'Joker, Folie a Deux' & 'Daddio', PlatePros Founder, David Smith

0:08Jawad MirHello, everyone. This is your host, Jawad Mir at Kingdom of Dreams podcast. Welcome to another episode. Today, my guest is David Smith. I had him on the podcast a few weeks ago, where we talked about immersive visual effects. I have him back today. We talked about, Joker Two, as well as Daddio, and he showed some great visuals, in terms of relating... I… in terms of, in terms of showcasing what he does and what his company does, behind-the-scene photos, behind-the-scene videos, tied in with the actual footage of the film. I had a great time talking with him, and it was something really brand new and learning experience as to what kind of visual effects elements are ahead of us and are already here. So without further ado, here is my conversation with David Smith. How have you been?

0:59David SmithExcellent. Excellent. Things are good. We've been, actually immersively busy the last couple of months. Our business has really picked up, so that's been helpful.

1:08Jawad MirThat's amazing. That's awesome. Glad to hear. Any plans for upcoming Thanksgiving in a couple of days?

1:13David SmithActually just gonna be staying home and hanging with friends. And, originally, I was gonna be traveling to London to visit my wife. She's on a show over there right now. But we moved the trip up, so I actually visited her last week. And then…

1:28David Smith... We'll be... She'll be coming back here stateside for Christmas. So actually, I think she's been on your podcast before, Alicia. Alicia Robbins. So she shoots Bridgerton and…

1:37Jawad MirOh, she's your wife?

1:38David SmithYep.

1:39Jawad MirOh, wow. Oh, okay. Amazing. That's awesome. Yeah, I had a great time chatting with her, even though I had only seen, like, the most recent season of, Bridgerton. Yeah, that's amazing.

1:50David SmithYeah.

1:50Jawad MirGood to know.

1:52David SmithYeah, she's back on it now, so it's going well.

1:54Jawad MirHow is she otherwise? Doing well?

1:56David SmithYep, very well.

1:57Jawad MirGood. Good. Well, that's good to know, and it's good to have you back on the podcast. Really had a great time chatting with you last time.

2:05David SmithThanks.

2:05Jawad MirAnd, excited to chat about, Joker Two, and I think Presumed Innocent, if I'm not mistaken.

2:12David SmithYep. I've, I've brought... I have a couple of behind-the-scene stuff, from some other…

2:16Jawad MirAwesome

2:16David Smith... Projects too that we can talk about. So just deep dive into the weird and wacky world of what we do.

2:21Jawad MirYeah. No, you can, you can take the... You know, claim the whole thing, conversation. Just start with whatever you wanna start with. I mean, you can talk about Joker Two if you want.

2:31David SmithSure

2:32Jawad Mir... Like what was, what was your company's role in making the immersive environments in Joker Two? So I'll let you take the steer.

2:40David SmithSure. We... Yeah, we did Joker Two. We also did Joker One as well.

2:44Jawad MirYeah

2:44David Smith... And, it was really nice to be, kind of be able to revisit the same m… kind of crew, the same material, the same cast. It was a bit of a homecoming in that way, which was nice. But we basically created, all of the 360 degree, virtual environments for the driving sequences in the film. So when you see, the characters driving around in a car, mostly for the sake of Joker Two, it was when, Arthur Fleck is on his way to and from court from Arkham Asylum, so that kind of commute, which happens a few times in the film. We shot all of that, in a cold day in January, a couple years ago now, in New York, so New York doubling as Gotham. So we had... We were on the, on the production for, I think it was about three or four days, but we did a couple of months of R&D and development of the rig that we used for it in advance of that. So shooting some tests here in LA, and then developing a new, array system that we use for shooting those 360 plates.

3:50David SmithSo, actually, is it okay for the recording if we do some screen share? Is that, is that working?

3:55Jawad MirYeah.

3:56David SmithWe've got some…

3:56Jawad MirAbsolutely.

3:57David SmithSo this is just some clips that I grabbed from the trailer. I slowed them down a little bit so that we could talk about it a bit more. So what you're seeing here is us actually going into, some of the tunnels in New York. And everything that you see that isn't the interior of the car is our content. So the tunnel, the police cars, everything that's happening outside the car is, derived from the 360 plates that we shoot. So this is actually in Los Angeles. This is, on a Disney sound stage, in Burbank. And, so they have the car, the actors, the lighting, cameras. That's all present in the, on the sound stage. But what's actually being filmed is our plate on a giant LED wall. So that's Larry Sher in shadow there in the foreground. He's the DP of the film. So this is a curved LED wall. You can kinda see where this, where the wall ends and the ceiling begins, where there's a little bit of a color shift up here…

4:59David Smith... With the lighting. So that turns into this. So basically we have our plate playing in the background, and then the camera is filming the actor in the car. So that gives the illusion that you're actually driving, when in fact you're sitting on a sound stage, on the other side of the country from where that content was originally created. And so this is, this is the, us on the shoot. This is actually in, one of the New Jersey shoots. This is the rig that we use to film this kind of material with. So it's a,.. In this case, it was a 17-camera array. So there's two rows of eight cameras, and then a 17th camera that's looking straight up. And the reason for having so many cameras, the eight cameras is able to cover the world in 360, where we're able to see in every direction. So you can think of it like Google Street View on steroids. The second row of eight is there to let us get a second exposure.

