It has been 7 years that we’ve been gathering together here in Beijing for ICEVE. To think that we are working in so many new fields in just this short period of 7 years is amazing to me.
So this time, I want to talk about the next generation of technology and how it’s going be used and why it’s being implemented. And for that, we will talk about the next generation of consumers.
First of all, here are our studio members of the AIS in Hollywood, and we also include community members from Silicon Valley, including Lytro. So we are half technology and half creative organization.
What are the things AIS is working on? Director Gareth Edwards, he directed STAR WARS ROGUE ONE and he used a Virtual Reality production camera control. So the AIS is working on technologies like this, and augmented reality, virtual reality, virtual productions which allow the directors to be in the scene when he is making the decisions about how to produce. Artificial intelligence, because we know all of this is going to take great computing power, and artificial intelligence is going to allow us to make our movies better. HDR quality guideline and cloud computing, because all of this is going to create a need for high-speed computing.
THE JUNGLE BOOK from Disney in 2016 is a case of new technology application. The little boy here is the only thing that’s real. Everything else in that picture in the jungle is created by artists, thousands of artists working thousands of hours with thousands of computers and thousands of hours of rendering to create that experience.
As more and more of the movies are made this way, because special effects and digital camera are the best way to make these movies, more and more of them are required, needing more and more computing power to achieve that. And that’s why we are moving into that area of cloud computing.
The other aspect with cloud computing is that if we are all working on a movie but the movie is up in the clouds, I can have a creative team in Beijing working with a creative team in London, and a team in Disney in Hollywood on the very same movie. So this is where we think movies are going. Why? Movies are going to be more expensive to make, therefore, we will all be paying more for a movie ticket in the next few years when we go to the movie theatres. And we can watch movies now and stream them at home so we have to make better and better movies and that’s no small part because the next generation of consumers is coming along.
The Next Generation of Consumers
People about 16-19 years old will spend about 9 seconds to determine whether or not to stay, watching a video or to scroll one. We’ve all seen it with young people sitting there scrolling, or on WeChat, or looking at their videos.
The consumers of today are multi-tasking and they want constant stimulation. So if we were to make the movies or television programs of the future, we have to know that we have a different consumer. This is a group of people who are absorbing a great amount of their video on Facebook or other social media as opposed to traditional broadcasters and services.
64% of young people want greater engagement with their content. They don’t want just to be passive watchers over television screen. They want to be in the movie and have more of a connection to the content. That’s why we are looking at VR and AR and all of these other technologies. We want to grab the attention of these young customers and give them more engagement. Statistics here also show where they spend their day, why they answer from media. and the social platforms that they use around the world. A 17-year old today met one of their closest friends online. They likely know not only how to write code but shoot, edit and distribute studio quality video content. So the young people today are coming up with an understanding of not only how to make movies but make good-quality movies.
This is a future where people of my age learn to use the mobile phone and use the laptop. This is a generation coming up absolutely at home with it and using it in their daily lives. And this is a young generation that are very capable of making good-quality content, and if they are going to pay money to go to the movie theatre or watch something, or stream it, it needs to be powerful and good.
VR Is Going To Be A Part of Our Future
Now let’s talk about virtual reality, because that’s something coming up in Steven Spielberg that I think will bring VR back to center stage in the conversations. Right now, according to a research done in the US, about 7% of consumers used VR on a weekly basis. About 11% are in household with some sort of viewing device or use one weekly through the early stages of VR.
Today we see VR being used in industrial applications by doctors and industrial manufacturer companies who can replicate a work situation and solve that problem much easier using VR than not. So in the next year or two, we think VR will be very busy being applied in the industrial area.
I went to a VR center in Tokyo. It’s a massive VR center with many employees. We think in the next year or two, this is where you’ll go to get great virtual reality. Because the cost of getting it at home and the quality you are getting at home is not as great as it will be in the next few years. So you’ll go to another gaming center and maybe a movie theatre to experience VR.
Right now, virtual reality is about as familiar to the average consumer as the smart watch. So if someone has an Apple watch or knows about Apple watch, or is aware of what an Apple watch does, that same number of percentage of the population kind of understand what VR is.
We are at early stages where most of the population knows very little about AR but the people we have researched have indicated that VR is here to stay. There are so many big companies, all of Hollywood’s studios, and most people making movies now are showing great interests in working in VR or AR. We believe very strongly VR is going to be a part of our future and it will be so certainly over the next 10 years.
Finally we got a test in the US where we show people a TV commercial online video and in a virtual reality headset separately. The blue line at the top shows you the response that the consumers had having watched it in virtual reality and the other graph shows what the responses of those who were watching an online video. Apparently, VR experience has a much more powerful impact on the viewer and that is good news for the movie studios, for advertisers, and major retailers to see VR as a way to really connect with consumers.
For the last few years, Steven Spielberg has been working on his next movie READY PLAYER ONE. It’s a movie based on a book by Arthur Ernest Cline about virtual reality. For most of you, you can remember AVATAR. Prior to AVATAR, most people were not aware of 3D movies. After Avatar, so many people saw that movie that the whole world understood what movies in 3D were like and their values. Last year, 1.2 billion 3D movie tickets were sold worldwide.
So we are excited about this movie coming out at the end of March from Warner Brothers. The estimates are it could easily beat 100 million people worldwide to get this. If 100 million people worldwide see Steven Spielberg’s vision of future VR, it will make all of our jobs talking about VR and working in it that much easier. It may inspire a new generation of young moviegoers to become excited about working in VR.
Jim Chabin founded Chabin Communications Corporation in 1978, beginning a career that would combine his passions for emerging technologies and marketing. The proceeding 25 years saw him take on roles such as National Promotions and Corporate Developer for E! News in the early 90s, President and Chief Operating Officer for the Academy of Television Arts and Science (Emmys) and President and Chief Executive Officer of Promax/BDA from 1992 till 2002.
In 2009, Chabin co-founded the Advanced Imagining Society with the goal of creating an organization that would educate and foster the development of new filmmakers interested in working with cuttingedge technologies and emerging fields of filmmaking technology. Today, the society has more than 1,100 members and holds seminars in 20 countries. Topics range from 3D moviemaking, content production, virtual reality, and High Dynamic Range. He serves as both President and as a member of the Society’s Executive Committee.
In his spare time, Chabin also serves on the Board of Directors of Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, presides over the VR Society, and works to further forge a bridge between the Chinese and American markets. In 2005 he became the first foreigner to earn government approval to hold a marketing conference in China for television professionals.
By Jim Chabin