Thursday, May 23rd, 2019

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

Session I: Haas Conference Center, Room 172-173

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

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

Marta Ordeig, founder, Garage Stories

David Gull, CEO, Outer Realm

David Birnbaum, Design Director, Immersion Corporation

Eric Navarrette, Co-founder, Chief Marketing Officer, ARwall

Mark Rickard, Founder, Executive Producer, Virtuality

Moderator, Danilo Moura Silva, VP Immersive Experiences, EXPERIUS VR

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.

Eric Navarrette, Co-founder, Chief Marketing Officer, ARwall: Eric Navarrette worked for more than 5 years as the Senior Copywriter and producer at the digital agency, Automaton Creative, taking on sales, marketing, and bizdev roles. While there, he offered video, VFX, and tech solutions to media and entertainment brands such as NBC, A&E, HGTV, and The History Channel. In addition to that, Eric spent a dozen seasons as a digital producer at NBCUniversal, working on a number of their biggest shows including America’s Got Talent, The Voice, SNL, and the World of Dance. He brings the team 10 years experience in B2B sales/marketing, with key roles securing $2.25M in early stage financing, sales, and partnerships.

Marta Ordeig, founder, Garage Stories: Filmmaker and entrepreneur residing between Silicon Valley and Barcelona. Graduated in Business from the University of Barcelona she worked in Berlin and LA as a producer and Creative Director of film and TV before setting up her first film festival (Landscape Film Festival). In 2016 she moved to Silicon Valley, where combining her passion for film and innovation she founded Garage Stories, a content lab where she gathers creatives minds from various background to co-create and explore the endless possibilities that emerging technologies are bringing into the table and take an active part in shaping the future of entertainment. She has organized Garage Stories labs and co-creation festivals in cities such as Barcelona, San Francisco and Mexico; and has given workshops in institutions such as the MIT Media Lab in Boston, the Sonar + D and the USC University in Los Angeles. Some of the resulting projects have been presented at TEDx.

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.

Danilo Moura Silva - VP Immersive Technologies, Experius VR: From voyages to the Moon, Mars, Egypt, Old Jerusalem and even a museum in his hometown of Brazil, Danilo’s volumetric virtual reality experiences have taken users on their most awe-inspiring journeys. Through his personally digitized environments using photogrammetry and laser scanning, Danilo’s decade-long passion for precision is unmistakable – and unstoppable. With a talent for perfecting pipelines, preserving source quality, and building multiple teams from the ground up, Danilo’s contributions have led to the development of countless games and interactive narratives in Hollywood for the past ten years. But his journey in VR/AR/MR, founded during his early R&D engineer days at Sony Pictures, is only just beginning. According to Danilo, “I believe we are marching towards a revolution in the way content is created for the new generation of Immersive devices. The perfect storm is coming! It's time to focus on volumetric solutions for an amazing simulated reality, where we can feel like we can be anywhere we want.” Danilo recently worked as Post Production supervisor for 7 Miracles. The first 8K VR full-length movie with 7 volumetric scenes. The 7 Miracles movie, shot in Italy and France,  just received the award of "Best VR Film Of The Festival" from Raindance Film Festival in London, UK  The movie will release in multiple VR platforms in 2019.