6:00David SmithSo we're able to get a hot exposure from one array, and a much darker exposure from the second array. And the reason for that… was actually what we saw in this clip, if it's gonna let me jump through. Should. Where there's a section here where we're heading... This is actually under the UN building in New York.

6:24David SmithAnd we're looking across the river at sunrise. So on the virtual production stage, we needed to be able to expose for both the dark tunnel interior on some angles, and expose for the bright sun and sunrise on the other, so that when you cut into the shot, you have, detail in the tunnel, but you also still have detail outside. That would be way too difficult for a single camera system to be able to hold that kind of dynamic range. So we're able to create a high dynamic range, file, stitched file using that, these two rows of cameras. So all of that footage gets merged together into one big stitched file. So that stitched file ends up looking something like this. So you're…

7:16Jawad MirIt's almost like a 3D camera kind of view.

7:19David SmithYep. So this is actually, now has become the standard for creating VR video as well. So you can put a headset on and look around inside this, but we can also look around inside it on an LED screen. So what you're looking at here is what's called an equirectangular projection. So it's kind of like the world map when you were in junior high school, which is taking a sphere of content and stretching it out to make it look... To fit it onto a two-dimensional plane. So just like you see the world map where Antarctica looks all funky and the North Pole looks funky, that's ha… the same thing that's happening here. So when we take that footage and... Let's see if it's gonna let me do this. So you can take that footage and project it out onto an LED wall. So this is a wall also here in Culver City at Amazon. So this is that same plate that you just saw, but…

8:14David Smith... Reprojected onto the LED. And because it's a sphere, we're able to project it onto the LED where the geometry of the screen is corrected for in the projection. So it ends up looking, where it looked kind of warped and weird on this version, when you unwrap it, all of that geometry goes straight again and becomes correct. So when you're standing in the middle of the volume, you can look in any direction and it looks like you're really in the, in the actual place. So, and let me see if I can.

8:50Jawad MirThat's crazy. That's just, that's…

8:53David SmithAre you able to see?

8:54Jawad MirYeah.

8:54David SmithIs this working now? Is the Vimeo playing now?

8:56Jawad MirYeah, it's, it's, it's working, yeah. It says Vimeo Studios.

8:58David SmithSo this is our 360 player. So I'm now controlling this. If we... This is one of our stock plates that we sell as part of our library. But so the movement of the car is recorded in the plate, but the movement of the camera, and I'm putting finger quotes around camera, is actually me dragging my mouse right now. So I can look in any direction and see…

9:21Jawad MirWow

9:22David Smith... What's there. So all of that content exists in the footage. We can watch this guy as we go by him. So that's all in the plate. And what this means is now on set, the filmmaker is no longer limited by what angles they can shoot. You can now basically point the camera anywhere. And so that was the other part of what we'd helped with on Joker 2. At the end of the film, there's a... I don't know if I have that clip here. I don't think I do. But at the end of the film, we have, a se… a, essentially like a oner, an uncut sequence where, Arthur, after the, courthouse explodes, he, escapes in a car. And you have one shot that leads from the blown up section of Gotham. He gets in the car, and ultimately goes for a wild ride through the streets of Gotham, City. He's, like, on the floorboard of the car, and then stumbles out of the car at the end, and then goes for a run through the streets of Gotham.

10:25David SmithSo the crazy trick about that sequence, aside from the fact that there's a couple of very cleverly, hidden cuts within it, is when he's outside the street, he's actually running on a set where they had the explosion and the debris and everything. Inside the car is now on an LED sound stage for the drive, and then he pulls back out of the car actually onto, a street in downtown Los Angeles. So in that one uninterrupted shot, you're actually traveling through three completely different shoot days, three completely different sets in multiple states. And so the plate, and even when we're inside the LED, portion of it, that's actually comprised of three separate plates that were merged together. So when you're in the backseat of the car and the camera tips down to him on the floorboard, and then tips back up to the windows, in each of those moments that you're down on the floorboard, the plate actually changes to a different version.

11:27David SmithSo there's one version that we shot in New York. There's a CGI version that kind of bridges the, going from the tunnel into downtown. And then there's a third section, which another crew shot here in Los Angeles, that is the, bridges together with the downtown LA version of Gotham. So in that one seemingly uninterrupted shot, you have multiple shoot days of the physical production and multiple plates all being merged together into something that feels like one continuous moment. So it's, it's really kind of fun to be able to play with those, kind of the smoke and mirrors and the magic to make it feel like a world exists, that otherwise you wouldn't have access to.

