Tuesday, August 27th
Technicolor Experience Center
8:30 am – 5:00 pm
Content Fabric – (Re) Building the Internet for Video
Michelle Munson, CEO, Eluvio
The Eluvio Content Fabric is an open, high performance software network enabling the management and distribution of video in ways never before possible. In this talk, Eluvio founder and CEO Michelle Munson will introduce the design principles and key technology of the platform, and demonstrate its first use cases for over the top video — on demand, live, and linear — and new opportunities for content monetization enabled by this novel environment.
The Emergence of DNA Data Storage, and the Future of DNA Computing
Nick Gold, VP of Marketing, Catalog
Why DNA is a useful molecule for storing digital information. What is the emerging set of technologies in biotech and synthetic biology that allow for the storage of digital information in synthetic DNA molecules. And how can data in DNA form can be computed on directly using biomolecular computing techniques, and what advantages this approach will offer over traditional forms of computation.
Academy Software Foundation: Enabling Cross-Industry Collaboration for Open Source Projects
David Morin, Executive Director, Academy Software Foundation
In August 2018, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and The Linux Foundation launched the Academy Software Foundation (ASWF) to provide a neutral forum for open source software developers in the motion picture and broader media industries to share resources and collaborate on technologies for image creation, visual effects, animation and sound. This talk discusses why the Foundation was formed, provides an update on ASWF hosted projects including OpenColorIO, OpenVDB, OpenEXR, and OpenCue, and discusses how the Foundation plans to increase the quality and quantity of open source contributions by lowering the barrier to entry for developing and using open source software across the industry.
Life Cycle of Metadata and the Possible
Steve Cronan, CEO, 5th Kind
What’s possible when we implementation taxonomies and unify metadata through out the whole production/studio/vendor/partner pipeline, Centralized events across the whole studio allow us to create an amazing amount of automation, reporting, training more accurate AI and make the whole pipeline programmable.
Leveraging Curated Descriptive Metadata for Competitive Business Value at Sony Pictures Entertainment
Jason Lambert, Executive Director, Content Licensing & Metadata, Sony Pictures Entertainment
Michael Malgeri, Business Development Lead, MarkLogic
For Sony Pictures’ film clip licensing business, unlocking the potential of the catalog requires a deep understanding of the studio library that goes beyond identifying a handful of iconic moments from popular titles. It requires rich, time-based metadata that describes the specific scenes, moments, even individual frames of video found within each feature film. In this presentation, Jason will share his team’s strategy for indexing the Sony Pictures catalog using time-based metadata; how that metadata has become a catalyst for taking advantage of new business opportunities across the studio (in licensing, marketing, compliance, and consumer experience); and how experimenting with services like the MarkLogic Data Hub helps Jason and his team continue expanding the reach of their metadata tagging solution.
12:00 – 1:00 pm Lunch
Tower of Babel: Decoded! The Language Metadata Table (LMT) Standard
Richard Kroon, CTO, EIDR
Broadcast and media companies are dealing with multiple language standards, typically using both proprietary and non-proprietary terms. Global distribution requirements are exposing the need to consistently present languages for audio, text on the screen, packaging/display, and online user interfaces. The Language Metadata Table (LMT) adheres to the IETF BCP 47 languages standard and provides a way for those in the media and entertainment industry to ‘herd the cats’ of existing system interoperability while scoping for a future state that allows better support of global efforts.
Leveraging Metadata in the Moment
Gabriel Berger, CEO, Think Analytics
Metadata is currency in the ‘New Hollywood’. The volume, variability and velocity of this new content supply chain is an unprecedented challenge for the Media & Entertainment industry. In the ‘New Hollywood’ platforms garner metrics from their customers in real-time and can capitalize on the moment. This presentation walks us through the nexus of data science and information science that unearth meaningful discovery and personalization, leading to better analytics and business decisions.
DeepLight: Learning Illumination for Unconstrained Mobile Mixed Reality
Chloe LeGendre, Software Engineer, Google
AI/ML Data Market Places
Kaladhar Voruganti, VP of Technology Innovation, Equinix
Data, like Oil in the past, will fuel the upcoming 4th industrial revolution. On Average 70% of Enterprise applications need to use at least 10 external data sources in order to create their AI models. Enterprises are beginning to buy and sell data and AI algorithms in AI marketplaces. In this talk we will discuss what is an AI marketplace, the different types of AI marketplaces, the architecture and governance models of AI marketplaces, and how companies in various industry verticals are using AI marketplaces to solve meaningful business problems.
AWS – Modern MAM & Supply Chains Optimizing IMF
Jack Wenzinger, Global M&E Partners SA, Amazon Web Services
Cloud-based architectures leveraging serverless, elastic, and integrated storage models like Content Lake are creating production platform capable of driving IMF development and distribution workflows on a global scale.
