and seeing your own content at that scale is just ultra awesome. So I think size does play a huge part in its appeal. What I don't think it's good at is films. I don't think you can play a traditional film in there. I don't particularly think that the Wizard of Oz, even though it's commercially more successful for Sphere. I don't know if that works personally. Other venues like Cozum, they're doing feature films. For me, I think it's great, [01:07:53:22 - 01:08:54:06] Paul but I'm less engaged in the immersion, the story immersion. There's a big difference between physical immersion and story immersion and narrative immersion. And I don't think you're as narratively immersed in that kind of thing, but you are very physically immersed and that is valid in its own way. What works amazing at Cozum is sports. Turning up and watching a Premier League game, feeling like you're sitting in the corner of the stadium and watching that game with some mates over some beers, fantastic, they've just nailed that format. What works in Sphere is music. Music concerts is just elevated to next level proportions, but traditional cinema filmmaking, I'm not so sure. I don't think it's a bigger cinema. It's not the evolution of IMAX, these kind of venues. It's a different kind of experience. And the more people that, the more creators that realize that and get a lot more value out of what it's good at and stop trying to make it a bigger IMAX. And I think they're slowly realizing that and moving their business models around that, around it. [01:08:54:06 - 01:09:11:04] Steve Our last episode actually, I had the pleasure of interviewing Mike Anderson at Nexus Studio. Oh yeah, nice. As we talk about future spatial storytelling and with Blunhouse Project and stuff, which was really fascinating. So I know you guys work quite well. [01:09:11:04 - 01:09:25:20] Paul Yeah, Nexus are one of our production partners. We collaborate on many projects, including the Sphere work and the Kia project that I previewed as well. And we've been with them for, represented us commercially for the last 12 or 13 years. So it's a really great long story. [01:09:25:20 - 01:09:27:12] Steve Great business. Yeah, great business. [01:09:28:18 - 01:09:46:21] Steve Paul, can I just go back to architecture? Because I just want to honor that for a moment, because it clearly, it's served you well, particularly in the current context. Tell us a little bit about that kind of, not necessarily the transition, but what's that red thread even today that you can kind of anchor back and say, yeah, that is really serving me really well with my work today. [01:09:48:05 - 01:10:15:01] Paul So we studied architecture for seven years and suddenly decided that we didn't really want to become architects in a traditional sense, but we had a huge interest in design, spatial narratives and that kind of thing. And the link for us, which is always a bit weird to explain, but we created architectural films at uni. That's where I met my business partners. And those films went viral on the internet and we managed to sign to an advertising agency, initially with RSA, and then we moved to Nexus. [01:10:16:02 - 01:11:23:14] Paul But we've always been the architectural, like the architects of the film world, if that makes sense. That's kind of how we're seen as, because of our sensibilities and we talk about space and that's weird for people and world building and design. All of our films have a very kind of spatial design aspect to them. The kind of, the environment plays a character in the story almost. Some of our most famous projects like Jonah, short film, it's based in Stone Town in Zanzibar and Stone Town is a character in that film. Yeah, it's very physical. And then one of our more famous commercial projects was the BBC Olympics that we did for Tokyo, the Tokyo Olympics. And Tokyo is the main character of that project. So that's how we feature architecture in our film work. And then what we're doing now is we're kind of almost going full circle where we're bringing the narrative media back into architecture. So we started off putting the architecture into narrative media and then we're putting narrative media into architecture. And that for me creates a perfect loop of representing my interests, going right back from architecture to storytelling and combining the two now. Fantastic. [01:11:23:14 - 01:11:26:07] Steve What else do you cover in your talk in addition? [01:11:28:18 - 01:12:42:22] Paul One thing I covered in the talk that I thought could have been a conversation in itself was some of the work that we did for Kia. And this was a charitable partnership between Kia Motors and St. Jude's Cancer Research Hospital in Memphis. And this was an experience for kids who couldn't leave the hospital because they were getting treated for cancer treatment. And