Thursday, November 14th, 2019

1:00 PM - 2:00 PM – Immersive Hollywood: VR – AR - MR

Session I: Haas Conference Center, Room 172-173, Webcast

VR-AR/MR ThinkTank - The Deep Dive - Creative - Visionary Experiential Content and Technology

Evette Vargas, Writer, Director, Producer, Multiplatform and Virtual Reality Creator

Samantha Gorman, Co-Founder and Director, Tender Claws

Mark Rickard, Founder, Executive Producer, Virtuality

David Gull, CEO, Outer Realm

Rene Amador, Chief Executive Officer, ARwall

David Brady, Chief Executive Officer, Cream Productions

David Birnbaum, Design Director, Immersion Corporation, Moderator

David Brady is Chief Executive Officer of Cream Productions, a company he co-founded in 2003. With offices in Toronto and Los Angeles, Cream develops, finances and produces distinctive and award-winning content across a wide range of TV and digital platforms in North America and internationally. Among the company’s many credits include Wild Things with Dominic Monaghan (Animal Planet), BTK: A Killer Among Us (ID), Fear Thy Neighbor (ID), Blood and Fury: America’s Civil War (American Heroes), Paranormal Emergency (Travel), Survivorman (OLN/City TV) as well as the upcoming Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan (Netflix) among dozens more.  Cream is a world leader in VR/AR

technologies and storytelling.  Since 2015, they’ve produced an array of content and products including VR series in coproduction with Hulu, American Heroes Channel, Investigation Discovery, Lexus-Toyota, the Globe and Mail, SIRT and various industrial partners.  Cream is currently developing a proprietary technology to create high-fidelity, low-computational AI backed virtual humans.  Among their VR/AR credits include A Curious Mind with Dominic Monaghan for Hulu as well as Oak AR, an augmented reality game, among others. Brady is also a director, having directed The Underground War, which was a hit on History and broke ratings records on Channel 4, and the cutting edge archaeological special Breathing Fire: The Greatest Untold Story of the First World War for History and Channel 4 as well.

Evette Vargas is emblematic of Hollywood’s new breed of multiplatform storytelling talent. Named by the New York Times as an “Artist to Watch,” Vargas is an award-winning writer, director, producer, multiplatform and Virtual Reality creator. Co-founder of Digital-Reign, an emerging media production company, Vargas' work includes series for Amazon, MTV, Bravo, DirectTV; as well as writing, apps, games and branded entertainment for FAST & FURIOUS, LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy and Madonna. Vargas executive produced, wrote and directed her digital series DARK PROPHET, starring Henry Rollins. The series was nominated for two Emmys, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and is available on Amazon Prime. The Virtual Reality series will premiere on the Sony PlayStation VR. Vargas recently sold her one-hour series MUSES to Turner Broadcasting Super Deluxe, is developing her show TRANS with Electus, and her series TEMPEST with The Wolper Organization. Vargas has optioned her Y.A. series, THE SPECTORS, to Campanario Productions. Vargas’ slate of VR projects includes the VR experience for The Weinstein Company feature film, THE CURRENT WAR, starring Benedict Cumberbatch. Vargas is also writing and producing two VR projects based on her original IPs, one of which she is producing with The Rogue Initiative. Vargas is a member of the Writers Guild of America, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Producers Guild of America and serves on the advisory board of the Alliance of Women Directors. Vargas earned her BFA in Directing and Film/TV Production from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and her MFA from UCLA for Screenwriting with a concentration in Television Showrunning. Vargas was born in the Bronx and learned to tell stories at the dinner table with her family where the imagination ruled.

Samantha Gorman is Co-Founder and Director at Tender Claws, an award-winning independent creative studio operating at the intersection of art, games, and technology. Its notable projects include the hybrid novel “PRY,” named by Apple as one of the Best Apps of 2015; narrative VR game “Virtual Virtual Reality,” named the Best VR Experience at the Google Play Awards in 2017; mobile AR game “Tendar,” winner of the Innovation in Interaction Design Award at IndieCade 2018; and the highly anticipated VR immersive theater adventure “The Under Presents,” launching later this year. Samantha began working in VR/AR in 2002 and is currently a PhD fellow in Media Arts & Practice at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. She specializes in writing for interactive media across genres including expanded cinema, games, and virtual reality. With her work at Tender Claws she brings a unique approach to VR/AR content creation, making players question the nature of technology and our place in a tech-driven society, for experiences that truly compelling and provocative.

Rene Amador, Chief Executive Officer, ARwall: Rene boasts 22 years working with 16 startups, inspired at age 10 when he got his start selling personal finance software his father developed for the Commodore Amiga computer. After working in digital development for FOX Broadcasting Company and the Baker Entertainment Group, he co-founded digital agency Automaton Creative, where he pitched and directed over 350 commercials, short films, and pilots as co-founder, general manager, and creative director. Past clients include Daqri, FOX, Honda, AT&T, Verizon, A&E, Starbucks, MoMA, Universal, Playboy, HGTV, PBS Digital and more. With a pedigree of founding 4 additional successful startups, Rene co-founded ARwall in 2017 as an augmented reality solution for filmmakers.

David Birnbaum, Design Director at Immersion Corporation, leads a team responsible for developing the tactile aesthetics of emerging technologies. Most recently he’s been focused on bringing the sense of touch to mobile video and ads. Driven by a desire to tell stories with the sense of touch and to bring emotion and realism to digital experiences, David has been creating haptic experiences for over 10 years, in which time he’s been named as an inventor on over 70 patents in the fields of user experience, wearables, gaming, medical devices, mobile communication, and rich interactive media. He holds a B.S. in Music Industry from USC and a M.A. in Music Technology from McGill University.

Mark Rickard is an award-winning film and Virtual Reality producer. He has developed and produced several feature films alongside Hollywood luminaries like Terrence Malick & Edward R. Pressman, and was a producer on the 2019 film RUN THE RACE, which was Executive Produced by Tim Tebow and distributed theatrically by Roadside Attractions. Mr. Rickard founded the immersive entertainment company, Virtuality, in 2017, with initial ventures including collaborations with AGT sensations, Light Balance, as well as the groundbreaking volumetric adaptation of monologues from MACBETH, aptly titled “Shakesperiences” (which he also directed). Having recently secured output deals with AmazeVR and BroomX Technologies, and firmly entrenched in post-production on Brett Leonard’s multimedia spectacle HOLLYWOOD ROOFTOP, the company is aiming to again break new ground with forthcoming experiences based on major literary works like the Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning novel, VURT, by Jeff Noon. Mr. Rickard is a member of the Producers Guild of America and holds certifications in screenwriting and production management from UCLA.

David Gull, CEO of Outer Realm, is a leader in the application of immersive software to real-world projects, helping visions become a reality by first developing high fidelity, true-scale virtual prototypes in Virtual and Augmented Reality. As a licensed architect, David understands that people's ability to visualize complex projects is inherently limited, and building any ambitious future requires buy-in, alignment, and clear understanding from an array of stakeholders. David founded Outer Realm to create a solution that showcases unbuilt projects and products as realistically as possible in order to ensure they are actually built, and to improve the product outcome through design iteration and validation. Prior to Outer Realm, David was a VP at Floored, a Virtual Technology startup acquired by CBRE. He also has 6 years at the renowned architecture firm Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill. David graduated first in his class from Cornell University’s #1 Ranked Architecture Program.