Trusted Partner Network – Updates
Guy Finely, CEO, Trusted Partner Network
Wednesday, August 28th
Google Spruce Goose Airship
8:30 am – 5:00 pm
Show Me The Money: Tech’s Impacts on Entertainment Monetization and Finance
Craig Schleicher, Head of Innovation, City National Bank
Technology has had major impacts on how finances operate throughout the entertainment industry, and City National Bank is front and center for many of those changes. The streaming and new media sector is creating new monetization opportunities for talent, from influencer marketing to new forms of fan engagement. Analytics are improving how films are produced and financed and how talent is evaluated. Two of City National’s portfolio companies, Exactuals and FilmTrack, are creating a new era of transparency around royalties, residuals, and film distribution, including using AI on music metadata to improve attribution. This presentation will share perspectives on these impacts for talent and for other stakeholders across the entertainment industry.
AI-Driven BI Application for Production Process
Guillaume Aubuchon,VP, Cast & Crew
Discussing the Cast & Crew application of artificial intelligence as a driver of business insights in the production process and lifecycle. Including emerging technologies that deliver practical prediction applications in the current production lifecycle and conversations on a future state of genuine insight into an ever-evolving process.
How 3 Different Enterprises Overcame the Challenges to Adopting AI & Starting Saving Money”
Aaron Edell, Head of Product Strategy, Veritone
This talk with go over three examples of real business implementing machine learning to save money, unlock new opportunities, or improve efficiencies. We’ll dive into each one to discuss what technology they are using, how they’re deploying the solution, and any key learnings gained along the way.
The Cloud Conundrum: How should multi-cloud and hybrid architectures play into your cloud strategy?
This panel will feature leaders from leading cloud companies discussing the very real dilemma faced by their customers: How much hardware should they retain on premise, and should they concentrate business in one vendor or remain agnostic?
Bob Eicholz, CTO, Technicolor
Buzz Hays, Global Lead Entertainment Industry, Google
Mark Miller, Sr, Director Azure M&E, Microsoft
Chuck Parker, CEO, Sohonet
Erik Weaver, Special Projects, ETC
Fixity in the Cloud
Buzz Hays, Global Lead Entertainment Industry, Google
How to PRESERVE in the Cloud
Andrea Kalas, SVP of Archives, ParamountPictures
The world’s greatest creative endeavor is getting so many new names: Content, Episodes, Bingeable, Longform, Shortform, Streaming. In the end there are still great filmmakers, cinematographers, art directors, line producers, actors, editors making compelling and important work. As we move these works to the cloud, how are we considering the important step of preserving?
12:00 – 1:00 pm Lunch
The Future of Media
Ben Miller, Global Head of Product, Google
Bringing characters to life: Digital and Virtual Humans
John Canning, Executive Producer of New Media & Experiential, Digital Domain
In this talk we explore what it takes to create digital and virtual humans and how they are used. We will also discuss the potential impacts of this technology both on traditional film making as well as new media outlets such as Youtube or Instagram. We will touch up everything from volumetric capture to uses of AI to the uncanny valley and beyond.
Meet Your Digital Twin
Kathleen Cohen, Experience Strategist, The Collaboratorium
A look into the future of your digital likeness and the physical legacy that (you think) you are leaving behind. With AI/ML humans are becoming virtual and robots are becoming feeling humanoids. We’re currently sitting in the gap years. Imagine the near future where your digital twin has agency over your physical self. Your twin has more “street cred” than your physical self. Sending your twin to events because your physical self can’t make it will be socially OK. Your likeness & legacy are fully captured, and the uniqueness that makes up you (your walk, your laugh, your dance moves) might all be used soon, with or without your consent, in the free marketplace. This is a talk about the AR/VR/MR/XR, spatial computing, IoT, the Metaverse, creativity, ownership and looking at your own self through the lens of volumetric captures, immersive media, digital DNA and the land rush to (re)create humans.
AI Virtual Characters for Entertainment on Social Media
Ryan Horrigan, CEO & Founder, Artie
Ryan will discuss the tech needed to create and distribute AI-powered virtual characters that can see, hear and understand their human users, responding personally and generatively. Ryan and Artie believe that AI characters will unlock a new era of content consumption on social media and beyond.
Virtual Beings
Peter Billington, Co-Founder, Fable
Presentation would be focused on the rapid evolution of virtual beings. Multi-modal and multi-disciplinary approaches to persistent characters who adapt and live outside a narrative. Trends that will likely be the future of how we play, learn, connect and help each other
Future of Virtual Beings, XR, and Self-Sovereign Identity Link Together
Liam Broza, CEO & Co-Founder, BitScoop Labs and LifeScope.io
How virtual beings, XR, and self-sovereign identity link together. Our team is currently building an open source personal database platform, LifeScope, with cutting edge identity features. We are building inperson agents on LifeScope with reinforcement learning and behavior trees. Our platform is being built so that we can create “digital twins” next year in the form interactive avatars. This platform has a traditional app interface, an XR interface, and a data API to power AI and real time systems.
Panel Talk
Peter Billington, Co-Founder, Fable
Liam Broza, CEO & Co-Founder, BitScoop Labs and LifeScope.io
Ryan Horrigan, CEO & Founder, Artie
Moderator: Phil Lelyveld, Director, Immersive Media Experience, ETC