we were bringing, it was in the festive season and we're bringing the festivities to them. So we built this pop-up LED stage around the car, the EV6 from Kia. This was again through our collaboration with Nexus in production. We did the creative and the content delivery. And what it was, was an experience that took these kids on a journey to the North Pole, right? Which sounds simple. But the kids loved it. They were kind of sitting within the car and from their perspective, the car felt like it was flying from what they saw through the windows looking out to the LED stage. The interesting thing is that it was an experience for kids but the experience wasn't the primary output. The primary output was a national TV advert. So it was a really tricky balance to when you're designing an experience, not to compromise it for its televised effect to the curation of the storyboard of what you want to do for film. So it became a bit of a realization to me that [01:12:45:00 - 01:12:55:00] Paul you can't over, because I'm a planner, I'm a producer, director. I like to plan and meticulously, the shoot is more of a formality for me. And it's kind of capturing what you planned. [01:12:56:03 - 01:13:29:07] Paul Whereas you have to be a lot more open-minded to not sacrifice the experience for the kids in that case by planning something that was a bit more open-ended and you're capturing the genuine emotion of the kids and the experience that was happening. Otherwise what you do is you've got a shot list and you might as well work with actors, where actually we were shooting with real kids in the hospital. So this is happening more and more with the kind of the brand experiences that we do, is that they need to work well as an experience but they need to capture well. And as a director, you need to try and balance the two in an interesting way. [01:13:29:07 - 01:13:33:09] Steve Yeah, that's a real balance. How did you do that? How did that play out? [01:13:33:09 - 01:13:48:14] Paul By letting it flow as an experience. And loosening your strengths on what you thought you were going to capture. So that you could do more in the edit than in the pre-production. [01:13:48:14 - 01:13:49:10] Steve Yeah, amazing. [01:13:50:22 - 01:14:01:22] Steve Tell us a little bit more about designing for the sphere in that project and how you got involved and then kind of how that's kind of blossomed since then with some of the work that then you've produced and put in there as well. [01:14:01:22 - 01:14:16:23] Paul Yeah, I mean how we got involved was twofold. One, we'd already established a relationship with the sphere studios, with our film that we had done prior and then the Exosphere content that we had done. And because we were, [01:14:19:00 - 01:14:29:06] Paul through Nexus, we were one of the directors who had done the most kind of immersive media work. That's how we kind of won collectively the first sphere gig that we got in the first place at Nexus. [01:14:32:00 - 01:14:51:22] Paul Another director called Carlos was instruct, he was a Mexican director and it was a Mexican themed independent, it was on Mexican Independence Day and he chose, he was kind of show running the event and he chose several directors that he wanted to work with and we got chosen to direct one of the films and then that turned into two of the films because we had quite a lot of experience in the medium [01:14:53:02 - 01:15:10:17] Paul and Nexus kind of co-produced the series of films from a sort of management perspective and they led some of the early tech studies and stuff like that. So that was a great kind of example. And then, yeah, what that's led onto, I mean, working or designing for the sphere in that process. [01:15:12:22 - 01:16:07:07] Paul I think we adapted to it a lot quicker than some of the other teams. That's what my feeling was, I don't want to feel arrogant about that but from watching the development of, because we got to see everyone work on it in real time, we talked to it much more naturally because we'd done VR films and it's not that dissimilar from a VR film, if I'm totally honest. It's not that much bigger in terms of smoke and mirrors and what you actually have to do from a design perspective. A lot of the same logic comes into play regarding speed, motion, sickness, these kind of things. Because it is like collective VR in the sphere. So the more you're used to a VR pipeline in terms of dos and don'ts, the more creatively you're set up for working within it. So creatively, it came very naturally to us. And I think working with the VR app, we could see in real time how it was feeling. And then we had several sort of like design sessions with the sphere themselves to sort of test the content. [01:16:08:07 - 01:17:09:12] Paul So the whole process felt very smooth. Some of the final technical requirements