12:12Jawad MirYeah, that's, that's crazy what you just showed, me, and how... I mean, I've, I've known about it, but just to kind of see it and play, like, and especially that whole sequence where the car is just there, and there's the big s… you know, the screen in the back. And, you know, on the set, and m… I may have asked you this before…

12:32David SmithSure

12:32Jawad Mir... The actual final output of how it's supposed to look, does that sometime, does that at all come close to being finished on set? Like, is it, like, in real time you're looking at?

12:43David SmithYeah.

12:43Jawad MirI'm just wondering if that is the... Okay, how do the actors, and I'm assuming you're on the set or your team is on the set, obviously, what's the actors' reaction to it? I mean, even though plates have been around for a while, but now they have been just sort of more, you know, like you said, things are, more studios are cl… keen to use it.

13:02David SmithYeah.

13:02Jawad MirHow, what's their reaction like when they see something like that, if you can put it in…

13:05David SmithYeah, it's a, it, a really good question. So the term we use for what you're getting at is called final pixel.

13:11Jawad MirFinal pixel.

13:12David SmithAnd so the idea there is that the in-camera VFX, which is the overarching term for the new virtual production, concept of actually filming actors in front of,.. Sorry, hit the mic. Filming actors in front of LED screens instead of blue or green screens. And blue and green screens haven't gone away. We still use that a lot as well, and there's certain circumstances where that makes more sense, other circumstances where LED makes more sense. But one of the ways that LED makes a lot of sense is just what you've mentioned, and that's, that's being able to give, not just the actor a real reference for what they're, what world they're living in, but also the rest of the crew. So the camera operator is actually able to see what's happening in their shot. If you're shooting on green screen, you kind of have to imagine it, that, okay…

14:01David Smith... The monster's over in the corner, or the white truck just drove by. If there's a st… if that's an important story point, that white truck means something, it's good for the camera operator to know that the white truck is there, or that the monster's there or whatever. So by putting that into the LED wall and having it photographed in the moment, it means that everybody has, i… is shooting the same movie. Nobody's imagining where things are and how things look. It's really there. And for driving sequences, it turns out to be really effective if... And sometimes it's funny, you, on set, you have to remind the actor, "Hey, the world's out here. Go ahead and interact with it. You know, watch the street sign go by. Like, engage with the world that's around you." Because when you're doing that in reality, your subconscious mind, your eye will lock onto something and track it, and that gives such a deeper degree of immersion for the audience when it feels like the actor is responsive to the environment around them.

15:04David SmithAnd so by giving them a physical environment that they can react to, it just, it just deepens everything. Real quick, so I grabbed one little clip that we had.

15:14Jawad MirSure.

15:14David SmithThere was another film that we did called Daddio, that was…

15:17Jawad MirYes. We talked about that last time, which…

15:19David SmithYeah, so…

15:19Jawad MirGreat film, by the way.

15:20David SmithOh, did you get a chance to see it?

15:21Jawad MirYeah, I did.

15:22David SmithYeah.

15:22Jawad MirSo.

15:23David SmithReally enjoyed it.

15:24Jawad MirAmazing.

15:25David SmithSo let me see if I can get this to work, 'cause this actually, so this is the director of the film did, made a nice little, a nice little piece for us, and she actually talks about exactly this. I was excited to use this technology. It creates an immersive environment for your cast. So when Sean was driving, he kept almost being afraid he was gonna hit pedestrians because there were people crisscrossing, and he was like, "Oh, right, it's not real." I mean, it is real. We shot the drive on an array car with nine cameras and then projected the drive, so what you're seeing is real. And then Dakota looks out the window and cars are whizzing by. She can actually see the streetlamps and everything. And so they're engaging with a real sense of time and place. Nothing is more real than real life, and plates capture that, and specifically vendors like Plate Pros that know how to capture it correctly. They bring that world into your volume, and now you're just laying on filmmaking on top of that. This is a whole different level of control, whole different level of creativity. There's a new wave of filmmakers that are absolutely understanding the potential and the capacity for this.

16:31David SmithSo I was really happy when they put that piece together for us. It was kind of a surprise, 'cause that, I think, sums up kind of, especially from the director's perspective, you know, this is... Her film honestly could not have been made, I think, any other way, especially not within the constraints that they had for time and talent and budget. So being able, you know, w… with Daddio, we kind of coined the n… the notion that the environment is the third character in that film. We brought New York to the film, 'cause it's, it's a very big part of the narrative.

17:02Jawad MirSure.

17:03David SmithAnd so it was really,.. Being able to do plates for a shot here and there, it's always fun to see that, but being able to be such a meaningful part of a larger, like, the project as a whole, was really special. It's really cool.

