Rob Bredow and Vicki Dobbs Beck: Story Living with Industrial Light & Magic

Charles Melcher: 

Hi, I’m Charlie Melcher, founder of The Future of StoryTelling. I’m delighted to welcome you to the FoST Podcast. 

Charles Melcher: 

For almost 50 years, Industrial Light and Magic has set the gold standard for visual effects. They’ve played a key role in seven of the all time top-10 worldwide box office hits and have earned countless accolades, including 15 Academy Awards. The images they create for the screen have been instrumental to the massive success of film properties such as Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, and Pirates of the Caribbean to name just a few. ILM also creates cutting-edge immersive work, having collaborated on some of the most innovative immersive experiences in recent memory, like Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s VR film, Carne y arena, the two-day Star Wars Galactic Star Cruiser Experience at Disney World and Abba Voyage, their holographic concert experience in London. Leading the charge of ILM’s revolutionary work in both film and immersive media are today’s guests, Rob Bredow and Vicki Dobbs Beck. 

Charles Melcher: 

Rob is an Academy Award nominated VFX supervisor who serves as ILM’s SVP Chief Creative Officer, overseeing creative strategy and technological innovation. Vicki leads ILMxLAB the award-winning division that’s pioneering the creation of more active social and transformative experiences using technologies like augmented and virtual reality. 

Charles Melcher: 

It’s truly an honor to sit down with two of the world’s top storyTelling experts on visual effects and immersive storyTelling to speak with them about where their fields are headed. Please join me in welcoming Rob Bredow and Vicki Dobbs Beck. 

Charles Melcher: 

Vicki, Rob, it’s such an honor to have you both on the Future of StoryTelling Podcast. Welcome. 

Vicki Dobbs Beck: 

Thank you. Thrilled to be here. 

Rob Bredow: 

Thanks for having us. This is great. 

Charles Melcher: 

I am a huge fan of ILM, I mean since my childhood of walking into Star Wars for the first time and just having my mind blown to just the other day, getting to go see Carne y arena, that immersive piece that you all helped to build. I mean, there’s just such a history of innovation and storytelling and memory-making that’s come out of your company. Wow. Just thank you for being here to talk with me today. 

Vicki Dobbs Beck: 

I was just going to say it’s an exciting time. It’s really with, there are all kinds of new storyTelling opportunities with these emerging technologies, 

Rob Bredow: 

And I feel the same way about getting to join the company and feeling that same passion around storytelling. I guess I’ve been there nine years this summer, which is a long time at a lot of companies, but not at ILM where there’s a lot of people who’ve been there 30 some even 40 years who I get to learn from and just amazing storytellers and experts in visual effects and immersive storyTelling everywhere you look, which is exciting. 

Charles Melcher: 

I was so moved by the Carne y arena piece, and I think it’s a wonderful example for us to talk about a little bit at the Future of StoryTelling here because it really was putting the participant into the story. It was a fully immersive and multi sensorial experience, and it felt so personalized. I mean, at first you take off your shoes, you’re in a cold waiting cell or you go out into the desert with your feet and you’re in the sand, and then this scene takes place with cinematic quality acting and lighting and sound. And then at a certain moment, I literally find myself getting down on the ground because I’m being yelled at by these guards at gunpoint and I’m frightened for my life. And it represents all of these ideas that we’ve been exploring and celebrating at FoST for years about how we take people from being passive voyeurs to being active and immersed participants. And I’d love to hear about the creative process there and a little bit about how you all think about this transition from passive two-dimensional media to immersive three-dimensional participatory media. 

Vicki Dobbs Beck: 

Well, I’ll jump in. I think that Carne y arena was really, it was an amazing first big immersive experience for us. It was the vision of Alejandro Iñárritu and he brought all of his expertise and StoryTelling prowess from films to this new platform. And I think that he really created something that could have only been done in VR. And I think that’s why it’s so powerful because he leaned into the two qualities of VR that are pretty unique to VR. One is that power of presence where you’re actually in that world with others, and the second is the power of connection. And you did have this connection with the people who were crossing the border from Mexico into the United States, and they get caught. As you mentioned initially, you feel a little bit like a voyeur, but you’re also correct that there’s that one moment in time when the border patrol looks directly at you, which is something that you can do in VR, and yells at you. 