and the resolution were challenging in the first time of working with it. And that's one of the big things we've learned is just, we've now developed a completely custom real time pipeline for developing content for the internal sphere screen. Because we did another show for the Backstreet Boys and that second time working within it worked incredibly smoother than the first time. Purely because of the technical rendering pipeline was a lot more streamlined than what we developed for the Backstreet Boys. So is that gonna serve you well for future-- Yeah, now we've got a completely custom system for developing content where we're not really losing fidelity in the process, but we're able to render much, much quicker. And we can get a lot more feedback instantly with the client and internally for designing content for it. But the other thing that was worth considering is just like your asset pipeline, if you wanna produce a caliber of content that we're used to, [01:17:11:10 - 01:17:25:23] Paul some assets that you're making, you don't realize they're gonna be the size of a double decker bus in that scene. So when you see it live, and I think only when you go there and you're reviewing the content, that you actually realize, okay, well, we might need to put a bit more work into that. [01:17:27:04 - 01:17:30:09] Paul But yeah, it's a really fun process. I really love working on it. [01:17:30:09 - 01:17:37:08] Steve God, it must be fascinating to put some of that scale on as you, to your point, see what you think of it, it might look like being real. [01:17:37:08 - 01:17:40:02] Paul Yeah, you've got this candle and then it's a size of a building. [01:17:40:02 - 01:17:41:13] (Laughing) [01:17:41:13 - 01:17:42:04] Steve Amazing. [01:17:43:15 - 01:17:51:12] Steve You talk also about world building as a methodology. Yeah. I love a bit of world building. So tell me about your viewing methodology around that and how you approach it. [01:17:51:12 - 01:18:25:09] Paul I think it just goes back to design, fundamentally. I think, you know, world building is a term that we've been using since we've started the company and nobody really knew what we were talking about back then. And now I'm glad to see that it's become a bit more mainstream and it makes what we do make a bit more sense. So it's just a case of, from our perspective, it's just research, design, and making things feel very authentic and thinking about the world that you're presenting. Nothing is kind of surface value. [01:18:26:18 - 01:18:40:03] Paul There's a lot of kind of thought that's gone into it. And I think that's how we apply it from concept art, research on any cultures that we're, for example, researching Mexican culture, the Day of the Dead, [01:18:41:20 - 01:18:50:12] Paul you know, and the process you go through from initial research to the final film is all within that kind of design and world building sort of system. [01:18:51:18 - 01:20:07:02] Paul For example, we also did the, what we call the world building for the kitchen feature film on Netflix. So that was, okay, we're presenting London in 2035. What does that look like? And it was a very kind of Afrocentric kind of like view of the world as well. And it was a very Afrocentric kind of story and we didn't want it to be generic. So for example, what does the, what does Brixton look like in 2035, right? So these are the kind of, that's world building. You're kind of imagining this future world and then the layers to that decision-making from research, design, concept art, VFX, everything is part of that world building process. And the more layered and detailed you can be, the more rich that world is gonna feel. And it all goes back to this point of design the world at the same time as writing the script, just to bring this back to filmmaking, more than experiences, but it applies to the same thing. You know, we love, when we were at uni, we were really inspired by films like "Blade Runner," all of the Philip K. Dick novels and how they translated into film, "Minority Report." Steven Spielberg famously said, "Design me the world before you write me the story, before you write the script." Yeah. You know, the story already existed to an extent. So I've always been inspired and fascinated by [01:20:09:22 - 01:20:38:12] Paul putting design as an upfront part of the process in building the world, not just the story from a God-fifty written sense. And I think all the best fictions do that. You think of "June" and Dennis Vealner's kind of model is the design and the world building and the time you get with that world makes that product what it is. Yeah. So they're equally weighted. And I think that's our approach, is equally weighting the story and the design as part of the kind of overall world building strategy. [01:20:38:12 - 01:20:53:18] Steve I know, I can't, I