Note: Lighter Darker is produced for the ear and designed to be heard. If you are able, we strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which includes emotion and emphasis that's not on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.

[00:00:00] Intro

[00:00:00] Vicki Dobbs Beck: once you were inside that, living world, you could go wherever you wanted I started to believe that, like, The time is now,

[00:00:13] Jenny Ely: Welcome to the Lighter Darker Podcast, where we talk about the creative process of filmmaking and the art of visual storytelling. Thank you for joining us for this, our 15th episode. 15 of 20 episodes planned for our first season, releasing every other Tuesday. It's great to have you with us. I'm Jenny Ely, Production Manager at ILM.

Todd is actually on vacation this week, so Rob is going to be flying solo for this episode. Hi, Rob!

[00:00:37] Rob Bredow: Hello, flying solo with Jenny, of course, and we have a special guest co-host, but yeah, I'm Rob Bredow. I'm SVP of creative innovation, digital production, and technology for Lucasfilm and, and Jenny and I work together at ILM in the visual effects, animation, and immersive entertainment industries. And the fun thing today, we have a guest co-host with us and I get to introduce Vicki Dobbs Beck, who I've gotten to work with since the first day I landed here at ILM almost 11 years ago. Vickie, however, has spent over 30 years bringing stories to life in new and exciting ways here at the studio. As a leader at Lucasfilm, she has helped create a studio dedicated to immersive experiences, that was ILMxLAB, and her and the team's work has resulted in many award winning projects. Um, if you've seen or heard about Carne y Arena that won an Oscar, um, the Star Wars VR series Vader Immortal, She's really been a champion of letting people step inside our stories, and she's very, very well respected throughout the entertainment industry.

So welcome to the show, Vicki.

[00:01:42] Vicki Dobbs Beck: Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here.

[00:01:45] Rob Bredow: This is going to be really fun. Today, we're going to take a couple questions from the mailbag, and then we're going to do one of our favorite features, called Rejection Letters, with Vicki, which will be great. And then we're going to just dive into the last 10 plus years of immersive experiences at Industrial Light and Magic, and hear some of the behind the scenes stories that you probably haven't heard before. So this will be a really fun show. Jenny, do you want to get us started with a couple questions?

[00:02:11] Questions from the Mailbag

[00:02:11] Jenny Ely: Yes, I'm very excited that you're here, Vicki. If anybody listened to our bonus episode last year, which was episode 9 that we released on New Year's Eve, I talked a lot about Vicki. So this is Vicki Dobbs Beck. So, first person that hired me at ILM. Okay, we'll get to our questions from the mailbag.

First question is from Daniel Vollmer, and Daniel asks, It seems that for large projects, often multiple companies are involved. Is there some sort of bidding process where you can bid on shots, or does this division of work happen at the show side and they reach out to specific companies for specific parts?

[00:02:44] Rob Bredow: Yeah, such a good question. And this has really evolved over the recent, I don't know, the recent decade, maybe even before in visual effects. It used to be, um, in the early days of visual effects that one visual effects team or one vendor would do essentially the whole show. And that often, especially in the early days of visual effects, ILM would do big shows end to end as a regular thing. Um, now, as you described, you'll see a lot of show, a lot of vendors, and a lot of visual effects teams on each show. And, and I think that was, it wasn't completely invented by Marvel, but Marvel certainly popularized that workflow. Um, as they had these huge shows with very challenging schedules, and they were very, very complicated, so you really needed to divide and conquer. And, whether that work is done by each vendor bidding on individual shots, or, or broken up by sequences or other methodologies that make the most sense, that tends to happen on the production side. the client side visual effects supervisor, client side visual effects producer, will look through and try to find logical breaks in the work.

So you're duplicating as little work as possible between visual effects teams. Um, and then they bid out those packages of work multiple places. And visual effects companies, like ILM, Like all of the visual effects companies that might be bidding on the work, they might bid on multiple packages. There might be package A, B, C, and D, and you might say, Hey, we, we're really a good fit for A and C, and the client might be thinking, Well, I would like you to do A and D, or just A, because I need to divide and conquer on this other thing. So there's a lot of dialogue back and forth about the best way to split up the work. I think another complicating factor is, it's a moving target. You're making your best plan as a supervisor for where the work should go to divide and conquer in the most efficient way, but the editing is still evolving, the movie is still evolving during that time. So everyone has to maintain a lot of flexibility, so that's when a lot more shot, kind of, shot by shot doling out of the work happens, uh, in that, in that visual effects turnover process and the visual effects assignment process. I don't know, Vicky, if there was anything you wanted to add to that.

[00:04:50] Vicki Dobbs Beck: You know, what's interesting is in the whole immersive storytelling space, it's quite different because we're controlling the, project from concept all the way through delivery and support. And so we're actually the ones that are responsible for determining, What work we can subcontract out, because oftentimes, um, we need to do that, uh, in order to, we need the additional capacity, literally.

But we're actually in the driver's seat, so that's been really wonderful. Um, in an example like Carne y Arena, a lot of that, most of that work, um, if not all of it, was actually done, uh, at ILM.

[00:05:31] Rob Bredow: Great.

[00:05:32] Jenny Ely: All right. Next question is from Nick Tierce. The Galactic Star Cruiser was one of the most transformative experiences I've ever had.

Mythic participation on a Campbellian level. And the visual effects work by ILM was an outstanding piece of that magic trick. Could you talk about creating the visual effects for this experience and other immersive theme park projects?

[00:05:52] Rob Bredow: So much fun. We have exactly the right person for this one. Vicki, do you want to just dive in? I mean, what an amazing experience that was to work on.

[00:05:59] Vicki Dobbs Beck: Well, all of the WDI projects that we've worked on, including, um, the Millennium Falcon, ride, and of course the Galactic Star Cruiser, were an important piece to a much bigger vision, um, for the experience. And, uh, What is interesting about those two particular projects that I called out is that everything's running in real time, so that, um, and it's a lot of content.

The Galactic Star Cruiser, I can't remember, Rob, do you know how many hours?

[00:06:32] Rob Bredow: 48 hours back to back. Never the same twice,

[00:06:36] Vicki Dobbs Beck: And that's what's really amazing about real time content, is that you can have that kind of, um, variation. So, it was an exciting project. As I said, it's always great to collaborate, uh, with WDI and, um, you know, the Galactic Star Cruiser was like a once in a lifetime experience.

