I love making movies.
Motion pictures have been in existence
for more than a hundred years.
Filmmaking hasn't changed for the dimensional mindset.
Placing the camera in a scene and pressing "record" hasn't changed.
Filmmaking is still a frontal experience,
and creating the film has the possibility
to follow the same direction of the content creation.
We still stand in front of a flat image
watching the fiction.
There's nothing wrong with it.
I love watching movies and going to the theaters.
The experiences can be such emotional experiences.
The arts and crafts of emotional experiences within a frame
can be so strong
to drive a stronger emotion.
The question we're asking is,
how the experience of motion pictures can exist beyond the flat screen?
How can we start creating content
for the next generation of content experiences?
Traditionally, when we imagine a scene,
we look at the frame and the composition.
We have to think about how we create depth and parallax
using foreground, background elements as the camera moves.
With the technology today and devices of VR glasses,
AR glasses, smart devices,
allowing three dimensional and full navigation in space,
we have the possibility to enable audiences
to experience content from multiple perspectives.
What we have to think about
is how we take this technology,
all the capabilities
enabling the experience to move farther away inside the scene.
Now, we're not talking about video games or computer-generated actors,
which looks tremendously realistic.
We're talking about real actors and real performance,
performing onstage.
We have to start thinking
how we capture the actors
and how we capture the real scene
in order to emerge inside.
Now, we're familiar with the 360-degree video,
where you place the camera inside the scene
and you can create this beautiful panoramic image all around you,
but from the same aspect,
filmmaking is still frontal.
In order to emerge fully inside the scene,
we will need to capture the light from all the possible directions.
We will have to surround the scene with an enormous amount of sensors,
with all possible capabilities to capture the light,
and enable us to emerge inside afterwards again.
Now, in this setup,
there's no more foreground or background
or a camera placed in space,
but hundreds of sensors
capturing the light
and capturing the motion from all the possible directions.
With the new technological advancements,
we can start looking at 3D photography,
capturing the light from multiple perspectives,
enabling us to reconstruct the object.
This is like photography in 3D space.
Now,
with these technological advancements,
we can record video
not just as a flat image
but as a volume.
This is what we call "volumetric video,"
and it is the capability to record every action of the scene
as a full three-dimensional volume.
Now, what is a voxel?
A voxel is like a three-dimensional pixel,
but instead of being a flat image square,
staying light and colored,
it's like a three-dimensional cube
in space,
with x, y, and z positions.
This enable us to create a full capture of the scene
from any perspective.
Now, this renders a fully light-immersive scene
from multiple perspectives.
This capability requires an insane amount of information to be processed.
We will have to capture the light from an enormous amount of cameras
to create this information.
Now, in order to do such a thing,
we would need a setup that would host a numerous amount of cameras
installed in a stage,
and a stage big enough in order to fit a full cinematic experience.
Now, that sounds like a crazy idea, but that's exactly what we did.
For the last three years,
we have been building a huge volumetric camera chamber.
It's 10,000 square feet of a stage,
enabling to capture the action from any location.
We have deployed hundreds of cameras,
sending a tremendous amount of information
to a huge data center
powered by the Intel supercomputers.
The ability to have this 10,000 feet
enables us to fit any kind of action,
any kind of performance.
It is the size of an average Broadway stage.
We call it Intel Studios