think I've lost count of many times I've watched "June." Yeah, right? Yeah. I watch it now for different nuances because you have that luxury of going, I'm not going to watch that now, I'm going to watch what's going on in the background or something that, yeah, it's amazing. Beautiful piece of work, can't wait for that. [01:20:53:18 - 01:21:14:14] Paul When you see a piece of fiction that doesn't prioritize world building, and I can give loads of examples, like any of the remakes recently, like the remake of "Total Recall," super generic world, not given the time to breathe, just about the story, the characters, their journey, and it's rushed, everything's rushed. You never get a sense of what that world is actually feeling like to be there. And that's what makes the difference. [01:21:15:15 - 01:21:33:18] Paul Going back to this concept of immersion, story immersion, very different to physical immersion, story immersion is all about making them feel like they are somewhere else. And you can only do that so far with prioritizing a kind of character or script. You have to present that world that you're presenting. Yeah, nice. [01:21:33:18 - 01:21:38:13] Steve Can I just, I want to dive a little bit into the dynamic with the, you've got two business partners. [01:21:39:20 - 01:21:51:12] Steve Just how have you kind of evolved your craft collectively as a trio with your business? I'm going to get onto some of the achievements that you've recently achieved, [01:21:52:16 - 01:22:05:17] Steve stunning work and this stuff, but obviously that's got through, you've probably evolved how you've done that to get kind of to a level. Has it changed much over the years? How have you kind of refined? Technology obviously has a big play, no doubt, but also how you've worked dynamically, [01:22:06:19 - 01:22:09:18] Steve how you've evolved the how you do it and your processes. [01:22:10:23 - 01:22:17:14] Paul There's multiple ways of answering that question, I think, and it's a super interesting one. So in terms of the trio, we started as three. [01:22:18:23 - 01:22:35:03] Paul I kind of had more of the, I would say, technical skills out of the three of us. A lot of the kind of tech, I was always into technology and rendering and 3D and animation. [01:22:36:15 - 01:23:51:10] Paul I think Kidway was much more into kind of story and Jonathan was much more into kind of cinematography and that was kind of how we kind of shared and complimented each other when we began. And that became quite evident very early on because Kidway was almost fast-tracked into features, basically. And so some of our early bigger short films, he directed and we designed and did all of the well-building and VFX well, basically. So we supported each other in that way. And then Kidway's career progressed from advertising to long-form TV to then feature films. So that was his trajectory. So he kind of would bring projects to the studio that we would support him on. And collaborate on. But then he wasn't so much involved in the day-to-day of the studio. And that's continued since. So now he's not very involved at all in the studio but still brings projects to the studio, but less frequently because he's a feature film director and they happen less frequently. And then Jonathan, we shared the running of the studio for sort of 12 years. And we had a very similar role. We both were kind of co-directing projects together. And sometimes he'd lead and sometimes I'd lead and it was all quite organic. And then suddenly he passed away in 2023 [01:23:52:10 - 01:24:08:07] Paul in a kind of tragic car accident. So I've been running the studio more on my own from a sort of empty perspective since then. And my journey was kind of short in advertising for a while but very quickly, as I mentioned in my talk, [01:24:09:16 - 01:24:22:16] Paul I pivoted my interest to experiences. So we got an opportunity to exhibit some work and talk on an immersive symposium in Montreal in Canada or the S.A.T. And I did a dome film there. Yeah, never looked back. [01:24:23:23 - 01:25:05:16] Paul That was my instant aha moment. This is the right thing. I'm connecting architecture and media, my two interests into this new format. This is what I want to do. So it's been a slow progress ever since. That was maybe 10 years ago. And we've been doing theatrical things, brand pop-up things, and now slowly building up to fashion shows, the sphere and immersive media and combining these different things. So we've been fortunate to work on a real plethora of very interesting artistic and commercial projects over the years without actually being within the themed entertainment community, if that makes sense. Because we've only just joined like two years ago and really tried to actively meet people at these type of events. Yeah. [01:25:06:21 - 01:25:32:08] Paul And so