[00:06:55] Rob Bredow: for sure. And WDI, for those of you who aren't familiar with our three letter abbreviations, that's Walt Disney Imagineering. They're some of our favorite people to get to collaborate with because I would say the imagineers and, the kind of. People we get to hire at ILM were cut from very similar cloths. I mean, it's, uh, it's people who want to do the impossible. It's always audacious goals. In the case of Galactic Starcruiser, even just figuring out how to review 48 hours of material, you know, usually we have dailies and we just watch the shots and decide when they're done or not. When it's 48 hours long, how do you break it up?

How do you even review it? Um, you know, some of it is happening during night and it's, you know, stars sailing by with minimal keep alive animations, but you still gotta check it. to where it's right. And it's not just one screen on the Galactic Star Cruiser. There was the bridge, which was, I can't remember, six or eight or twelve projectors.

So that was a huge canvas. There were windows outside of the bridge, and then there were windows for every single room. And if you saw a TIE fighter fly across the port side of the ship from your room, you could, if you were running alongside the ship, you would see that TIE fighter fly through the side windows of the main foyer area and then onto the bridge in a continuous animation.

It was completely seamless, even though it was being handed from one computer to the next over that whole experience. So it was really, it was really an immersive experience, that's for sure. Unfortunately, Galactic Star Cruiser isn't a ticket you can still get today, but for those like Nick who got to do it, it was, it was really kind of a remarkable immersive experience.

[00:08:30] Vicki Dobbs Beck: And we also learned a lot about, um, that kind of storytelling because the, the complexity, and the interwoven storylines is really at the core of what we do on the, um, immersive, uh, you know, on, on the XLAB side of things. So that was a great opportunity to, um, to learn from that.

[00:08:52] Rejections Letters

[00:08:52] Rob Bredow: That's great. Well, that is a great segue to Um, kind of how people got started, you know, and learnings in early days. Um, although I guess the Halcyon experience wasn't particularly early days, that was well into, uh, our immersive team's experiences. But, um, we love to talk about rejection letters, and what we mean by that is that time where a door closed in your face, certainly at the time it was disappointing, almost, sometimes even seems like, Earth shattering and then like it with the benefit of hindsight you get to see like oh that closed door actually led to this which Ended up being exactly what I needed for my career.

So especially for people getting started this has been very popular to hear these stories. So thanks Vicki for being willing to share your rejection letter with us Whatever that means

[00:09:37] Vicki Dobbs Beck: was thinking about this the other day and it actually still gives me heart palpitations because it's such an intense experience. But I went to Stanford Business School, um, a long time ago, like well over 30 years. And At that time, almost everyone went into either investment banking or management consulting.

So, I thought I should be a management consultant. Um, and I knew a lot of people who were. So, I signed up for the interview process on campus. And my first interview, this is for a summer job in between the two years, at school, and it was with McKinsey and Company, which is a very large, um, very, you know, prestigious management consulting firm.

And the way that they do these interviews is they give you a case study right on the spot, and you're supposed to sort of talk about how you would approach it. And so they give me the case study, and it's about a car manufacturer, and this is, they have a carburetor problem. Um, and. I didn't even know what a carburetor was, and I tried to fake my way through it the best I could, and it was a disaster.

I, I literally think I just cut the interview short and was like, thank you very much. I don't want to waste either of our time. I had a second interview with another management consulting firm, Bain & Company, and

[00:11:01] Rob Bredow: So McKinsey and Bain are your first two interviews.

[00:11:03] Vicki Dobbs Beck: My two interviews. I happen to know the person who was interviewing me, um, at Bain, and after we were talking, um, for a while, he just said, You know, Vicki, you seem like you have so much of a creative spirit.

Are you sure you want to go into management consulting? And we talked a little bit more, and he said, I'll tell you what, you go find a job, um, for the summer that is more creative, and if after that you are convinced that, you know, you want to be a management consultant, then let's talk about a full time job when you graduate.

Well, honestly, that is totally, that combination of those two experiences was life changing for me because I ended up, um, well, first of all, I volunteered to work for free at ILM and they turned me down. Another rejection, um, I think it was because they thought I was going to be too much work, um, but I had made some suggestions about projects I thought I could help them with.

It did end up helping me in the long run, but I worked for free. at the San Francisco Ballet for the summer between the two years and I was absolutely convinced that in fact I should be pursuing, um, much more of a creative path. So it was a door closed, or several doors closed actually, and, uh, another one opened.

[00:12:25] Rob Bredow: That's amazing. I cannot see you at McKinsey or at Bain, like, knowing Vicki's personality. Vicki, like, in general, when those consultants get in, get invited into a company, it's to make cuts, right? It's to find efficiencies. It's just like brute force numbers, and Vicki, is like the most optimistic, um, finding the blue ocean, looking for the new opportunity, uh, building expansion, new plans, like, it's almost the opposite of what at least I think of when those companies, maybe that's a misconception, but certainly when they have been involved in companies that I've been there, it's almost always been about headcount reduction. So I, I can imagine that might not have fed your soul in the same way as what you've been building here.

[00:13:05] Vicki Dobbs Beck: A hundred percent.

[00:13:07] Jenny Ely: there's so many people that have come on the podcast and their rejection letter is ILM. Think you're the first person that volunteered to work for free and got rejected from ILM.

[00:13:17] Vicki Dobbs Beck: I know, nobody could believe it.

[00:13:19] Rob Bredow: How did you get your foot in the door at ILM after that summer?

[00:13:23] Vicki Dobbs Beck: So. Um, I actually had my foot in the door before summer, um, but it was, that was when I thought I did want to try to pursue, those nightmare interviews with McKinsey and Bain happened quite a few months before summer, because that's the way the cycle goes on campus. Um, so I had a number of months between those interviews and summer to try to land something. And I actually saw an article in the Stanford Daily, um, about Walt Conti, who did the, um, he did, I think, the whales in one of the Star Trek movies at ILM. And I was like, okay. He went to Stanford a year ahead of me because I also went undergrad.

And I was like, I have to know someone who, you know, we must know someone in common. So I sort of networked my way, um, through that. And eventually, Walt got me to Rose Degnan. And, um, Rose was the one that I offered to work for free. Um, and who turned me down. But she later was the one who hired me, for a full time job.

[00:14:34] Rob Bredow: That's great. So what was your very first job inside of ILM or Lucasfilm?

[00:14:39] Vicki Dobbs Beck: It's actually kind of funny, I was a marketing assistant, and I walked in the door and Rose said, um, Do you know anything about, um, writing or doing a marketing plan. And I said, Well, I do. I just graduated from business school, but I don't really know anything about this industry. And I said, Do you have a business plan?