Vicki Dobbs Beck: 

And people’s reactions were varied. Some people looked behind them because they assumed that they were a voyeur, and then they realized that they’re actually talking to them. Some people responded immediately and got on the ground. So you are making choices about where you go, who you follow, et cetera. And what you find is that when people talk about it later, even though the experience was exactly the same, their journey, their personal journey and their personal experience varied by the choices that they make. And that’s, I think another really powerful element of interactive storyTelling. 

Charles Melcher: 

It also is incredible in its ability to create empathy for the people who are doing those crossings. And it ends with your getting to hear the individual stories of the people that the characters were based on. And so as you said, it plays to that other great power of VR, which is as an empathy machine, being able to understand that these are not numbers, these are human beings who are escaping terrible situations in their home country and coming for a better life. You’re just really, in terms of helping to give an emotional connection to a hot button political issue, there was nothing that I’ve seen that’s been better. It’s almost like a form of journalism, but more powerful because you’re living the story. You’re not just, again, watching it from a detached perspective. 

Rob Bredow: 

Every choice was made really to reinforce that experience as you’re discussing, I mean the design of the room, which you don’t see when you’re in VR, but you get glimpses of as you’re anticipating the experience kind of coincides with that time of day in the environment. Of course, the sand between your feet, all the temperatures that you experience, depending on where you saw the installation, all of that is designed to put to you in that, by Alejandro Iñárritu, to put you in that place where you’re receptive to feeling empathy with people with an experience that you’ve likely never had. And I think we’ve all experienced that to varying degrees in VR. And as you repeat experiences or you have experiences that address more of your senses simultaneously, I think it forms different kind of memories than you can form than with 2D film and other amazing mediums. But this is particularly powerful for these kind of experiences. 

Charles Melcher: 

I even just think about the storytelling in it was so strong, it starts with a beautiful sunset. It’s getting darker, but you get to sort of appreciate the beauty of the scene at first, and then it turns physically and emotionally dark. It becomes night and it becomes scary. And so you go through this arc of emotions in that experience and all really emphasized by the interactions, by the sensory experiences. And again, I felt like it’s almost like there was a moral consequence or there was a ethical decision. Am I going to listen to this border guard, or am I going to resist? This is the first one with a cinematic quality acting, film technique, storytelling, all of that that was that personalized. A lot of the ones I have seen before were in game engines and not … the quality of what you’re watching is kind of rough. And this was the quality of a Industrial Light and Magic movie. 

Rob Bredow: 

And it does seem to do something different for the storytelling. Alejandro was very clear about what the bar was, which is complete photorealism. He wanted it to be a completely believable environment because that was what he was communicating about. And there’s nothing wrong with a stylized VR experience. In fact, I think they’re amazing. And I remember some of the first times I saw some of those really fun, simple polygonal shapes in VR and how fantastic they were, even with simple shading. But when you do something that feels very photo-real and you have complete freedom of movement and characters are looking at you and addressing you, something switches in your brain for your level of immersion that more closely mimics reality. Both are fun, both have their place, but our focus in ILM not on everything we do is completely photorealistic, but pushing the boundaries of what’s possible visually does open up new storytelling opportunities. 

Vicki Dobbs Beck: 

The other thing that was interesting, there was so much press around the experience, but I remember there was one news outlet in particular that talked about, it was an experience that was just six and a half minutes in length, but it created memories that last a lifetime. And you were speaking to that, Charlie, early on, and I think that is really evidence of powerful, immersive experiences is when you remember the experience and how it made you feel even years later. 

Charles Melcher: 

I’m wondering what learnings or insights you might share as you’ve worked in so many of these next generation immersive experiences about palette of the larger set of senses that we have. I’ve heard that there might be as many as 30 or more. How do you paint with those as storytellers? What have you learned from that experience? 

Rob Bredow: 

Well, I can share an early story, and Vicki probably has a more recent example. But we thought the way to get, or I thought the way to get, VR experiences off the ground was more like a film where you work on a pitch and you storyboard it and you walk in and you pitch some boards. And we pitched, I don’t know how many, we pitched several things that I still think are good ideas using that technique, and we couldn’t get any momentum. And then the first time we started getting momentum, we mocked up the Millennium Falcon flying in above your head with sound and really nice audio and picture that was ILM-quality of this beautiful sunset. When you hear the Falcon in the distance and you hear the motors echoing off the canyons and then it flies in over your head and then it lands really close to you and you feel the wind, which we did with a fan, and you feel the power of the engines, which Skywalker Sound brought to the subwoofers. 