that's been really eye-opening about one, how friendly the industry is. I'm not just saying that. Really, no, it's-- Because we work in architecture and advertising, which are two quite ruthless industries. And we're noticing, we're just getting way nicer relationships and conversations going in this sector. And it does feel very collaborative. Everyone's kind of, no one person does everything. So they all require, you know, rely on their networks to sort of build these things. [01:25:32:08 - 01:25:45:18] Steve Yeah, yeah, I found that. It's a proper melting pot of, I don't know, proper artists to creatives, to technology, to business, to everything in between. Yeah. It's a unique space. [01:25:47:19 - 01:25:49:12] Steve What, one thing I want to ask, you won a BAFTA? [01:25:49:12 - 01:25:50:19] Paul Yeah. [01:25:50:19 - 01:25:51:16] (Laughs) [01:25:51:16 - 01:26:07:06] Paul I mean-- That was cool. What was that about? Probably the only one I could physically win, I think. Because it was for our Tokyo Olympics titles for the BBC. So graphics and identity was the category. And so for titles of TV shows, basically. [01:26:08:09 - 01:26:15:18] Paul And I think it was one of the only short form categories that we could have won in commercially. So yeah, I mean, we were lucky enough to be on that project [01:26:16:22 - 01:27:15:22] Paul with Nexus, the BBC Olympics film. And we shot it all in Tokyo during COVID. The project nearly got canceled because of COVID. We picked it up again. All the filming requirements were super strict in Japan at that time. So we had to film it all remotely across the internet and waking up at 5 a.m. in the morning to film something in Japan. And it was all quite chaotic. And then figuring out all the 3D, that was because it's a really magical surrealist kind of journey through Japan and discovering all of the Olympic athletes and sports within the environment of Tokyo. And it's designed to be watched like a hundred times. Because even on the hundredth time, you'll notice a different athlete. You'll notice a different, and that's the world building and design craft that goes into it. Because you're designing something so intense. It's not designed to be kind of taken in in one go. It's designed to be seen 20 times on TV, which is the actual fact. We didn't want people to be bored of it, watching it every day. So we made it pretty intense. So yeah, and we went about it for it. So it was pretty awesome. Congrats, right, congrats. [01:27:15:22 - 01:27:18:19] Steve Is it a doorstop or is it on the-- Is it on the-- [01:27:19:23 - 01:27:19:23] Steve So [01:27:19:23 - 01:27:44:04] Paul what happened was, John O being John O, this is Jonathan, he, the night of the party just took it onto the dance floor, got wasted, instantly smashed it. And then I was mega annoyed at the time, obviously. And then now I've left it broken, because he passed away. I've kind of left it as a little monument in the studio. It's kind of, it's in our trophy area. [01:27:45:05 - 01:27:48:01] Paul Broken to sort of memorize him. [01:27:48:01 - 01:27:50:11] Steve I love it, mate. That's really nice. Really nice. [01:27:52:03 - 01:27:53:02] Steve Just for anyone watching, [01:27:54:12 - 01:27:59:05] Steve just the craft and the evolution of experiential, [01:28:01:02 - 01:28:04:03] Steve what are you seeing? Where's the possible futures? [01:28:07:16 - 01:28:11:09] Paul I don't think I'm fully qualified if I want to be modest. [01:28:11:09 - 01:28:12:00] Steve Go on. [01:28:12:00 - 01:28:14:22] Paul Compared to someone-- But you have some of the giants of the industry here. No. [01:28:16:00 - 01:28:25:09] Paul I think that there's gonna be an even bigger merger of tech with experiences in more human ways. I think that's the key. [01:28:26:11 - 01:28:50:06] Paul I think you get these kind of crazy things like this sphere, one end of the spectrum. I just think that there's gonna be an explosion of new tech that comes with the dawn of AI that create completely new things that we haven't seen. We haven't even thought of. But it's gonna be a fusion of tech and experience [01:28:51:11 - 01:29:30:16] Paul to form completely new things. I don't think it's gonna be an evolution of what we've had before. I don't think it's gonna be just bigger and bigger screens or just things like that. I think there's gonna be all sorts of crazy things coming out of AI, specifically that manifest in removing the friction from technology and these experiences. So that's my sort of mold and prediction. I think it is removing that friction. Right now there's a huge difference between the human interface and what the machine is doing and I think that's gonna become blurred. I think there's gonna be a lot more human-based technology integrated into things, wearables, tech, that's not just clumsy VR headsets. [01:29:31:20 - 01:30:19:13] Paul Way more AR, augmented reality, way more gamification of things. Dean Rogers from Secret Cinema did a bit of a chat about that in terms of the biggest entertainment sector in the world is gaming and it's because we make gamers feel like they are participants in the story. So we are gonna be more in the experiences of the future. We're gonna be more like participants in the story, more actors, more gamers within these kind of environments, seamlessly blending with tech. And I think when we came around, right, I talk about tech, I've always been interested in tech and architecture, that's my thing. But when we came around, what enabled us to be successful or to stand out from the crowd as sort of weird architectural filmmakers was the invention of the Canon 5D Mark II [01:30:20:19 - 01:30:51:13] Paul and the ability to render something on a single machine using the i7 processor that came out that same year. So it's that fusion of technology that allowed us to capitalize on that new technology and compete with people in Hollywood because the Canon Mark II, for those who don't know, produced cinematic quality video content from a consumer camera, the first one. And so all of our films were made of that. And the people are all, "Who are these guys "from uni making these crazy architectural films?" That was cinema quality issue. [01:30:52:22 - 01:31:08:04] Paul And I think we're just going through that now. We're going through that now with AI. It just opens up this whole new spectrum of tools for storytelling and experiences that I think the new generation are just gonna be able to capitalize on in ways that the old generation are not. [01:31:08:04 - 01:31:20:21] Steve Yeah, I think Mike Anderson was extremely encouraged by creating or actually filming from scratch with spatial from the start, not having to render or evolve it. [01:31:20:21 - 01:31:46:04] Paul You've got some, all of the work we did with Max Cooper was using like Gaussian Splats, which is a super interesting new format of capturing sites. Gaussian Splats? Yeah, it's this type of particle system. It's a way of kind of filming in a location. If you think about it, have you heard of photogrammetry? No. Photogrammetry is when you film a location or take lots of photos of something and the photogramic process turns it into a digital mesh, right? That's been known for ages and used in different ways. [01:31:47:04 - 01:32:23:00] Paul Gaussian Splats is the evolution of that. That can produce an extremely high fidelity, high accuracy capture of an environment. We used it in a very artistic context with our thing from Max Cooper that we showcased here. But that is allowing people to capture a set and digitize it in a way that we haven't done before with the kind of fidelity we've never seen. And then what you can do with that afterwards with AI enhancement is almost create a digital twin of your sets and then you can animate them now. You can create 4D Splats. You can capture a scene. This is happening in sports. So in sports, the feature of sports, [01:32:24:16 - 01:32:48:21] Paul it's Gaussian Splats. It's 4D Gaussian Splats where you're capturing the entire event live in Splats, they call it. It's a strange word, but you're capturing a 4D capture of that whole event live. What you can do with that, anything. So imagine there was, they've already trialed it in tennis where you can kind of like, almost like a video game. You can move the camera wherever the fuck you want. [01:32:50:02 - 01:33:06:09] Paul And then that is all you can be in there is a VR experience. You can be in the audience sitting there and watching the tennis. And that's happening live, right? So what that tech opens up with experiences is not talked about enough. But certainly in sports, that's a big one. [01:33:07:17 - 01:33:29:17] Paul And certainly for kind of more creative experiences, it's going to be huge. So yeah, any kind of evolution of tech, I think the people that really hang onto that are going to be the ones that succeed. And just to add a little note about that, is just the, I think we always, we thought that AI was going to kill coders because it does all the coding for you right now. [01:33:31:01 - 01:34:04:21] Paul And what's happening is really interesting. It's almost like the opposite of that. It's democratizing coding. So what it's doing is allowing any small individual or small team to kind of compete with anyone making software and actually find an audience. And what I mean by that is it no longer takes a team of 50 people, 30 people to develop software, which is really expensive. And because it's so expensive, that software needs an audience that is up, that is hundreds of thousands to become profitable and marketable. [01:34:05:23 - 01:34:34:21] Paul It's a bit like YouTube. Nobody thought we wanted lots