And she sort of looked at me blankly. And I said, Well, you know, something where it's like got the trends and the competition and, you know, five years of financial estimates, etc. And she said, No, we don't have that. And I said, I'll tell you what. You tell me who to interview, and I will interview them, and I will write a first draft of a business plan, and even if I'm 100 percent wrong, at least it's something for people to react to.

and, so that's what I did. So apparently I wrote the first, um, ILM's

[00:15:30] Rob Bredow: ILM business plan, right out of Stanford Business School. That is awesome.

[00:15:35] Vicki Dobbs Beck: But then the company, then Lucasfilm started moving me around the company because there were a lot of startup activities happening at that time. And the way Lucasfilm did it back in those days is they just started by doing it. And so I was always like running behind trying to figure out whether these businesses were sustainable.

[00:15:54] Rob Bredow: you were making business plans for businesses that already got the green light because it was George's company, George, George Lucas could just start whatever he wanted, right?

[00:16:01] Vicki Dobbs Beck: That's right. And then they just wanted to know whether it was sustainable. And, you know, we did some really amazing early, um, immersive location based, um, experiences with the Evan Sutherland's, you know, flight simulators and that kind of thing. So as with a lot of things at Lucasfilm um, and a lot of things in my career, uh, we were quite a bit ahead of our time.

[00:16:24] Rob Bredow: yeah. So what were some of those, this would have been a little more than 30 years ago. This is pre Pixar splitting off from ILM, I imagine. These are some of the businesses that have now grown into giant things or, or ceased to exist under Lucasfilm. What are some of these businesses that we have or haven't heard of that you were writing business plans for?

[00:16:45] Vicki Dobbs Beck: Yeah, well, I think the one that was my. My absolute favorite, um, and really did change the trajectory of my career was Lucasfilm Learning. It was a small team that, um, rolled up into the person, uh, Steve Arnold, who ran, um, Lucasfilm games. This was even before it was called LucasArts games. And, um, Lucasfilm Learning was doing some really innovative pioneering work, uh, in educational multimedia.

So we were working at the intersection of storytelling, high fidelity, um, visuals and sound, uh, interactivity, and, of course, with an educational lens. Back then, you did it with a computer driven laser disc player. So this is even pre CD ROM.

[00:17:34] Rob Bredow: That's Amazing.

[00:17:35] Vicki Dobbs Beck: And, but these were really, these were story driven, um, multidisciplinary experiences.

There was one, my favorite was called, Paul Park Ranger and the Mystery of the Disappearing Ducks. Um, but it was, And it, which is actually, in retrospect, a perfect analog to VR. Um, but, but back then, obviously, it was on a 2D screen. And it just transformed me. I was so taken with how powerful this kind of storytelling and this kind of learning could be.

But it was virtually impossible to make it a for profit business. And I tried a whole bunch of other things, you know, setting it up as a nonprofit, getting social venture capital, all kinds of things, but we could not figure out how to, um, how to make that work. And so in the end I had to, um, to shut down. That division, and we rolled what we could into Lucasfilm Games, and then I was still so taken with both transmedia storytelling and then this, this interactive storytelling that I actually left the company for four years, um, did independent consulting.

Ironically, I worked at Disney for, on a long term contract for about 18 months and, uh, then came back to ILM.

[00:18:55] Rob Bredow: Wait, before we go too much further, I want to go back to the ducks and make sure people are getting a sense of, um, how this was made because you described it being on Laserdisc and if I, I'm guessing here a little bit, but the, I think it was a little bit like the Dragon's Lair video game that some people may have seen.

This is like, I don't know if it's choose your own adventure, you tell us, but it, you were using Laserdisc so you could skip to different parts of the video to tell different parts of the story interactively, right?

[00:19:21] Vicki Dobbs Beck: Exactly. So actually, there's something that's really interesting even about how this was created. It was initially a prototype, and, uh, we had a high school design team who was paired with a professional design team, and they were creating a prototype, um, for, uh, life sciences. interactive experience for middle school.

So, who better to know what middle schoolers would like than those who had just been in middle school? And they were actually the ones that came up with the character of Paul Park Ranger and the idea of a mystery. So, the actual experience is you arrive at Paul's cabin and he's gone off to solve some other environmental mystery.

And now you're in Paul's cabin and it's a very literal interface. So, you know, you can click on the video player and, um, and select video and it, you know, it launches. off the laser disc, um, you could open the file drawer and pull out files and then there would be information. So what you were supposed to do is help Paul solve this environmental mystery.

Why are the ducks disappearing? And there was actually no right or wrong answer. The whole goal was, um, for kids to develop a hypothesis about why this was happening and then, and then support it. Um, which is another idea I love, that sort of critical thinking, again, multidisciplinary, uh, facet.

So, I said that it was sort of an analog to VR because You know, now in VR, we can put people in an environment, so we could be in Paul's cabin, we could have accessed all of that information, had that, those same kinds of, um, interplay, but doing it in VR, so, and we were actually working with almost all the projects we had done back then were in partnership with a content owner, so in this case it was Audubon Society, so that's where the content came from, the, the video content.

[00:21:21] Rob Bredow: And in that era. Like, a random access video was not something that was universally thought of as achievable. I mean, this is the same era where EditDroid is being prototyped with an array of Laserdiscs so you can non linearly edit a movie before that was possible, because the Alternative, before that was literally cutting film, cutting negative or cutting work print to make your, to make your film.

So this is, this is early days of interactivity, early days of multimedia, uh, transmedia was literally a brand new term at the time.

[00:21:53] Vicki Dobbs Beck: Yeah, no, it was, I mean, the hard part about it, honestly, is it was a clunky set up, you know, it was, you had a large computer, you had a laser disk player, you had to connect, um, everything, and, we just couldn't expect schools to be able to set up and support that kind of what was quite a difficult technology set up, I used to, actually go around and speak about this and, since I was, most often, traveling by myself, all the cords that I had to do to do the setup were color coded so that I made sure that I could actually, you know, get the right cord in the right place in order to be able to do that.

[00:22:32] Rob Bredow: That's a heavy checked bag with a full size laser disc player and a computer from that era.

[00:22:36] Vicki Dobbs Beck: Oh yeah,

[00:22:37] Immersive Topics

[00:22:37] Rob Bredow: But this is really interesting. Your career has continued to be on the cutting edge, even though the hardware has gotten smaller and now it fits in a headset that fits on your face. But it's always been breaking technology, brand new, late breaking technology that you've been working on storytelling that's been a consistent part of your career for the last more than 30 years.