Rob Bredow: 

So all the things that we had done up to that point, pitching on boards, had never gotten energy and never gotten excitement. We learned a lot about prototyping these experiences, how the senses are … they’re not just additive, they’re multiplicative. They really multiply together to put you in a space so you can experience something that maybe you’ve always wanted to experience before. 

Vicki Dobbs Beck: 

Yeah, this is a medium where that phrase, “Show, don’t tell,” is so essential to getting support and momentum behind these projects. I think we also sort of took that early experience further when we were working on Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire with the Void, and they called that a hyper-reality experience. And so not only did they invoke what you see and hear, but what you smelled and what you touched. And this was kind of a key to that experience because the hyper-reality aspect of it is when you see a wall in the virtual world, if you were to reach out and touch it, there would actually be a real wall. And that one-to-one mapping of the virtual and the real-world causes your brain to absolutely buy into the reality. And you really are there. 

Rob Bredow: 

I think that we like to be told stories and we like to experience storyTelling. So especially against a backdrop of a powerful story, I think we want to suspend our disbelief and go on a journey. Skipping all the way ahead up to Abba Voyage. There is never a moment where you expect that you’re looking at the real band, but you know that they sincerely put a performance together for you. So you feel that empathy and that the fact that the band presents so graciously. I felt as a participant, grateful that I get to be there and see that. And I think these are the kind of stories that we’re interested in suspending our disbelief for and just enjoying the experience. 

Charles Melcher: 

We had a writer on the show some months ago, Annie Murphy Paul, who wrote the book, The Extended Mind, and in there she talked about the science of perception and embodied cognition. And one of the things she reminded me of is that we’re only conscious of a very small amount of the sensory data that’s coming into our brain at any one time. We are basically ignoring so much of what’s going on. So even in our daily lives, and especially when we’re surrounded by things that are familiar, we’re not really paying attention to most of it. And so I guess again, if you’re engaged with the story, you’re happy to block out so much of the rest of what’s going on, that it becomes very easy to fully bring people down into the rabbit hole of that story. 

Rob Bredow: 

A lot of us don’t have a chance in our modern everyday routine to engage your imagination. And that is what these stories are an invitation to do, and that’s what movies and experiential storytelling and immersive storyTelling are really about. So it’s an invitation to the user, the player, to play along. 

Vicki Dobbs Beck: 

I think the other thing that VR allows you to do is really be transported to a world that you couldn’t otherwise experience. So now I think it’s understanding how the brain works and how you sort of invoke emotions. Then I think you know, couple that, as Rob has pointed out, with great storyTelling and you really can allow people to experience worlds and situations and stories that there is no other way to experience them. 

Charles Melcher: 

I think you all know that we took a group from Future of StoryTelling to Orlando for the Star Wars Galactic Starcruiser experience, and there were 10 of us and we spent two days in costume, in world, adventuring eating, drinking. Love going to the bar, Star Wars bar. To me, the highlight honestly was the lightsaber training where I’m holding a lightsaber and I feel like I am blocking blaster shots. I mean, literally from that 12 year-old-boy who watched the first Star Wars, watched Star Wars when he was that little kid, to be able to live that fantasy of this is real and every part of my body was doing it. Again, I’m transformed from having been able to become a Jedi. Yeah, thank you for that. And tell us a little bit about your role in that amazing piece. 

Rob Bredow: 

It’s just one of my favorite projects that we’ve ever gotten to work on. It’s so ambitious and risky. And our role, we just played one role in that experience. Well, a couple, actually. We were mostly focused on every view out every window for all 48 hours of the show, which is all live and continuous. So if someone is looking out the flight deck and taking some action, like blowing something up or an asteroid gets shot and you happen to be looking out the port side of the ship from your room, you will see the debris from that asteroid go by. So it’s all a highly integrated system. 

Rob Bredow: 

So we had a big job to do and there was lots of work that went into that. So I got to go through there and I knew where every projector was and how every system worked. So I thought when I went on during a play test that it would be difficult for me to suspend my disbelief, that I’d be there with my daughter and we get to experience it together and I get to look at it through her eyes. And in the first 15 minutes of being on the ship, instead of having to remind myself to say, “Port and starboard,” which is what we had been doing for the whole production, which was like we’d call it north and south and then say, “No, no, no, no, it’s port and starboard.” 