of short form videos out there. When we are Hollywood, we have cinema, we have TV, what do we need these little videos for? So it's the same for coding. You can have lots and lots of small teams making more and more niche little applications that nobody thought we needed in the future. Productivity apps and all sorts of things, entertainment apps, experiential apps. So I think there's gonna be this huge democratization [01:34:38:09 - 01:34:46:15] Paul cut of coding. And that will open up a lot more opportunity for tech to be integrated into experiences. [01:34:46:15 - 01:34:59:20] Steve Yeah, I agree. To bring it back. No, I agree. And I heard also as well, like for that market, because it is gonna get so democratized, everyone's gonna have, I mean, I think you're even gonna have family, you're gonna design family software that suits your family for example. [01:34:59:20 - 01:35:11:10] Paul Exactly. You're gonna have any-- Businesses are doing it. We're doing it. We've built up a whole backend of our business. That's all AI powered now. And it's just helping in all sorts of things. We never thought we needed. So it's gonna get [01:35:11:10 - 01:35:34:12] Steve very-- I just wanna know something you said earlier, because as you said it, I was like, oh, totally. And this is a really, I was talking to someone recently about this from a doctorate perspective, is studying and figuring this out, is the gap between the human and AI and this interface that we have right now. And actually the keyboard is slowing us down. So I think in the future, we're gonna look back and go, come on, do you remember when we used to use a keyboard? [01:35:35:14 - 01:35:40:20] Steve It will go, because already there's like Whisper, I think, or one of them, we're in their office. They don't have any keyboards. [01:35:40:20 - 01:35:46:15] Paul They're just, they're not literally dialogues. It's funny you say that, because one of our guys has already developed a system where he's, [01:35:47:21 - 01:36:30:02] Paul we're already creating agents that we can just chat to. We're building in an LLM into the system so that we've got all these kind of productivity tools that are kind of working in the backend. And then we can just talk, we have an agent per tool, and then we can just talk to the agent colloquially. I see him all the time. I've not quite joined him on that journey yet, but he's just talking to his phone. And all of a sudden these things start popping up because we have integrated it into Slack. So you can just, you can type in Slack and type instructions for this agent to do certain things. Marketing new business, certain tools, certain tasks. And, but now we can just do it with chat by integrating large language models. So I'm one of these people that gets really annoyed if someone sends me a voice message on WhatsApp though. [01:36:30:02 - 01:36:30:02] (Laughing) [01:36:30:02 - 01:36:44:17] Paul It's like, I just don't want to sit there and listen to this now. Do you know what I mean? I'm doing something else. I'm on the bus. It's just like, it annoys me. So I don't know if I'm the right person to sit there and chat to an AI chatbot. I'd rather think about it and type it out personally. [01:36:44:17 - 01:36:47:11] Steve But I think it's interesting, the behavioral shifts, we all got, I think we're all-- It's [01:36:47:11 - 01:37:34:08] Paul like her, the film, her, right? Yes, all-- Already outdated in terms of its kind of aspiration for where we're going. But that was really, but it just presented the beautifully subtle differences in culture that happen in that world, where everyone is just on their own talking and it's not weird. They're just talking to their chatbot in that case. And now it's already happening. And so I remember thinking, oh, that's so strange. Like they're all just talking individually and nobody's, their spatial awareness seems to be here and nobody's seeing what they're doing over there. Nobody cares because they're just talking to their chatbot, you're talking to their chatbot and everyone's in their own little world talking to their chatbots, right? And it's one of my favorite films just because it paints such a subtle picture of the difference that culture might turn into. But it's already outdated. We've already surpassed it in a way. Sounds crazy. [01:37:35:19 - 01:37:51:00] Steve Paul, thanks so much for spending your time with us. Yeah, really enjoyed the conversation. I learned something. I'm sure the audience has learned something too. And listen, genuinely, I wish you all the best for the future. I think you've done some amazing stuff already. Really excited to see what you are. Cool, thanks very much. You guys come up with next. Great. [01:37:51:00 - 01:37:53:16] Paul Stoked to be here. Nice one, thank you. See you soon. [01:37:53:16 - 01:37:54:05] Steve Cheers.