17:17Jawad MirYeah, no, I would like to say two things. So one thing you were talking about earlier about, you know, the characters being involved with the surroundings, right? You can tell even nowadays, like, with green screen stuff, you know, it's all great, fathom, and amazing. But when you, when somebody's looking at something and in reality it's not there, no matter how hard visual effects team, and this is not to put down the visual effects team in any way…

17:44David SmithNot at all

17:44Jawad Mir... It's just the techna… it's just technology. You can see the eyesight kind of going in a little different direction than the object they're looking at. You can tell. With this technology, you can't. And one of the things that I did, was I s… David, I saw, which you've seen, I'm sure you've seen Collateral, Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx movie.

18:03Jawad MirSimilar concept in terms of a setting.

18:06David SmithYeah.

18:06Jawad MirLike, but it's out and in, but it's, shot a lot of it inside the cab.

18:10David SmithYeah.

18:10Jawad MirI saw that the next day after I saw Daddio. I saw it after a long time, and I didn't see any difference in terms of…... The reaction of the actors and the environment, it just seemed, both seem identical to me. And that was in LA, this was in New York.

18:25David SmithYeah, Collateral was one of the first films to really make strong use of the low light capabilities of new…

18:33Jawad MirYeah

18:33David Smith... Digital cameras.

18:34Jawad MirYeah.

18:34David SmithAnd so, and they did that specifically with the idea of being able to have Los Angeles as a character, where you could... It was the first time that you could actually see a palm tree silhouetted against the night sky. Because the film stocks we had prior to that really weren't sensitive enough to be able to capture that level of detail. And yeah, I think it's a, it's a, it's a great parallel, where both films really wanted the location outside of the vehicle to play a significant role in the narrative. And what's interesting is that both of them made use of new technologies at their time to be able to let that happen. So at a... A… I actually need to go back and watch it. I haven't seen it since I saw it in the theater…

19:13Jawad MirYeah

19:13David Smith... Originally. But great film.

19:14Jawad MirAnd…

19:14David SmithYeah

19:15Jawad Mir... And another one, which is way back, I mean, this is... You've seen, have you seen Duel?

19:20David SmithOh, gosh.

19:21Jawad MirIt's…

19:21David SmithYeah.

19:21Jawad MirOkay.

19:21David SmithWell, it's been a long time.

19:23Jawad MirYeah, so that came out in '71, which gave Spielberg…

19:25David SmithYeah

19:25Jawad Mir... His career break… breakthrough before Jaws. So…

19:28David SmithYeah

19:28Jawad Mir... Studio executives at the time were telling him to use, you know, those screens in the background.

19:34David SmithYeah.

19:34Jawad MirAnd he, and he fought for, like, real environments.

19:37David SmithRightly so.

19:38Jawad MirAnd…

19:38David SmithYeah

19:38Jawad Mir... And rightly so, a… absolutely. But it's incredible that how 50, 55 years later we're kind of going back in that, but with much more, you know, technology and abilities…

19:49David SmithYeah

19:49Jawad Mir... To make it look as realistic as possible.

19:52David SmithYeah, and it's, it's interest… I mean, the, it, I always make the joke that the techniques that we're using, are almost as old as film itself. It's just finding new ways to increase the fidelity, increase the believability. You know, and that's the challenge. That's, that's the, that's the part that kind of I wake up every day, you know, intrigued by, is what can we do to make it even better? And there's, there's lots of new things coming along. There's lots of things that we're, experimenting with and playing with to be able to make it more believable. Just the fact that I was able to show you that one clip with our plate where I could look around in any direction.

20:32Jawad MirYeah.

20:32David SmithWe've only really been able to create plates that are pre-stitched like that for the last, let's say two to three years, where the processing power and the software, and the, and the camera hardware as well, have had a significant amount of small iterative improvements that have given us all of the little technical pieces of the puzzle that we need to be able to offer a plate that is completely 360. Prior to that, it was more cost-effective and at scale. You had to create individual angles looking in individual directions. We could still shoot it all at once, which was a huge advancement even then. But now we can blend it together so you can look in any direction and you would never know that you were actually looking at the output of multiple cameras.

21:19Jawad MirThat's, that's amazing. That's so beautiful. I… in terms of, you know... I, and I, any, it, I... In terms of projects that are coming up, right? I'm just trying to find the right way of saying this.

21:35David SmithSure.

21:35Jawad MirOne thing I would love to see, and you don't have to answer it in any way, it's not even a question, it's just a comment, is that, you know, I have sort of become who I am because of Jurassic Park. You know, in terms of my…

21:47David SmithRight

21:47Jawad Mir... Love in directing. I would love to see one day, I mean, there's one coming up next year, and I'm sure there'll be many more, how your technology works on a film. Not necessarily like Jurassic Park or Jurassic World, like in a monster, you know, like Godzilla type film.

22:03David SmithSure.

22:03Jawad MirHow that is utilized. Would you, would you like to do something like that eventually?