[00:22:58] Vicki Dobbs Beck: it absolutely has. And for a while there I was, um, when I came back to ILM,I was doing more traditional kinds of roles in, um, in strategy operations, et cetera. But I was always waiting for that convergence of the technology so that we could get the high, high quality visuals that we were seeking, but we could do it in real time and it could be interactive.

Uh, and so that was, when ADG first formed, which was sort of a rebel unit that was a mix of, um, people from the games team and ILM. Uh, at the time, Kim Libreri, um, who's now CTO of, um, Epic, was there and I was quite inspired by his vision and, um, and we both believed that, Real time technology was going to transform entertainment and that's when I started to feel like based on some of the stuff that we were seeing and things you were involved with like trials on Tatooine and even Droids on Tatooine prior to that on the iPad, I started to believe that, like, The time is now, um, after all these years.

So the funny thing about, you know, my career has been timing is everything. And I haven't always had the right timing because what I was doing back in the Lucasfilm learning days, like I said, was about 30 years ahead of its time.

[00:24:25] Rob Bredow: Before it's time. But when I joined almost 11 years ago, um, I think I had been in the building for, uh, 14 minutes before you were in my office, because you, I think you, you, you found, you found me early, and you knew that I had been a CTO somewhere else, and Kim had introduced us, I think, early on in my interview process, and, um, I thought I was coming in to be a visual effects supervisor, and I think 10 minutes later, uh, you had drafted me to help run ADG, and then we, I think, I mean, you had a vision for making a production, like create a production unit, and we started what, what became known as ILMxLAB together in those early days.

That was such a fun time.

[00:25:04] Vicki Dobbs Beck: It was funny, I literally just about kidnapped you because, um, I, you know, because Kim was leaving to go to, um, to go to EPIC, and I so believed in this vision and the potential, but it needed, you know, it needed a leader, and it needed someone who appreciated and understood that, and, and I was like, hey, Rob, I hear you're really interested in, like, cutting edge technology, let me tell you what we're doing, and, The rest is history.

[00:25:35] Rob Bredow: Well, I mean, walking downstairs, so you mentioned that original droids in the desert test, but most people haven't gotten to see that. You, like you say, you kidnapped me, but it was like, hey, you want to go downstairs and see some cool stuff? And we walked across the campus and on an iPad, there was what looked like a cinematic.

It looked like a movie of, of. R2 and 3PO having experience in the desert, running from stormtroopers, um, getting to see a hologram of Leia, giving them a mission. It was a simple story, but it was a very clear story, and it was close enough to photoreal that someone who wasn't doing computer graphics as a full time job probably thought it was photographed. And then, on that same iPad, you could hit pause and swing the camera around with a single finger, and you could look at the scene from any angle, you could change the lighting, you could change the weather, and all of a sudden, you were realizing you were looking at a game, but it didn't feel like a game.

It felt like live cinema, and that was that, that was a game changer.

[00:26:35] Vicki Dobbs Beck: It was, and I think one of the things that was so magical for me is that, um, You were literally in a living world, and there were three intersecting storylines unfolding. But you were making a choice, well, initially in the cut, of course, a director made the decisions about what you were seeing and what you weren't.

But once you were inside that living world, you could go wherever you wanted. And you would, you could see, things that weren't shown in the cut scene. But on the other hand, you're therefore not seeing what's happening on another timeline. One of the guys, Lutz Lata, um, had a DK2 and you know, this is pre, um, pre rift and, uh, VR headset.

And he. Since we had this whole environment that lived inside the, iPad, he basically created a VR experience where you were on a speeder bike, and you could go above the scene, and if you looked down, you would see these three intersecting storylines unfolding beneath you, and for me that was Just like eye opening and, and awe inspiring, because I saw so much potential in that idea of living worlds.

And of course, that was something that real time enabled. The funny thing is back then, um. I would say about 30 percent of the people that got on that speeder bike with the VR headset got sick. Um, so we used to have Dramamine in the, um, in the demo room, because those were early days and it was, you know, the frame rate wasn't quite where it needed to be in order for people not to get sick to their stomachs.

[00:28:15] Rob Bredow: Well, I remember we had an Imagineer up who rode it and they and it was actually I think it was Mark Mine who was like, oh, you know how to help people get sick less You just blow some fresh air on them Cool the temperature of the room down and you'll get like 70 80 percent of the people to get through this comfortably So the next time we went in there were some fans on the desk The room was a little cooler and you know, we could put more people through the demo without them walking out green

Which was good but I mean, this proved a few things.

I remember when you took me down there, first was like, impossible things are happening. Like, no, this had not been built anywhere else before. And, like, that whole experience was inside the iPad, but it wasn't actually on the iPad. It was being remotely rendered on another computer, streamed to the iPad in real time, but the latency was tight enough to where it felt like it existed on the iPad, and it existed in VR.

It was a connected story happening in multiple locations. And, it was a proof of concept that existed because of a force, the force of will, and it was, you know, I mean, Kim Libreri was absolutely driving that. I think you were involved in get, helping get that going, figuring out how to get that underway.

And I could start to see that in this place, proofs were being made of what the future was going to be like, and this was going to create new opportunities.

[00:29:24] Vicki Dobbs Beck: And the hard part is that, you know, , when somebody sees something that's inspiring like that, they want it to become real and commercializable right away. And the truth was, it was, again, it was supposed to be aspirational and pointing toward a North Star, but the technology and the cost structure, et cetera, at the time was cost prohibitive.

[00:29:46] Rob Bredow: you had to have a 2, 500 computer and a 1, 000 or 1, 500 headset, and it just wasn't going to scale to millions of users right away.

[00:29:54] Vicki Dobbs Beck: But it's still, I feel like, throughout my career and throughout ILM's history, we have always tried to be ahead of that curve and pointing toward the future, and I think that's such an important part of who we are.

[00:30:10] Rob Bredow: I remember we were side by side during certainly my learning experience, maybe yours too, because I was excited about building the next prototype, seeing that I'm like, Oh, this is, we got a crack team of amazing artists and engineers who are working side by side to create the future. Um, wouldn't it be fun to take Lutz's speeder bike experience and like.