Rob Bredow: 

You’re trying to remind yourself to be in the experience. But the first 15 minutes, I was completely transformed that I was on a ship, even though I had been in the other mode. But once we in the show was going, my daughter asked, “Is this ship actually moving?” 20 minutes in. I was like, “It kind of feels like it is. Doesn’t it?” It’s really immersive. 

Vicki Dobbs Beck: 

I think it’s such a great example, and perhaps the most audacious and ambitious example ever, of transitioning from storytelling to this idea of story living where you’re in a world, making meaningful choices that are driving the narrative forward. One of the things that I love about that project is talking to the people who were involved in the design of the story. It is sort of a complex set of storylines and choice points that you can make. And Rob, I love this story that you tell about your daughter, how she really believed that she was making a difference in the story that she had pivoted. 

Rob Bredow: 

We are sitting at dinner and a big event happened after dinner that I won’t spoil for anyone who’s listening to this and is going to book their Galactic Starcruiser experience the next day. But a big event happened a after dinner and she’d telling me that she was doing stuff on the computer and that she was befriending this guy who was not a good guy and he told her to do this thing and there’s a timer and things are going to happen. And after dinner, big event happens and she looks at me and she goes, “I might have had something to do with that.” 

Charles Melcher: 

So let’s talk a little bit about what you see coming because you do what you do so well. I feel like you get drawn into things even before, way before they’re out in public. Are there things that you can share that you are learning and getting to experiment with that might push all of this forward some? 

Vicki Dobbs Beck: 

Yes. We’re very excited for the future. I think in many ways VR has already begun to mature in some regards and compelling AR is on the horizon. Some people are referring to it actually as mixed reality now, especially if you’re moving through all shades of reality, from fully in another world, to an augmentation of our world. But the key really for us has been trying to understand what is compelling about storytelling in an augmented reality world and how do people want to engage? What is fun? What is emotionally impactful? 

Vicki Dobbs Beck: 

And in order to do the kind of experimentation that we have wanted to do, especially speaking to things in terms of the cinematic quality of the imagery so that there’s a seamless blend between the real world and the digital world, the other aspect that we’re super excited about is the possibility of AI characters that feel authentic. So then the design challenge becomes about creating a rich character, but then allowing that character to interact in a way that is his or her own, literally. So your job as a storyteller is more about the birthing of the character than it is about writing lines of dialogue. And all of that work is evolving very, very quickly, but it’s mind blowing. 

Charles Melcher: 

Do you worry at all about any of the negative outcomes of some of the AI characters or maybe just making stories that are so compelling people don’t want to come back? 

Rob Bredow: 

Well, I think great storyTelling for many centuries has had beginning, middles and ends. And I think there is a certain form to stories. All the stories we’ve built have a certain form and the form does evolve with the different mediums that we use to tell them. But stories have beginning, middles and ends. So I think those journeys are going to continue to evolve, but they take great storytellers and they take … I think having that sort of promise of being in the hands of a master storyteller and even if you’re going to use AI characters to be able to respond to you in a way that feels like it’s engaged with you and personal. And there’s no storyteller in the world who could do that for every variation that you could throw at it, but maybe you could use some tools like AI to be able to do that. But you’re still being guided through a story that has a begin, middle and end. That’s where we’re focused in our StoryTelling right now and it’s all about buying into participating in that. 

Rob Bredow: 

So I think that helps focus our efforts in those sort of directions that can be guided by those master storytellers and those teams that help enable that kind of storyTelling. 

Charles Melcher: 

I sometimes think that we use the wrong term. We have some antiquated language. Storytelling, for example, which I would … It’s the name of Future of StoryTelling, this organization, but telling doesn’t seem to be the right word anymore. I think we’re much more moving towards an age where the role of the creator is to set up a set of rules, almost like some physics, a world-building and some characters and then allowing for a kind of agency to the player, to the person formally known as the audience, to co-create in that world. Do you agree? Do you all have some better language that you’re using? 

Vicki Dobbs Beck: 

Sometimes these days we talk about a story-runner. So often talk about filmmakers, and filmmakers are core to our business. But if you go down the path that you were just describing where there really are about world-building and creating characters that inhabit that world and then all of the stories that can unfold and figuring out how to invite people into the story-living process while preserving the integrity of the IP. I mean, in our case, obviously one of our big responsibilities is being authentic and caring for the integrity of the Star Wars IP. That said, I think the future magic is going to be how do we do that and in invite people in to engage in ways that haven’t been possible before. 

