Volumetrically Capturing Authentic Digital Actors, with Metastage’s Christina Heller

Even with all
the advancements in CG animation, it can’t capture that distinctly
lifelike essence that a real human exudes. But XR can capture that
essence — volumetrically. Metastage CEO Christina Heller drops by to
discuss the process of transcribing the aura of a person into XR
space.

Alan: I have a really special
guest today; Christina Heller, the CEO of Metastage. Metastage is an
XR studio that puts real performances into AR and VR through
volumetric capture. Metastage is the first US partner for the
Microsoft Mixed Reality Capture Software, and their soundstage is
located in Culver City, California. Prior to Metastage, Christina
co-founded and led VR Playhouse. So, between Metastage and VR
Playhouse, she’s helped produce over 80 immersive experiences. To
learn more about Christina Heller and Metastage, you can visit
metastage.com.

Welcome to the show, Christina.

Christina: Thank you so much for
having me.

Alan: It’s my absolute pleasure.
We met, maybe three years ago? At VRTO?

Christina: Yes, that’s correct.

Alan: Yeah, we got to try your
incredible experiences, mostly in the field of 360 video. And you’ve
kind of taken the leap to the next level of this stuff. So, talk to
us about Metastage.

Christina: Sure. As you said,
it’s a company that specializes in volumetric capture. I think, in
the future, you’ll see other things, but at the moment, we specialize
in volumetric capture. Specifically, using the Microsoft Mixed
Reality Capture system, which is an incredibly sophisticated way of
taking real people and authentic performances, and then bringing them
into full AR and VR experiences, where you can move around these
characters, and it’s as if they are doing that action right in front
of you.

Alan: Let’s just go back a
little bit. What is volumetric capture, for those who have no idea
what volumetric capture is?

Christina: Sure. For a long
time, if you wanted to put real people into AR/VR experiences, you
had basically two ways of doing it. You could either animate it; so,
you would try to create — using mo-cap and animation — the most
lifelike creation of a human character possible. Think, like, video
games; when you go play a video game and they’ve got a character
playing a scene out with you. If you wanted to put real people into
these XR experiences, that was the most common way to do it.

Then there was also volumetric capture,
which, for a long time, just wasn’t quite — I would say – at the
technological sophistication that people wanted, to integrate it into
projects. Volumetric capture — thanks to the Microsoft system, I
think — is finally really ready to be used in a major way in all
these projects. And basically what it does is, we use 106 video
cameras, and we film a performance from every possible angle. So,
we’re getting a ton of data. We use 53 RGB cameras and 53 infrared
cameras. The infrared is what we use to calculate the depth and the
volume of the person that’s performing at the center of the stage.
The RGB cameras are what’s capturing all the texture and visual data.

Then, we put that through the Microsoft
software, and on the other end of it you get a fully-3D asset that
really maintains the integrity and fidelity of the performance that
was captured on the stage. Unlike some of the animated assets —
because this was kind of the challenge — the animated assets, they
might get kind of there, but they had that uncanny valley thing
going.

Alan: Yeah, those are creepy.

Christina: Yeah. And so if
you’re not familiar with the term “uncanny valley,&

Even with all
the advancements in CG animation, it can’t capture that distinctly
lifelike essence that a real human exudes. But XR can capture that
essence — volumetrically. Metastage CEO Christina Heller drops by to
discuss the process of transcribing the aura of a person into XR
space.

Alan: I have a really special
guest today; Christina Heller, the CEO of Metastage. Metastage is an
XR studio that puts real performances into AR and VR through
volumetric capture. Metastage is the first US partner for the
Microsoft Mixed Reality Capture Software, and their soundstage is
located in Culver City, California. Prior to Metastage, Christina
co-founded and led VR Playhouse. So, between Metastage and VR
Playhouse, she’s helped produce over 80 immersive experiences. To
learn more about Christina Heller and Metastage, you can visit
metastage.com.

Welcome to the show, Christina.

Christina: Thank you so much for
having me.

Alan: It’s my absolute pleasure.
We met, maybe three years ago? At VRTO?

Christina: Yes, that’s correct.

Alan: Yeah, we got to try your
incredible experiences, mostly in the field of 360 video. And you’ve
kind of taken the leap to the next level of this stuff. So, talk to
us about Metastage.

Christina: Sure. As you said,
it’s a company that specializes in volumetric capture. I think, in
the future, you’ll see other things, but at the moment, we specialize
in volumetric capture. Specifically, using the Microsoft Mixed
Reality Capture system, which is an incredibly sophisticated way of
taking real people and authentic performances, and then bringing them
into full AR and VR experiences, where you can move around these
characters, and it’s as if they are doing that action right in front
of you.

Alan: Let’s just go back a
little bit. What is volumetric capture, for those who have no idea
what volumetric capture is?

Christina: Sure. For a long
time, if you wanted to put real people into AR/VR experiences, you
had basically two ways of doing it. You could either animate it; so,
you would try to create — using mo-cap and animation — the most
lifelike creation of a human character possible. Think, like, video
games; when you go play a video game and they’ve got a character
playing a scene out with you. If you wanted to put real people into
these XR experiences, that was the most common way to do it.