Let's go for it. We were doing episode seven at the time. Like, let's race across Batuu. Let's take a moment from the film, see it from a different perspective. Try to get something out there. And I remember we walked into a pitch with Kathy Kennedy. And this was, you know, early in our relationship, in my relationship with Kathy, so I think yours as well. And um, she's like, I, we did, we had some beautiful artwork. We did what we thought was a great pitch. But like, she looks, she gets pitches. All the time from like world class storytellers and movie makers and it just wasn't a pitch that landed and she's like, I don't know I don't think that's worth Investing in like just riding a speeder bike like that sounds like a ride It doesn't sound like a story like I just remember walking out of there with our heads hanging like how are we gonna get another one of these green lit? And then I don't know whose idea it was. We decided we just needed to build a little piece of it to show what it would feel like and that was the Falcon test, right?

[00:31:25] Vicki Dobbs Beck: Yeah, and that's been true of Literally everything that we've done, it's, you know, talk about show, don't tell, um, you really have to put people inside the headset, um, which is not always an easy thing to do because, you know, some people feel uncomfortable, but, it is pretty mind blowing when you're inside the headset, but you have to, um, give people that experience.

If you show them concept art, et cetera, it just doesn't begin to capture, um, how emotionally impactful the experience can be.

[00:31:58] Rob Bredow: That first test, which we had, we took the real Millennium Falcon model from Episode 7. We got it working in real time, which was a feat, you know, 11 years ago. Um, we, we set up a little stage on Tatooine, um, and took the latest headset that you could stand and walk around a room. And then we made the sneaky call over to Sky Sound, like could you help us out with some speakers?

And when you make the call to Sky Sound for some speakers, they deliver. I think there were 200, 300 pounds of speakers on each corner of the room. When, and the story was, the Millennium Falcon was just going to come and land really close to you. So you would get that feeling. And Sky Sound delivered on the sound of the Falcon landing so much that the whole building shook. As the Falcon was coming in. And um, we all thought it was pretty cool. And we got Kathy to come down and put the headset on. And landed the Falcon nearly on her head. Uh, with, and you didn't have to wear headphones because it was in the whole room. Everybody could hear the Falcon coming in. And um, yeah, standing under the Millennium Falcon was pretty impressive.

[00:33:02] Vicki Dobbs Beck: it was indeed. And then you use the fan to great effect on

that one, too. So that the fan was on the person in the headset, which, of course, they couldn't see you holding the fan. And so you got this sense of of wind and activity

[00:33:17] Rob Bredow: extra touch of immersion really

went a long way to making you feel like, well, the falcon just really landed

five feet from you. Um, and I remember Kathy, because we, you know, this was our second big pitch to Kathy. And I remember Kathy took her headset off and she's like, That's what I'm talking about. Yes. This is what you should do. And then, um, I was on a trip in Europe and I woke up in the middle of the night, jet lagged, and I had this idea for the little Trials on Tatooine story, which is a very simple story with Han and Chewie in the cockpit and you working with a, with a droid, with R2, down below to fix the Falcon and some stormtroopers attack and I remember just like in one morning writing up that first draft of that script, I think I sent it off to you and go like, could this be the thing that, that after the Falcon lands that we actually do? And uh, boy, over the next few months we made that piece.

[00:34:04] Vicki Dobbs Beck: Well, and if you'll remember, one of the things we learned is, especially at that time, you know, VR was so new and it was so like, Your senses are almost overwhelmed that we actually had to cut out a lot of dialogue and that turned, that was true also with Vader Immortal and our other experiences is that you can't assume that you can have the same amount of dialogue that you have in a film, for example, um, because there's so much other sensory experience happening around you.

Sometimes you won't even hear, you won't even hear the, um, the dialogue.

[00:34:43] Rob Bredow: It was such a smart note. Uh, it was Kiri Hart who came down and gave me a line by line edit of my precious dialogue and I was so proud of it because I thought it sounded so much like Han Solo when he was talking to you and it felt so experiential but she struck every, so the way the experience works is it's Han and Chewie in the cockpit but you're below the falcon, right?

So you're hearing them over comms which is a fun concept in VR. And you're down there with a robot. And Kiri very smartly struck every line where they were talking to each other. Cause there were things happening in the cockpit. Um, but she realized that the experience was about you having your experience.

So she struck every line that wasn't directed at you and then left dead air. And I was directing the piece and I had I was thinking of it from a movie editing sensibility. I was cutting out all the dead air, because it seemed like it was, it's not the way you cut a movie. And she wisely said, do a version where you leave the dead air in, let you experience more of it, and get rid of everything where they're talking about this imaginary space that you can't see. Well, this was early days in VR. You're already imagining that you're standing under a falcon. And then to go one more layer deep of inception and imagine the virtual Han and Chewie in the cockpit that you can't see was a lot to ask someone who wasn't experienced in VR. And, uh, to Kiri's credit, Kiri's a genius. Uh, we took those out and I remember trying it the next morning and everyone went, Oh, it's like ten times better.

[00:36:05] Vicki Dobbs Beck: yep,

[00:36:06] Rob Bredow: so fun to get to work on some of those early experiences together, but that's not where it stopped. That was actually the very beginning. That's when we decided it's time to hang a shingle. It's time to have a brand, which was an experimental brand that we thought maybe would last, I think we said three or five years. And here we were 10 years later, um, merging it completely into ILM or most recently. But I mean, that was just hit, you hit the ground running after that with a team and making these immersive experiences,

[00:36:30] Vicki Dobbs Beck: Well, I think Trials on Tattooine was such a solid start. Um, we learned so much from that. It gave us confidence. Um, and it was something to show people that we're thinking about this new medium. And one of them was, uh, was Alejandro Inarritu, and, uh, he had this vision for a piece that ultimately was called Carne y Arena.

Uh, it was about a group of, um, immigrants crossing the border from Mexico into the United States and getting caught. Um, and the great thing about Alejandro and this piece is he had seen trials on Tatooine, and we had also done some tests to sort of show him what this could be like. And He envisioned that piece as what I would call the VR first.

So it was never conceived as a short film or in any other format. It was really intended to be in VR. And I really believe that that is why it was so impactful. But all of us had to learn, you know, new ways to to work. In order to take direction from Alejandro, for example, um, he had that recognition that Unlike films where he controls the camera You can't control the camera in VR the the person with the headset on becomes in effect the camera And so you can't Um, control where they look and you can't, um, control where they go, but you can guide them as best you can.