22:07David SmithOh, absolutely. Yeah, in a heartbeat. We've, we've done a tiny bit of that style work. We did some work on... Gosh, I can't remember what number season it was for Stranger Things. There's a sequence when the shadow monster is chasing the

22:25Jawad MirThe car?

22:25David Smith... If I remember right, it was a, like a station wagon with a, with all the kids…

22:29Jawad MirYeah

22:29David Smith... In the back.

22:30Jawad MirIt's

22:30David SmithAnd it's kind of lumbering along behind it. So that actually is our plate that CG then added the monster to, and then that was composited in behind the kids in the car. So I think that shot's in our demo reel. Actually…

22:42Jawad MirThat was season three, the last episode, and I know this because my kids were rewatching it two weeks ago. So…

22:47David SmithNice. Nice

22:48Jawad Mir... I know it. It's the season three last episode.

22:51David SmithYeah. So we shot those plates in Georgia. And actually that was an interesting, an interesting rig too. We had to create, a different version of our array for that as well. It seems like there's a lot of projects that come along, and kind of our standard package of hardware, is good for, like, 95%, but there's always those projects that come along and say, "Hey, we wanna create something unique, something special, something new." And so we, that's when it's nice. We have a... I'm actually here at my office in my shop. We have a small machine shop and fabrication facility, so I can actually build the rigs that you're seeing us use. So when a, when a show like that comes to us with a specific need, it's nice to be able to just kind of go out back and whip something up as a prototype, to be able to answer a specific need. So.

23:40Jawad MirThat's awesome. You talked about, stock footage that you have. Right? Like stock library. So how do people access that, number one? Like, how do they get, you know, ac… license it or whatever? And is it, can anybody? Is it in the bu…

23:57David SmithYeah

23:57Jawad Mir... Can it be in the budget of ev… at any independent filmmaker as well?

24:01David SmithAbsolutely. So everything is through our website, which is platepros.com. P-L-A-T-E-P-R-O-S.com. And, basically there's a, there's a link in there to, the, just across the navigation at the top, it says library. And with that, there's a list of locations that we've filmed, across the country, where you're able to say, "Okay, I'm, I'm looking for somewhere, you know, Manhattan at night," or, "I wanna go across the Queensboro Bridge at dawn." or, "I'm in, I'm in Texas. We're doing a road trip movie and we wanna be able to go across country." and we're constantly shooting new plates to add to that library. So actually, right after Thanksgiving, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, I'll be heading back East and we're gonna be doing another cross-country road trip with the, with the ARRI vehicle to capture more winter, 'cause it's not just locations, it's also variable seasons. So we capture all of that in advance and then it's available for license from the website.

25:03David SmithSo, definitely, you know, if you find something on the website that you're interested in, if you're working on a film, and we do a ton of work with students, with shorts, if it's a passion project. We're all filmmakers in the company, and we all work on our own projects. We shoot our own shorts and bigger projects too. So we understand the challenges that meet productions at every scale. And so we never wanna turn somebody away on price. We're always interested in finding creative ways to be able to contribute really at every scale. So even though it might feel big and intimidating because we've got all these big Hollywood things on there, we do just as much work for, you know, Hallmark movies, Hallmark Christmas movies, or student shorts. So…

25:55Jawad MirThat's amazing

25:55David Smith... We always wanna encourage people, reach out. We're nice people, we're easy to work with. And we understand what you're up against. So don't be bashful. Reach out, and we love to collaborate.

26:07Jawad MirThat's so cool, man. That's really, that's really amazing what you're doing because, you know, for a s… independent filmmaker or somebody who's making a short, it's just intimidating to even reach out to a studio, right? Because nobody gets back…

26:19David SmithSure

26:19Jawad Mir... To you, or big companies.

26:21David SmithSure.

26:21Jawad MirBut so if somebody, if s… a student was making a film, right? Let's say if he or she had a scene in a car or, you know, in El… in, I don't know, Boston, let's say.

26:35David SmithYeah.

26:36Jawad MirSo they have a... They can license the footage, they can buy the stock footage, whatnot. So in... That's great. Now, how…

26:42David SmithYeah

26:42Jawad Mir... How can they, with such a small budget, and this is just on behalf of people who watch it…

26:48David SmithYeah

26:48Jawad Mir... Can utilize that on, in a physical way? Like, how do they create that in the post-production aspect of making that work?