Rob Bredow: 

And I would say in terms of experiencing these kind of experiences, Galactic Starcruiser is a great example where there’s a ton of interactivity. There’s even better than artificial intelligence interactions. There are actually intelligent interactions with amazing actors who are willing to engage with you personally and directly and remember you and all these kind of amazing experiences you get in there. I feel like that’s a prototype for where we are headed next. I don’t think a Choose Your Own Adventure is the most compelling kind of storytelling. And someone may prove me wrong, but the kind of storyTelling we’re focused on is the architected story that takes you somewhere that you probably wouldn’t have thought of on your own. And it didn’t require us crafting 50 variations of a story because it’s unlikely we could make 50 satisfying variations of a story. It’s hard enough to make one. So we make one and then we give you lots of agency along the way, but we’re still guiding you along with a master storyteller. At least that’s the primary perspective that we adopt these days. 

Charles Melcher: 

So let me ask you about the economic side of things. Often when people talk about these types of immersive and interactive multi-sensorial experiences, there’s a throughput problem, there’s a volume problem, and maybe there’s also a high cost to build these originally. How are you all thinking about that and the economic opportunities for these types of immersive entertainment experiences into the future? 

Rob Bredow: 

We’re very, very fortunate to work at a company that invests in these kinds of innovations because of the future storytelling opportunities and the richness of the IPs we get to work with. And we work with Star Wars and Marvel and then filmmakers and bands that want to see their experiences come to life. So there always seems to be somebody who wants to do a first of its kind and break new ground. And we’re just so fortunate that those people pick up the phone and call us and see if we can put together the team to do it. Because honestly, our problem tends to be, “Our teams are finishing a project or they’re booked right now, we’re really interested in that project, but can you wait for … ” We have to figure out how we can scale to meet the demand for these kind of innovative projects. And there is a certain maturity too. 

Rob Bredow: 

The first time we did a VR experience, there was only thousands, or tens of, or hundreds of thousands, of headsets in the world. And now if we want to tell a story that’s going to live inside of VR, there’s millions of people that could potentially view that experience. The people who might be early adopters in virtual reality tend to also be fans of some of the stories we get to work on. So we’re very, very fortunate to have storytelling canvases that people are interested in seeing. 

Vicki Dobbs Beck: 

Well, I think for us, the key was obviously what Rob was saying. We are so fortunate to work with such important powerful and rich IP. And because we have that, we became natural partners to companies that had the ability to fund content development. So as an example, it was Oculus, now called Meta, but Meta wanted to launch their first tetherless headset, all-in-one headset, the Quest One. So we partnered, we created VA Immortal, they put up the production funding, and then together we launched that VR story series into the world. But at our core, we don’t want to be developing solutions that others are going to be better poised to do it. What we want to do is be able to inform the requirements of those kinds of technologies in order to tell the kinds of stories that we want. So I would say from a business perspective, it’s all been about partnerships and relationships and then bringing the IP. 

Charles Melcher: 

Well, I think that’s one of the trademarks of ILM, right? That you’ve always been able to be at that cutting edge of the science and the technology and pushing it in service of the story, of creating something that’s so memorable. And I also just wanted to sort of end with this thought that because there’s such power in the ability to tell such convincing stories, that I always again think of that Marvel Spider-Man, “With great power comes great responsibility.” I just wonder if there’s any thoughts that you have from your perspective as superheroes of the storytelling world of the moral compass that you operate with or the opportunity to move the world through the power of the stories you tell and how ILM thinks about that. 

Vicki Dobbs Beck: 

We really seek to use all of our talents to inspire people and to have positive emotional impact. That is at the core of who Disney is, who Lucasfilm is, and who I think these IP are. And I do agree with you, with great power comes great responsibility and we take that very, very seriously. But I think the way it manifests is in compelling story experiences that potentially transform people’s lives. 

Rob Bredow: 

We are so lucky to get to work at an optimistic company with optimistic people who are looking to build that into the stories that we tell. Getting to work in story worlds that are at their heart optimistic is a real pleasure. 

Charles Melcher: 

Thank you both. It’s really a pleasure. So appreciate the time today. May the force be with you. 

Rob Bredow: 

Thank you, Charlie. 

Vicki Dobbs Beck: 

Thanks so much, Charlie,