INDUSTRY. METAVERSE ROUND TABLE
ease themselves into the virtual world. Game engines like Unreal Engine are a great example of that. It’s all about familiarising yourself today with the tools that will build the metaverse of tomorrow. Obviously, there is no metaverse without VR. Headsets are getting cheaper, more accessible and game engines are daily becoming more VR friendly. It really just takes a bit of will, creativity, curiosity and of course time to create a VR project. From there, your vision can only extend to all the possibilities of these technologies. PHILIPP WOLF: Imagine stepping into a world where the boundaries between reality and fiction are blurred, where you can explore breathtaking landscapes and interact with characters on a deeply personal level. This is the world filmmakers can create in the metaverse, a realm where stories come alive. They can craft immersive environments that react to users’ actions, weaving social interaction into the fabric of the story. The result is a groundbreaking, dynamic form of entertainment with the potential to bring together diverse voices and create a truly inclusive experience. How could the metaverse be used to create completely new genres of films, ordinarily impossible to achieve through traditional filmmaking techniques? QJ: The metaverse doesn’t just mean a change in audience perception of your work because of VR goggles. With the right tools, you can make a traditional film meant for flat screening, but shot entirely inside the engine, using the platform as a live collaborative system. You can also create a live film outside of the engine, shot in volumetric capture, and allow your spectators to walk around the scenes, helping find clues to solve your murder mystery plot, for example. The metaverse means interactivity, remoteness, scale (you could have an almost unlimited number of participants), the potential of doing everything live and, by essence, a cross between two worlds – the virtual and real world. This frontier can be tampered with by bringing the real world inside the metaverse and vice versa. Imagine at any time while watching a film, being able to extract yourself from the camera’s POV to walk around the film set and learn about the craft of how the scene was made. We could also use it to facilitate remote work in the film industry – a director could be working on a set miles away, while the crew and cast could
How can filmmakers leverage the metaverse to create new and innovative forms of interactive content, blurring the lines between fiction and reality? QUENTIN JORQUERA: In 2017, I worked on a project called Sergeant James , a short VR film by director Alexandre Perez. At the time, it was quite bold to do that. The film was ahead of its time, only one year after the Oculus Rift came out, and it was a huge success! Now, Alexandre is working in collaboration with Quantic Dream on the next Star Wars video game... a perfect example of blurring the lines between the video game and film industries. I believe this is what the metaverse is all about. However it isn’t much more than a concept for now. We’re far away from the oasis and frankly, for having tried a lot of what companies today have to offer and showcase as metaverse, it’s all pretty much unusable for anything else but chatting with random people. That being said, VRChat might be the best candidate out there right now for a potential embryo of a metaverse. Of course, it doesn’t mean that filmmakers shouldn’t dive into the subject: they have an array of tools to use, virtually for free, in order to
THE INTERVIEWEES
QUENTIN JORQUERA Director of photography & virtual production consultant Freelance
PHILIPP WOLF Executive-in-charge, corporate strategy DNEG
Quentin Jorquera is an experienced DOP and VP consultant, born in France to a family of Spaniards and Italians. He grew up in the South Pacific – between New Caledonia and Vanuatu – and trained in Paris, through both a classical artistic education and film school. Currently operating between the UK and France, he has worked on high-profile projects such as House of the Dragon and Mission: Impossible – Fallout .
Philipp Wolf, executive-in-charge, corporate strategy at DNEG, Montreal. Credits include Dune and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery . As a VFX producer, he’s collaborated with Guy Ritchie and David Yates. Wolf is a member of VES board of directors, and co-chair of VES Health & Wellbeing and the Animation and VFX Committee, Producers Guild of America. Wolf initially gained recognition by a VES award nomination.
54. DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM
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