So, you know, you can use sound, you can use, um, triggers, you can use light and another, um, another means in order to help. sort of try to push people in the direction you'd like them to go. But it also means that the experience itself has to be conceived holistically. Um, and we, uh, we developed sort of methods so that we could see what Alejandro was seeing and, uh, in the headset and that we could then, you know, translate that back into, into the real time environment.

We did this, this little computer graphics or computer simulation where we tracked where the characters were in the story and where the people who visited went. and literally everybody was looking everywhere. And that's exactly what you have to be prepared for. Um, when, you know, when you design for VR, but it was.

The story itself, the scene, um, the characters were so powerful that it was only six and a half minutes. Um, it was the centerpiece of a museum installation, but it was only six and a half minutes. But it created a sort of extraordinary emotional impact, uh, on people.

[00:39:28] Rob Bredow: Well, and it was a centerpiece of a much longer experience, right? Because there was a, a 10, you had to get ready to do

it. Uh, you were wearing a, a physical backpack, which was a perfect, um, a perfect comp for putting you in a situation where you were gonna be journeying through a desert. Um, I think. At least in that original installation, they installed sand on the floor, and you were barefoot so you actually felt like you were walking across the desert.

As you're in your headset, you're seeing the desert and you're feeling it. The photos from the installation were incredibly beautiful because it's this beautiful orange line of light. So even if you're not in the experience and you're just watching people go through it, it's a beautiful installation because it can only handle so many, uh, guests per hour.

It's a relatively limited number of people that can get through there. But then afterwards, I think there was a beginning or ending with a different temperature experience?

[00:40:20] Vicki Dobbs Beck: The beginning was very cold, and there was a locker room with lots of, um, shoes, discarded shoes, and essentially what I believe happens is that when they take people into custody, they take their shoes so that they can't run. Uh, so you go in and you leave your shoes there also. Then you go into this huge room, it was 50 by 50.

Um, uh, so you're barefoot, there's sand. It's also quite cold there. It's like, it's like the desert at, you know, at late at night or early, early, early in the morning and, uh, and then you do the VR experience. And then when you come out of that experience, um, the sort of post show, if you will, is all of the

people who had actually played the different parts, you know, with, with motion capture and so forth. They were all truly, um, immigrants who had, who had crossed the border and their individual stories were, um, were in sort of a photo display at the end. Um, the really, like, kind of culmination of the experience was,This scene was unfolding around you and you could go wherever you wanted, but, um, for the most part, you sort of thought you were watching a scene unfolding around you, um, that you didn't really have a role in this, except as an observer, and at the very end, the border patrol looks directly at you, because we can track the eyes, and, you know, puts his gun up and says, you, get down on your knees, And at that moment, you realize, well, you're not sure, actually, some people like look behind them.

And, you know, there was no one there. Some people immediately dropped to their knees. But it was really powerful. And the last, um, you know, sort of profile, if you will, in the post show was the Border Patrol and even the empathy that they felt for, um, the people's plight. And, it's an experience that we have since, essentially, Used more modern technology so we could use a smaller footprint and, uh, so forth, but it has traveled to other cities, um, over the years, and I think they continue, they're hoping to continue to travel it.

[00:42:41] Rob Bredow: It's such a powerful experience and, um, you know, we weren't the only ones who appreciated getting to work on it and experience it. It won a special, um, Oscar, which is very unusual. It wasn't the previous one to that, um, Toy Story. I mean, yeah, so it went from Toy Story to Carne Arena that we created with, with that team, which was an incredible honor,

[00:43:01] Vicki Dobbs Beck: Oh, I'll tell you one funny thing, because at the very beginning, Again, remember, this is super early in that whole process, and I remember sitting around a table, with Alejandro, and Tim Alexander was the, lead creative on our side, and, and Alejandro asked Tim, like, okay, so how many photoreal characters, um, can we have in this, and Tim's like, One, maybe two.

And of course, Alejandro never takes a no for an answer. And in the final, in the final experience, I think that there were something like 15 characters, a dog, a truck. I mean, there was, it was, it, it exceeded a helicopter. It, yeah, exactly. It exceeded our expectations of what was possible by probably five times.

[00:43:54] Rob Bredow: Yeah, it was incredibly visually ambitious. Um, and he was the perfect person to push us on that.

That's such a great story. And I love that combination of tech and creativity, which has certainly been your experience, but also just a common thread through ILM's history.

so we should, I don't want to run out of time without talking about some of the other experiences.

Secrets of the Empire was so much fun getting to do a location based experience. What are, what's a fun story from Secrets that, that sticks with you today, uh, Vicki?

[00:44:23] Vicki Dobbs Beck: Well I guess I would say that, um, first of all, what it is, it was a location based experience. It's called hyper reality. What hyper reality means is, you know, you're in the headset with three of your friends. There's four of you. Um, when you look at one another, you look like storm troopers. And when you go through the experience where there is a wall in the virtual world, if you reach out and touch it, there's actually a physical wall.

And that one to one mapping makes your brain completely buy into that reality. Um, so it was, it was powerful in that way. We were also able to, because we controlled the environment, introduce, um, you know, heat, um, in this case, because it was on Mustafar, it was, uh, hot, smells, um, like what sulfur would smell like, um, or what you would imagine Mustafar would, would smell like, and so forth. Um, Well, I think one of the nice stories, if you will, is Diego Luna, who does, you know, Cassian, he does an opening introductory video. We had to shoot that toward the very end of our production cycle. Um, it's a key piece that, that sort of sets up the entire experience, and then you put your headset on, you go through the, um, through the experience.

But, uh, we were supposed to shoot with him, and there was a huge, um, earthquake in, in Mexico, and he wanted to be in Mexico too, to help however he could. We weren't able to shoot it at that time and we were sort of running out of time because it was supposed to open. But he agreed to have us, um, do the shoot in, in Mexico City.

And, uh, he was always a huge fan and, and just a lovely human being throughout. So, that was, you know, one of those things where life doesn't go as you plan it. But, um, but it, it can work out in the end.

[00:46:19] Rob Bredow: That's great. That experience was so much fun, getting to do a multiplayer experience with your friends and seeing each other disguised as stormtroopers, getting to invade the empire, getting to walk through this castle on Mustafar was a pretty amazing experience.

[00:46:38] Vicki Dobbs Beck: The one thing that I really learned from that is, is that, um, it is transporting. And there was a, the first day that, um, it opened at Downtown Disney, there was a group that came through and, uh, there was a young woman with her three friends and she was in a wheelchair. And, uh, At the end of the experience, she took off her headset and she was crying.

