Wednesday, April 29th, 2015

Virtual - Augmented Reality Workshop

2:30 PM - 3:30 PM, Poolside Tent II

Activating the Fanbase for Global Sport Franchises: Strategies for Content, Platforms and Technology

Randal Kleiser, Noted Hollywood Director and VR consultant to the U.S. Army

Ed Lantz, CEO, Vortex Immersive Media

Don Brittain, President and CEO, Instant Effects and principal architect for Autodesk’s 3DSMax

Brian Seth Hurst, CEO The Opportunity Management Company, Inc., Managing Partner, StoryTech™

Matt Liszt, VP of Marketing at MasterImage 3D, Inc., member, Board of Directors, International 3D & Advanced Imaging Society

Amir Rubin, CEO Sixense, Inc

Bruce Greenberg, Founder, iCinema Ventures, Moderator

Melbourne, Florida, five years at the Astronaut Memorial Planetarium and Observatory in Cocoa, Florida leading the development of advanced laser, video and astronomical projectors, and eight years with Spitz, Inc. where he built a team that transformed old-style planetariums into immersive visualization environments and assisted in developing an immersive cinema production team and workflow.  Mr. Lantz is founder and Chair of Harmony Channel, a broadband television network delivering mood-elevating digital media that has been described as “MTV for the Soul.”  He also operates Visual Bandwidth, Inc., an immersive cinema and fulldome video advisory network. Mr. Lantz has published and presented numerous papers on VR and entertainment technologies, and is a regular contributor to ACM SIGGRAPH papers, panels and courses.  He founded the International Planetarium Society’s Fulldome Video Committee and the first Fulldome Standards Summit held in Valencia, Spain in 2004, and co-organized the first Immersive Cinema Workshop in Espinho, Portugal in 2005.  He received an MS in Electrical Engineering from Tennessee Tech University (1984), serves on the boards of the Center for Visual Music and the Center for Conscious Creativity, and holds two US Patents on immersive video-based theater technology.

Amir Rubin, Co-Founder and CEO of Sixense, is an entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience building companies and developing products in the fields of simulation, video games, virtual reality and motion tracking.  Sixense is shaped around Amir’s two fundamental tenets for virtual reality: (1) to deliver the best user experience, the technology should be transparent to the user, and (2) a platform’s success depends on its ability to enable application developers.

Randal Kleiser's first feature Grease is the most successful movie musical ever made. Other credits include The Blue Lagoon,The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, Summer Lovers, Flight of the Navigator, White Fang, North Shore, Getting It Right, Lovewrecked and It's My Party. In 2007, his USC Thesis film Peege was selected by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Registry. Working in 70mm 3-D, he directed Honey, I Shrunk the Audience, which has been running for over a decade at the Disney Parks in Anaheim, Orlando, Tokyo, and Paris. This led to the US Government signing him to develop a 360 degree hi-def simulator to train soldiers to deal with Improvised Explosive Devices in the current war in Afghanistan. With George Lucas, he recently released a 2 DVD set, "USC School of Cinematic Arts presents the Nina Foch Course for Filmmakers and Actors". In 2010 he was elected to the Science and Technology Committee of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Brian Seth Hurst, CEO The Opportunity Management Company, Inc., Managing Partner, StoryTech™: Brian Seth Hurst is CEO of The Opportunity Management Company, Inc., a strategic consultancy and cross media production company that is driving the next generation of entertainment. Referred to as “the father of cross platform”, Hurst coined the term in 1998 as MD of Convergent Media at Pittard Sullivan, where he launched TV Guide as the first ever cross platform brand.  In 2006, seeing the need for a solid production process for cross media programming, Hurst developed and launched the Rapid Cross Media Initiative to assist broadcast clients in extending their programming to audiences and communities on new platforms. The methodology established a clear workflow for the strategy, planning, budgeting and production of integrated story telling across platforms including broadband, interactive television, games, mobile, social networks and personalized media. It allows for the maximization of assets and the best in class technology vendors to “talk to each other” and be efficiently integrated into the production process. Brian's credo, “go to where your audience lives” is transforming the relationship of audiences to programming. Clients have included: Showtime, Lifetime and AOL amongst others. Hurst was on the team that developed the original user experience for TiVo and currently sits on MobiTV’s advisory board.  Brian was instrumental in the establishment of the Prime Time Emmy® for Interactive Television and spearheaded the initiative that extended Primetime Emmy® eligibility to original programming distributed via broadband. Brian served two terms as Chairman of the Producers Guild of America New Media Council (’03-’05) while simultaneously serving on the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Board of Governors. Until 2009, he was the Second Vice Chair of the Television Academy and sat on the National Board of the PGA. Recipient of a 2006 Interactive TV Today [itvt] Award for Leadership in Interactive Television, he was profiled in the April 2007 issue of Emmy® Magazine one of the 10 media executives in the business leading the industry’s digital drive, and in November of 2007 was named to the Hollywood Reporter’s PGA “Digital 50” for the second year in a row. Apart from his role as CEO of The Opportunity Management Company, Brian is also the Principal at Tim Kring's Conspiracy for Good, a global movement for change driven by a story, a legendary narrative that the audience becomes a part of and every participant has the ability to impact the outcome of this story.

Bruce Greenberg, Founder, iCinema Ventures:  A recent speaker at Digital Hollywood 2014, Bruce Greenberg has marketed and sold immersive storytelling products, technology and services in 4D, 3D, Interactive DVD and Blu-ray, and Interactive Cable Television and Home Entertainment,  most recently serving as the Senior Vice President of Studio and Filmmaker Relations for CJ 4DPlex, Korea.  Greenberg’s immersive career began with producing and directing interactive home video workouts for the same content company that began the wave with the Jane Fonda Workouts.  In the late 80's and early 90's, Bruce sold over 50 million VHS workout videos, truly beginning the interactive home entertainment business.  Then in the early 90's, Bruce helped to usher in interactive cable networks with cable broadcasting, phone and computer integration via North America's 2nd 24 hour cable news network, The Orange County Newschannel, where he was the creative director and head of on air promotions.  In the mid-90's, after winning several industry accolades for his television documentary work, Bruce was developing the value-added behind-the-scenes materials for the first 50 DVDs distributed by Hollywood's leading motion picture studios and earned the first DVD awards for his work on LA CONFIDENTIAL.   In 2011, Bruce brought together The Indianapolis 500 and 3Net (Sony, IMAX, and Discovery Channel) to produce a 3D insiders’ view of 100th Anniversary of the Indy 500.  Additionally in the past two decades, Greenberg has produced a myriad of short form marketing and advertising content to promote Hollywood’s most well-known franchises and stories for every Hollywood studio, television network, and major cable network.  Additionally, with 30 years in advertising, marketing, entertainment, journalism, and broadcasting, Greenberg's accomplishments include producing audiovisual marketing campaigns for Warner Bros., Buena Vista, Miramax, Columbia TriStar and Universal. His vibrant branding work can be seen in Warner Home Video’s 75thAnniversary Collection, The Warner Century Collection, and The AFI’s 100:100. Bruce also produced, wrote, directed and edited many of the documentaries on your favorite DVDs, as well as oversaw the execution of a variety of successful home video marketing campaigns.  Greenberg continues to stabilize studio relationships, create unique filmmaker projects, and to develop a richer future for out-of-home and location based storytelling through 4d technologies, products, and services. Currently Bruce is developing launch plans for a variety of immersive cinema, immersive technologies and immersive storytelling projects.  You can learn about these projects through updates at @4DBruceG on Twitter.