26:56David SmithSure. There's a wide range of versions of the answer to that. So, at the simplest level, depending on the nature of the creative goal, we've had students literally take a $300 Walmart, OLED TV, like a 55-inch TV, and park it outside the car, and load the plate onto a laptop…

27:29Jawad MirLight it up

27:29David Smith... And play it back. And you would be surprised. Actually, not just students did that. If, there was,.. I don't know if you remember the TV series, The Mindy Project. So it was a kind of a romantic sitcom TV series, a few years ago. One of the final shots of the series is one of the actors driving to the airport. The male kind of romantic lead is driving to the airport in the rain, and they shot that with an OLED TV sitting outside, like, as student level as you can imagine. And that shot was on our reel for years because it looked beautiful. So it can be very approachable and very affordable. And you know, there is a little bit of, because of the 360, you have to unwrap the 360, so the playback…

28:16Jawad MirSure

28:16David Smith... Software, is, has to be managed a li… You know, you have to have the right software and use it in the right way. We can help walk people through what those are. Some of those software have free trials where you could actually, you know, basically use it for a month. So if…

28:33Jawad MirYeah

28:33David Smith... You time that right within your production, you could have access to even the playback software for free. But what's really encouraging is that a lot of film schools are investing in this technology. So we're seeing a ton of LED stages being installed at film schools across the country. NYU just announced their virtual production. They have now an entire branch of the film, program is in virtual production. So, a lot of students now are actually getting access, not just to, reaching out to us for a plate, which absolutely they should and they can, but also that they're having access to these kinds of facilities now as well, which is really great to see. 'Cause I think virtual production is one of those things that when it's being handled correctly and when it's, when it's done right, it can really broaden the horizons of what you can do on a conservative budget.

29:31Jawad MirThat's really cool, man. I'm, I'm, I'm, again, we talked about this last time, I'm just blown away by all this stuff. Not, even though I knew about it, but just…

29:39David SmithSure

29:39Jawad Mir... Especially hearing about the OLED TVs and, you know, necessity's the mother of all inventions, that you just gotta make it work. Any…

29:47David SmithYeah. I mean, you could, the TV…

29:49Jawad MirGo ahead

29:49David Smith... You could also, a video projector. Video projector works well.

29:52Jawad MirYeah.

29:52David SmithYou've got, it's g… you gotta be careful 'cause it's easy to have your lights contaminate the screen. So, you know, there is some, there's some trade-offs. But yeah, I mean, a $1,000 projector on a bedsheet and it would work. Or stay with green screen. You know, you can, you can throw a green screen up behind the car, and then you still use the 360 plate… But you can load it into After Effects, load it into DaVinci, Premiere. Very accessible tools, that any filmmaker is gonna be dealing with already have the capacity. For Adobe, they refer to it as immersive video. So if you go down your video effects menu in Premiere or in After Effects…

30:30Jawad MirYeah

30:30David Smith... You'll see a tab called Immersive Video, and under that is a whole series of tools that is specifically designed for working with this 360 content. So it's already baked in. It's already there. Now, 10 years ago, we couldn't say this. It's taken a lot to get these tools to be ubiquitous. But now that…

30:46Jawad MirYeah

30:46David Smith... They are, it really makes it easy.

30:50Jawad MirIt, sort of reminds me of when you were talking about the student films and everything, when Saving Private Ryan came out, I think about eight or nine years after, I could be wrong about the timing, but around that realm, a couple of guys, went to a beach, and they kind of just shot three guys, you know, with green…

31:09David SmithYeah

31:10Jawad Mir... Out… you must have seen that.

31:12David SmithI remember. Yeah.

31:12Jawad MirAnd how they, and how it just…

31:13David SmithAnd then they copy and paste replicated themselves…

31:15Jawad MirYeah

31:15David Smith... And turned it in. Yeah.

31:16Jawad MirYeah. It…

31:16David SmithAnd it was amazing. Yeah, it was a…

31:18Jawad MirIt was

31:18David Smith... The end result was really top-notch. It's, it's ideas like that where being able to give voice, or having smaller voices that wouldn't otherwise be able to kinda get this kind of content out, but being able to achieve it. I mean, I love the guys from Corridor Crew. I don't know if you're familiar with them. They have a VFX, based kind of podcast and YouTube channel.

31:45Jawad MirYeah

31:45David Smith... And their whole, their whole methodology is about using what's new and on the horizon from a technology perspective to be able to create massive budget effects as what's essentially a few guys in a garage. And, it's really remarkable to see just how much can be achieved with really a laptop and off-the-shelf cameras or even your iPhone. So yeah, there's, I think, never been a better and worse time to be a filmmaker. It's…... It's the best time because we have easy, inexpensive access to really robust tools, but it's challenging because now everybody else has access, too. So your stuff has to be really good and really compelling…

32:35David Smith... To break through the noise because now when everybody's got a voice, it's really hard to be the voice that gets heard. So it just means that we've all gotta be better.

32:44Jawad MirI couldn't agree. Somebody asked Quentin Tarantino, I think, at Comic-Con, at one of his films, you know, how do you distinguish yourself? How do you d… stand out from others? And he said, you know, "Just make a effing amazing movie. That's it."

33:00David SmithYeah.

33:00Jawad MirLike, that is it. And, you know, now with the, advent of AI, with OpenAI, was it OpenAI and, Sor… I think it's called Soros.