And, of course, everybody was, you know, concerned and she said, No, you don't understand. I may have looked like a stormtrooper, but for the first time, I got to walk with my friends.

[00:47:13] Rob Bredow: Hmm. That's amazing. And I know that's been a priority, um, especially within some members of the team and the Immersive team, is to allow for accessibility, and that was conceived from the very beginning, but no one knew how impactful that was going to be for someone who is able to access this in a wheelchair, but then represented as a stormtrooper standing there. I think probably a short stormtrooper because it was all measured by head height. But, um, what a great experience. I love that.

Well, let's talk about a couple of experiences that people can have today. Um, Vader Immortal is probably the most Popular VR experience that we've ever shipped out of ILM. Um, talk a little bit about how that one got going, because that was another one, which was a pitch to Kathy.

It was finding the right creative. It was the first time anybody had been audacious enough to try to do a two hour VR experience. I mean, this was very ambitious.

[00:48:07] Vicki Dobbs Beck: Yeah, it was considered, you know, in our minds, episodic VR storytelling, and so we envisioned it as, um, three episodes. But when we first started, we were actually doing development on it while we were working on, um, Secrets of the Empire. And for about a year, um, we were sort of approaching it like one would a film.

And, uh, It was this notion that the story is unfolding around you and you're sort of a ghost. And about a year into it, we're just, we were realizing that we're not taking advantage of the power of VR or real time. Um, and we did a very major pivot, which was a scary thing to do at that, at that moment in time.

[00:48:54] Rob Bredow: And this was, I mean, David Goyer had been writing with you and the team for a while, right?

[00:48:59] Vicki Dobbs Beck: Yep, but I think it was because so many of the people had come from a film background. This was just sort of the natural extension, including David, even though he'd worked in the, um, worked in the games world. But once we sort of had that aha moment, like this has to be your story, and then, you know, the unfolding relationship with Vader becomes the journey.

But, we knew the key to this pivot was that you had to be able to establish a connection with a character in VR. And so we, once again, we did a test and essentially the test is in the final product, but you're in a cell and the door opens and, um, Vader is in the doorway and then he walks towards you and it's, you know, the heavy footfalls and deep breathing and so forth.

And he comes up right up to you and, um, looks you directly in the eyes. And it is so overwhelming, um, David had actually written some lines of dialogue that Vader delivers, and almost no one heard it, because they were just so overwhelmed by his presence, by his size, by being in a room with him, but it completely confirmed for us that you can actually establish a connection with a character in VR, and so that was really the key to the, uh, experience.

[00:50:20] Rob Bredow: If you haven't gotten a chance to try Vader Immortal, it is, um, where can people play it today? Where can people experience that? And it's even in the very first chapter that you get that first moment, right, Vicky?

[00:50:31] Vicki Dobbs Beck: Yeah, Exactly. And it's on the Meta Quest, uh, store. And it's also, um, I think you can still get it on PSVR, uh, as well.

[00:50:42] Rob Bredow: Great. Yeah, that is quite an experience. And even if you just do the first chapter, you get quite an experience. But if you do all three, it's nearly two hours

of experience all the way through. And there's a lot of fantastic writing, storytelling, seeing things in the lore. For Star Wars fans, it's really fun.

But even if you're a casual Star Wars fan, I think getting that first person experience in these giant environments, it's a really great, um, way to experience a new place.

[00:51:08] Vicki Dobbs Beck: Yep.

[00:51:08] Jenny Ely: It's so fun to watch someone do that experience. I mean, when we would do demos of Vader Immortal, for people like you said, that Darth Vader scene's very early on. Just, you don't even see what they're seeing, but you know what scene it is, because almost everybody takes a step back, or takes a swing. I mean, it's, you can just tell how impactful it is and how real it feels.

That's, that's one of my favorite moments to watch people experience, is that Vader moment in Vader Immortal.

[00:51:32] Vicki Dobbs Beck: And of course you get to wield a lightsaber. Who doesn't love doing that?

[00:51:36] Rob Bredow: That's right, that dojo, that lightsaber dojo is super, super fun. Well, um, for the sake of time, we'll skip a little bit over Star Wars Tales from Galaxy's Edge, which is a really great story and kind of gaming experience. It's got both mixed in, a lot of fun. And also available still, but, um, we should skip to What If, because it's been recognized now with a couple of awards.

It's, uh, was certainly as ambitious as any of the things we've been talking about on a brand new platform. Um, talk a little bit about getting that one underway. It was a crazy story.

[00:52:08] Vicki Dobbs Beck: It is a crazy story. So What If an Immersive story is actually, designed for the Apple Vision Pro, but it is tied to a Disney plus streaming series called what if, um, within the Marvel universe and, you know, the conceit is basically, well, what if, you know, um, Iron Man was bad or something, you know, whatever.

Um, it's all those kinds of speculative stories and, and in the multiverse. So. It was really the perfect I. P. for our first foray into mixed reality. So in mixed reality, um, that term has evolved a little bit over time. But in today's use, it means you're able to fluidly go between VR, full VR, where you're fully in an environment, to AR, so it's, you know, digital imagery in your world, but you see your, you know, your living room around it.

Um, Marvel can exist in our world, and because it was this idea of a multiverse and so forth, what we decided to do was make you the hero. And it was more than anything, it was like an interactive, um, episode. So, Apple Vision Pro was in development. We knew at a high level what kind, you know, what its capabilities were going, uh, were going to be.

But it was a brand new, um, very groundbreaking platform. And so we had to do a lot of development,sort of simulating what we thought it was going to be like. And, that's a challenging development process. We had had to do the same thing on Vader Immortal because, uh, we were actually a launch title for Meta's first Quest platform, which was a tetherless platform, and of course that's why the Lightsaber was so powerful.

So, what if it is about a one hour experience, and,I think, sort of broke boundaries in so many different directions, but one of the things that I think was really, um, sort of magical about that experience was it starts out with the watcher coming into your living room. And even the opening, um, sequence with the Marvel Studios logo is, you're like, wow, okay, this is something new and different.

I haven't ever experienced Marvel in this way.

[00:54:35] Rob Bredow: I love the fact that the fidelity on the device is fantastic. And then there's a style to What If. It's based on the same style that we've seen in the TV series, the animated TV series. It's beautiful, but it's 3D, in your world, which you haven't gotten to see before. And then, um, there's no game controller, right? So that required a whole bunch of innovation in terms of the interaction models. But it's very satisfying to be able to, uh, do the magic, to be able to project into these spaces and interact. Um, in a game-like way, but using mechanics that you've seen other superheroes do, it is, uh, it is very, very satisfying.

