Digital Hollywood Spring, 2016

Thursday, October 22nd, 2015

2:30 PM - 3:30 PM

End-of-Day Keynote Roundtable

Future of VR Plus AR

Dr. David Levitt, co-founder and CEO, Pantomime Corporation

Aaron Koblin, Co-founder and CTO, Vrse

Adam Geoghegan, Managing Director and Founder, Immersia Virtual Reality

Sivan Iram, General Manager, River Studios

Tim Gedemer, Owner, Supervising Sound Designer, Supervising Sound Editor Source Sound‬

David Traub, Co-Founder, Epiphany Film Fund, Moderator

scientist and software developer at the MIT Media Lab, Atari, Viacom, Interval Research, and virtual reality inventor VPL Research. Dr. Levitt has developed “kits” that let non-programmers create software by connecting on-screen parts, and artificial intelligence software that creates musical arrangements. He received doctoral and master’s degrees from MIT, and his B.S. from Yale.

Aaron Koblin, Co-founder and CTO, Vrse: Aaron Koblin is an artist, designer, and entrepreneur specializing in data and digital technologies. He is the Co-founder and CTO of Vrse, a virtual reality company in Los Angeles. Prior to Vrse, Aaron created and lead the Data Arts Team at Google from 2008-2015. Aaron has received the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for Interaction Design and the National Science Foundation's award for science visualization. He received an Emmy in 2014, and two of his music video collaborations have been Grammy nominated. In 2010 Aaron was the Abramowitz Artist in Residence at MIT. He received his MFA in Design|Media Arts from UCLA. His work is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) in London, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. His projects have been shown at international festivals including TED, Sundance, Tribeca Film Festival, Ars Electronica, SIGGRAPH, the Japan Media Arts Festival, and more.

Sivan Iram, General Manager, River Studios: Born and raised in Israel, Sivan served four years as a military officer in the Israeli Defense Force. He has a B.Sc in Software Engineering, started three companies, most notably taking one from 0-$2M in the first year. He has a Harvard MBA, and is currently leading River Studios, a Virtual Reality Production Studio. River Studio's mission is to tell stories in VR. We partners with music artists, companies and brands to connect them to their fans, and create awesome new experiences. As a "1-stop-shop for VR", our service spans across production, post-production, development and physical product fulfillment. We are based in San Francisco, with offices in LA, NY, DC and Canada.

Adam Geoghegan is Co-founder and Managing Director of Immersia Virtual Reality, and Founder and President of Australia's Virtual Reality Association, founded to unite Australia's fragmented developer and start-up community. Born in England and raised in the Western Australia city of Perth (also known as 'the world’s most isolated city'), Adam started using computers at 8, building them at age 13, then founded Immersia VR in 2014 at the age of 23.  He has grown the company from 2 part-time staff at home to a team of 20 programmers, 3D artists, game developers, movie directors, music producers and corporates spanning Australia, South East Asia, North America and Europe.  While Immersia has developed virtual reality applications for a number of large industrial clients in mining, architecture, education and tourism, the company’s true passion lies within the fields of entertainment and mental wellbeing.  Immersia has 4 applications due for first release in mid-October 2015, including a game, an animated movie, a music visualisation experience, and a music festival, the later created using 360 degree footage and 3D audio captured at Rottofest, an annual celebration of Australian music and comedy held on Australia's Rottnest Island. In the mental wellbeing space, Immersia has recently begun developing “Project Dopamine”, a platform that diagnoses, monitors and treats people suffering from anxiety and other mental health issues.  The application enables VR meditation and the capture of real-time feedback on a patient’s mental state. Adam studied chemical engineering while completing a Bachelor of Commerce at the University of Western Australia, then completed a second Bachelor of Economics at McMaster University in Canada.  In 2012 Adam  went to work with the Strategy and Operations team at Deloitte Consulting Australia.

Tim Gedemer is President and CEO of Source Sound, Inc., a premier audio design and mixing group based out of Los Angeles. He is a 27 year veteran of the Hollywood feature film audio post production community, having concentrations in Music, Sound Design, Mixing, Sound Supervision and Sound Editorial. Tim has been afforded numerous awards throughout his career, including an International Monitor Award, several Golden Reels, and was a member of the “Best Sound Editing” Academy Award Winning team for the film U-571. Under his direction, Source Sound has become the premier audio finishing provider to both Warner Brothers' and Fox’s Feature Film Marketing groups. Partnering with game audio legend Charles Deenen in 2012, Tim created “Source Sound Digital” for the purpose of servicing the game and interactive media industry at large. Since that time, the company has seen deep penetration into the AAA game business, providing sound design and mixing for Star Wars Battlefront, Call of Duty, Halo, The Crew, Need For Speed and many other top franchises. In 2014 he began working with Jaunt on their Cinematic Virtual Reality projects, including the Paul McCartney and Jack White concert experiences, as well as the cinematic short film “Kaiju Fury” from New Deal Studios and Academy Award Winner Ian Hunter. Also in 2014, he started “Calliope Music Design” - a boutique music production company servicing the feature film, television, game and interactive media spheres. In 2015 he has pushed deeper into Virtual Reality by working with Samsung, Nokia, Mirada, WeVr and many others, positioning Source Sound as one of the leading providers of VR specific audio services in Los Angeles.

David Traub, Co-Founder, Epiphany Film Fund: David earned a Masters in Education in 1990 from Harvard University, while conducting simultaneous class-work in interactive cinema and AI-based narrative at the MIT Media Lab.  HIs master thesis: design of the world's first virtual reality simulation game modeling family therapy. In 1984 he earned his undergraduate degrees in rhetoric and film with honors from the University of California at Berkeley, concluding with an honor thesis focusing on the use of film and television as "educational propaganda."  His primary focus: the aggregation and delivery of "social and emotional" and other learning-centric applications/content via feature films, TV, mobile phones, video games, thin clients/PCs and VR/AR.  In the real world, David has 20-years of experience as a digital media-oriented executive producer, entrepreneur, investor, venture catalyst, global business development executive, ind/or board member to over 40 startups/private equity companies. He has co-raised and deployed nearly $30 million dollars in support of these ventures. His most recent feature film as executive producer was JOBS, starring Ashton Kutcher;  with Bronx Bull his next movie to market (co-producer), and multiple others feature films and TV shows in  development.  David has created games, apps and other content as a co-founder,  executive and/or executive producer of digital products across a wide variety of clients such as EMI North America, MCA Records, Philips/Polydor, Microsoft/ MSN, Apple Computer and many others. He is also an author of nearly 50 articles and reports on the evolution of the digital domain for trade publications, professional books and institutional clients; and a speaker who has given nearly 50 forward-looking keynote and other speeches throughout the world for clients such as the EU, the Swedish and Canadian Governments, TV Globo (Brazil), the National Institute of Film in Denmark, Viacom, US West, Mercedes/Siebold, The Broadband Content Development Forum and numerous other economic development agencies and universities.