33:09David SmithSora, yeah.

33:10Jawad MirAnd, Sora, and then, what's that other one called? There's so many. I mean, I was just watching…

33:16David SmithYeah, Runway. Runway is one that's making a big…

33:18Jawad MirRunway, yeah

33:18David Smith... A big splash right now.

33:19Jawad MirYeah, I mean, I was just watching somebody on LinkedIn posted this person created, like, a futuristic sci-fi with Asian c… actors, and it looked so fricking amazing. Like, you know…

33:32David SmithYeah

33:32Jawad Mir... I mean, it's just amazing where we are right now. It's amazing.

33:36David SmithYeah, and it's, it's, you know, both terrifying and encouraging. You know, I think there's, there's... Because we don't know which side of, you know, which side of the coin is gonna land up, right? There's, there's an opportunity for these new tools and new techniques to move narrative forward and to move the conversation forward, and I hope that's what happens, and I'm optimistic that it will. But I think there's a, there's an... The flip side of that coin is a push to use those tools to cut costs at the expense of the creative, and that's the part of it that I'm worried about. If it's…

34:20Jawad MirYeah

34:20David Smith... If it's an accountant and no, yeah, I mean, no disrespect to the accountants of the world, but if the bottom line is the only metric of success, then we start seeing that creativity is…

34:35Jawad MirGone

34:35David Smith... Diminished. And I'm…

34:37Jawad MirYeah

34:37David Smith... So I'm hoping that what we're gonna find... And this, I think this is true across, you know, we're, we're obviously going through a massive shift in the way that the industry greenlights projects, where the financing is coming from, what budgets levels. You know, we've had peak TV, has, we've crested it looks like, and so now it's like, okay, what's, what's the next business model? My hope is that we're gonna find new buy-in by filmmakers and storytellers to acknowledge that the stories we've been telling recently haven't been that good. And the audience is responding and has been voting with their wallet and is telling us as an industry that we haven't necessarily been delivering on the promise of good stories well told. And the franchises and the rinse and repeat, which a lot of the financial impetus behind, "It worked last time, so let's do it again," that's a conservative financial model that's driving the creative in a way that ultimately is not serving the audience.

35:41David SmithAnd so my hope is that w… that this restructuring of the industry and this shakeup, the end result of that is that we're gonna have a new renaissance. We're gonna have a new, you know, a new set of voices coming on, that gives us better access to emotion and story and humanity. And so I really am hopeful that's where we're going.

36:06Jawad MirYeah. I truly believe, in my heart, 100% I'm convinced, and this is not delusional thinking, it's just about…... How society changes. Like, I remember in the '90s when Miramax and DreamWorks came out, like, you know, you saw some of the most amazing films in that decade time.

36:24David SmithYep.

36:24Jawad MirBe… and before that, it was all, like, '80s was, you know, action and visual effects, and the '70s was similar. And I think we have hit that peak and that threshold of, you know, even, like, when you approach Netflix for any kind of project, like, in terms of documentaries just in general, all they're looking for is, like, brand name celebrity bios or true crime, and that eventually people are gonna get sick and tired of it, and they want simple things, simple stories that are powerful, and they're meaningful.

36:52David SmithYeah.

36:52Jawad MirWhich I would highly recommend, there's a series on Apple TV+ that my wife and I got into, it's called Bad Sisters.

37:00David SmithYeah. Yeah

37:00Jawad Mir... It's, it's, based in, Dublin. It's amazing.

37:04David SmithOkay.

37:05Jawad MirIt's character-driven, about five sisters and one of their husbands, and it's, it's awesome. It has nothing to do with remakes, visual effects. It's just simple…

37:14David SmithYeah

37:14Jawad Mir... Storytelling with amazing characters, and that's what people want, and I was craving for something like that, and I fell in love with it.

37:20David SmithYeah.

37:20Jawad MirIt's, you know... So I truly feel that there's a shift happening for better. I really do.

37:26David SmithAnd in that shift, I think there's an opportunity for new talent, for new voices to be able... You know, that, I think that is the way you can distinguish yourself, is by putting out content that breaks away from the norm.

37:42Jawad MirThe norm. Yeah.

37:43David SmithSo don't try to make your own Marvel movie. Unless, I mean, if that's what you're passionate about, rock on. Have at it. But in terms of moving the needle forward, you know, I think it's important for people to really tell the stories that inspire them, and hopefully that gives us a window into a version of the world that we might not understand already. And with AI as a storytelling tool, what concerns me there is that AI at its core is an averaging of human experience. You feed in content, and it feeds back an interpretation only of that content. So there's nothing that's really revolutionary to come out of that. Maybe it will in the future, and maybe that emergent behaviors will turn into an AI that can write a new thought.

38:47David SmithBut as it stands right now, I think it's still on the creator, on the filmmaker, to express new ideas and to create a new, logical branch that isn't just regurgitating the averaging of what's come before.