And, uh, Apple recognized it recently with a very nice, uh, award.

[00:55:15] Vicki Dobbs Beck: Yes, it was the app of the year award for the Apple Vision Pro.

[00:55:21] Rob Bredow: Which is the inaugural year they've done that. And, um, boy, that's some, that's some stiff competition. So to get that kind of recognition and it was really breaking new ground. In fact, I remember up until days leading up to the release, like they were still evolving their API and we were doing a lot of things that I think were unexpected. So there was always, uh, there was a rapid back and forth and, and workarounds to try to make sure that. Experience could ship at the quality that it did, which was amazing. The team really pulled through again.

Well, this has been super fun. I can't believe we're already at time, Vicki. I feel like it's been 15 minutes, but we're up against our time.

[00:55:58] The Martini

[00:55:58] Rob Bredow: We need to move on to our martini. Why don't I kick it over to Jenny, and you can get us started.

[00:56:03] Jenny Ely: Okay. My martini this week is a bag. It's called Soolla. It's S O O L L A. And I believe it was actually designed to be an art bag, specifically for potters. So it's an open top structured bag. It's just a rectangle, but it has so many pockets around the sides for what I assume are pottery tools that, You know, people who go from studio to home carry with them, but it also has, um, some other little interesting pockets inside and out.

And then it's just an open bag that you can put your supplies in. I don't do pottery, but I do carry things around my house, like books and journals and notebooks and highlighters and markers and things. So I am now addicted to this thing. I carry it all over my house. I have every highlighter, marker, pen that I own, pencil sharpener, stickers, journal.

I usually read two or three books at a time, comic books, and I can just take it to whatever room I'm in in my house. So, I highly recommend this thing. It's very versatile. I think you could use it for anything. Um, you know, paint supplies, pottery, whatever. So, I'll link it in the show notes. You can get it.

It's canvas. It comes in a ton of different colors. But it's very versatile and almost the perfect bag, which is quite an accomplishment for

me, so. That's my martini this week.

[00:57:14] Rob Bredow: Great. And Vickie, did you bring us some martini?

[00:57:17] Vicki Dobbs Beck: Sure. Well, my martini is I've been experimenting at home with some AI tools and mostly becauseI'm not an animator, I'm not an artist, et cetera, by training. Um, but it has enabled me to do stuff for my grandson that is really fun. He had his fourth birthday and so I used Act one in Runway, I, I, um, he had a spaceship theme.

So, I basically used, uh, Imogen to generate images of, um, for my husband as, uh, a spaceship captain and me as also as a spaceship captain in a different spaceship. And then we used Act 1 and we recorded birthday messages, um, to him through these, you know, using these animated characters. And it was like, so empowering.

And it took about, probably, a total of 30 minutes to do it. But, um, he just, I don't think he even knew what to think about. You know, it's like, isn't that Granddad and Mimi? But they look like spaceship captains! And animated characters!

[00:58:24] Rob Bredow: That is so fun, Vicki. Why does that not surprise me? That your, your grandson's getting animated videos, uh, using AI from, Vicki. That is perfectly on brand. I love it. That's great. That is a perfect martini.

And, uh, since I'm going to do mine and then we're going to do our closing, I just wanted to thank you, Vicki, for coming on the Lighter Darker podcast. It's so fun to have you here. The work that you and the team have done on our immersive projects has been amazing and the immersive team is continuing to do, I mean, if we had more time, we could talk about all the things that are underway right now, some of which are incredible secrets so we couldn't talk about. That team is continuing to have such a big impact on ILM and in a future episode, we plan to talk about some of the immersive music experiences that are overlapping with these, uh, immersive virtual reality experiences that we mostly focused on today. But there's, there's a lot of overlap in these real time tools, uh, and you've heard us talk about stagecraft in the past as well. So there's, these teams have had a huge impact on the company. So very fun to get to talk to you about, uh, at least a little

[00:59:25] Vicki Dobbs Beck: much.

[00:59:25] Rob Bredow: world today.

Um, my martini, I'm gonna call out a camera, the Fujifilm X100, uh, 6, it goes by VI, uses Roman numerals. It is compact. Um, not full size CCD, but two thirds size CCD, so good quality CCD with a nice lens on it. Um, what I really like about this camera is the form factor is great. Not only is it small, but all the controls are physical controls, so there's knobs for everything. You can use the menus if you want, but if you like controlling a camera as if it was, uh, all analog controls, you can do all that. So just with one glance down, once you get used to where everything is, you can see exactly how it's configured. Um, so you don't even have to dive into the menu if you want to make sure your settings are right. I, I took a trip with my wife to Cambodia, which is why I missed the John Knoll episode, but I, but it was a great episode. So thank you, uh, Todd and Jenny for doing that and hosting it with John. It was great. Um, And while I was in Cambodia, I used it a good chunk of the time because it's so nice and portable and got some really nice photos with it. The other thing that it does beautifully is it has some film looks built into it.

So if you want to shoot JPEGs straight out of the camera with some very pleasing and not too overdone film looks, um, it has some nice looks. So all the Fuji color science is very. Pleasing to my eyes. So, uh, that camera is getting a little easier to get ahold of. Uh, it's not a super cheap camera, but if you're into photography, it might be something that changes.

You know, I take different photos, uh, with that camera that I do with my Sony. Uh, I like both of them. I like both my kids the same, but I do like the Fuji's portability and straight out of camera JPEGs quite a bit.

[01:01:03] Outro

[01:01:03] Rob Bredow: So thank everyone for joining us and listening to today's lighter, darker podcast.

[01:01:09] Jenny Ely: If you have a question for the show, or you would like to suggest a topic you would love to hear discussed in a future episode, please email us at lighterdarker@ILM.com. You can also contact us or follow us on social media. Our links are in the show notes, which you can find at ILM.com/LighterDarker, along with the transcripts.

If you like the show, like, and subscribe, leave us a comment on YouTube or review on Apple podcasts and let your friends know about the show. Thank you to Industrial Light and Magic for hosting the Lighter Darker podcast. The show is produced by Rob Bredow and myself, Jenny Ely, and today's episode has been edited by David Dovell.

And we want to thank ILM's PR team, led by Greg Grusby, who work behind the scenes to help make this happen. Thank you for listening to the Lighter Darker podcast, and until next time, may your pixels be both lighter and darker.