39:09Jawad MirYeah.

39:10David SmithAnd so if we rely too heavily on AI right now as it stands, I feel like we're just essentially on a, you know, we're, we're guaranteeing mediocrity, because that is, that is really what it is as a technology. And so I think using it, to take away the drudgery and using it as a tool for filmmakers to be able to, you know, whiteboard ideas and have those kinds of back and forth, I think there's value in it, but I think it's wrong, at least as the technology stands now, for us to think of it as a way to make, to make the story. It can be there to make more stories easier and faster to tell, and hopefully it's gonna increase our output. But it, I think it needs to still be viewed as a tool, not as a replacement. And I think that's really gonna be the case, and a lot of the fear around it, is, hopefully not warranted.

40:11David SmithBut, you know, time…

40:14Jawad MirYeah

40:14David Smith... Time will tell. It remains to be seen.

40:15Jawad MirI do think that kind of like what you were saying earlier, before we sort of wrap things up, is that you know how now everybody has technology, like, you know, let's say phones, right? Anybody can make a film, right? In that same breath, if people have become, for the lack of better word, lazy, and they wanna use AI to make film, then there you have a opportunity of, let's say, you know, 70 to 80% of the people, let's use AI. Again, these are just random numbers. Then that 20% have way more opportunity to do something authentic, and I think it opens up opportunities for those people. So i… it's... I get what you're saying, but I think it's all about seizing the moment and, you know…

40:57David SmithYeah

40:57Jawad Mir... Seizing the opportunity. That's all it is.

41:00David SmithYep.

41:01Jawad MirYeah.

41:02David SmithYeah. Couldn't agree more

41:02Jawad Mir... What's, what's, what's next for you that you can talk about? I know I asked you that last time, but you can say anything you can reveal now.

41:09David SmithSure. Yeah, the big thing right now is that we're gonna be adding to the library. So we're looking to double the size of the library, by the end of quarter one next year. So we're putting a lot of our energy into, expanding. Part of that is really looking at, the optimistic hope that the level of production will increase. Thankfully, in the last month or two, we've seen, a resurgence. We've seen a lot more productions coming online. And so we wanna make sure that as next year, we see production ramping up, we wanna make sure that we have as much, content in the library, as possible. We're also working on doing more rooftop, so being able to create vistas for, you know, you have a scene that takes place in the penthouse of a, of a, you know, New York skyrise. We wanna be able to give you, the environments outside of that window, so it's not just about cars.

42:04Jawad MirOh, cool.

42:05David SmithSo we're doing, we're doing more of that kind of work. And, really kind of m… trying to move the technology forward. So, we've got a new product line that we're calling Sim Plates, that is fully CG rendered… Moving environments. So it looks very much like what you see from our photograph plates, but they were created entirely in a computer. Those answer certain needs. Some things are really difficult to photograph. We have a joke around the office that when a client calls up and asks for rural night, you think about those two words, that's black. There's no... Rural night means you can't see anything. You're in the middle of nowhere. There's no lights. Maybe there's the moon. So usually what they mean is we want a forest and we wanna see light coming through the forest from the distance. And so filming that practically means we have to light miles and miles and miles of forest road. And in the past we've actually budgeted it out to see what it would cost for, you know, 30 Musco lights or BB lights to line a forest.

43:07David SmithIt's really prohibitive. So that's much easier to do in CG. You know, procedural forests are pretty robust today, and we can add an in… we can copy and paste an infinite amount of light wherever you want it. So cer… certain circumstances like that, sim plates are really a good way to approach, things that might otherwise be too challenging. Doing period where we wanna be able to have, you know, 1930s cars in the background or locations that don't exist anymore, things like that. So, we're really excited about that. Yeah, and then it's also really just whatever the next email that comes in that says, "Hey, we wanna do this other thing that you've never done before." that's, that's the stuff that makes me really excited, is when we get to…

43:53Jawad MirNice

43:53David Smith... Get to play around and develop new toys and find new ways to do it.

43:59Jawad MirThat's great. Well, that's awesome. You know, thank you so much, man, for the chat. I truly appreciate it. I would love it if you're, if it's possible, that video that you showed of Christy Hall. The audi… the audio was a little low on that.

44:16David SmithOh, yeah, I can, I can send you the clip.

44:18Jawad MirYeah, if you can, that'd be great. And

44:21David SmithYeah

44:21Jawad Mir... Amazing talking. Please give my regards to Alicia. I'm looking forward to talking to her when the next…

44:25David SmithOf course

44:25Jawad Mir... Season comes out. So appreciate it, and Happy Thanksgiving to you.

44:29David SmithHappy Thanksgiving to you and to your audience as well. Really appreciate it.

44:32Jawad MirThank you, sir. Take care.

44:33David SmithCheers. Talk soon.

44:34Jawad MirBye.