Then there was also volumetric capture,
which, for a long time, just wasn’t quite — I would say – at the
technological sophistication that people wanted, to integrate it into
projects. Volumetric capture — thanks to the Microsoft system, I
think — is finally really ready to be used in a major way in all
these projects. And basically what it does is, we use 106 video
cameras, and we film a performance from every possible angle. So,
we’re getting a ton of data. We use 53 RGB cameras and 53 infrared
cameras. The infrared is what we use to calculate the depth and the
volume of the person that’s performing at the center of the stage.
The RGB cameras are what’s capturing all the texture and visual data.

Then, we put that through the Microsoft
software, and on the other end of it you get a fully-3D asset that
really maintains the integrity and fidelity of the performance that
was captured on the stage. Unlike some of the animated assets —
because this was kind of the challenge — the animated assets, they
might get kind of there, but they had that uncanny valley thing
going.

Alan: Yeah, those are creepy.

Christina: Yeah. And so if
you’re not familiar with the term “uncanny valley,”
basically with people and animals – or like, dynamic, organic,
moving objects — if you get it kind of close, but not fully there in
terms of it looking lifelike, you have this inherent rejection of it.
You just… there’s this distaste, like “ew.” It’s called
“the uncanny valley.” It’s close, but it’s not really
there.

So, volumetric capture — and
specifically the captures we’re doing in Metastage — don’t have that
uncanny valley going on. When you look at them, they look like real
people. They maintain all of the nuances and the micro-expressions
and the subtleties of the person that performed on the stage. So you
can bring these fully authentic, fully real captures into your AR and
VR experiences. It just kind of brings the whole thing to life. So,
that’s how I would describe it. It’s volumetric video. It’s a video
asset, but it’s fully-3D, and you can easily integrate it with six
degrees of freedom into AR and VR experiences.

Alan: I’m going to break it down
even simpler: this means you can now step into the movie, and
participate in the movie as it’s going on around you.

Christina: Yeah, correct.

Alan: So exciting.

Christina: One of the things
that I’ve been saying is — part of the reason I’m really passionate
about volumetric capture as a tool inside of the greater medium is —
it’s the real person’s seat at the table. As we move more into these
virtual worlds, it’s important that real people are represented in
them. And when you watch something that was captured volumetrically,
you know that it was captured live. It wasn’t reanimated. It wasn’t
puppeted. This is something that you can watch with the same awe that
you would a live performance happening right in front of you. And I
think that that’s really important, that authenticity.

Alan: I really think we’ve come
a long way with computer and CGI and being able to animate things,
but there really is no substitute for a real actor or actress.

Christina: Absolutely. There is
something about humanity — and it’s part of the reason that
animators are struggling to get it as lifelike as possible — there’s
just something about the way people move, the way that they speak.
There’s just these little nuances that are impossible to fake. It’s
part of what makes watching something that was captured
volumetrically — or something in a film or a TV show — part of what
makes it so satisfying, is to capture all those little quirks, and
those little things that make people, people.

Alan: I think in a world where
AIs and robotics are going to replace a lot of our jobs, it’s nice to
know that we’ll still have some. [laughs]

Christina: Yeah. And I like
connecting with real people, and I like seeing real performers. And
when we’re talking about celebrities or public figures, or the CEO at
your company; I don’t want to watch an animated CEO give a board
presentation. I want to see the real guy. When it comes to anybody in
our society that’s “the real deal,” volumetric really is
the only real way to capture them for these experiences.

Alan: You touched on something
that is really, I think, interesting. You mentioned CEO
presentations, or investor presentations. We could talk about the
entertainment aspects of this — and we met up at the New York
Volumetric Filmmakers event and you spoke at that event, and I was
blown away by the stuff you guys are doing — but a lot of it is
creative and arts and entertainment, which are businesses as well.
But are there companies that are leveraging this technology now, to
broadcast their CEO or whatever? How are companies using this
technology now?

Christina: We’ve done a number
of B2B captures in Metastage, and I’m excited to do more of them.
It’s exciting to see other industries outside of the entertainment
field getting involved with XR, and starting to see how they can use
this tool to not only improve workflow and make money, but also just
to dazzle. That is an exciting opportunity right now, to just be
really ahead of the curve and do something that nobody’s done. You
still have that opportunity right now with augmented and virtual
reality.

Alan: You just mentioned
something: how to “dazzle” using this technology. I think
we always hammer down on “what’s the ROI? What’s the ROI?”
There is an intangible ROI, in the dazzle.

Christina: Absolutely, yeah. And
you got to make sure you partner with the right people, because
you’re not going to dazzle unless you’ve got the right production
team to do it. But if done right, I mean, that’s one of the most fun
parts of my job, is getting to watch people’s eyes light up when they
first see a person appear right in front of them — almost like a
human hologram — using volumetric capture. So, yes, we have done a
few different business applications, and one of them was specifically
for that use case that I just described.

We had an executive come in and do a
board presentation for his CEO on the Hololens. Basically, he came in
and he captured the beginning and end of his presentation,
volumetrically. He went out on the stage, we used 106 cameras, we had
a teleprompter. And basically, the presentation was about the
company’s plans to use technology to build their future, and how
technology was going to affect the future of their company.

By the way, I’m going to use the term
hologram to describe it, because I think that’s an easy way to wrap
your head around what you’re looking at. There’s questions of whether
that’s the correct term or not, but we’ll just call it a human
hologram, when it’s integrated into an augmented reality experience.
So he was using the Microsoft Hololens, which is some glasses that
you wear on your head, and it allows you to place digital objects
into the real world.

So we captured him holographically, and
using the teleprompter, he gave this intro to the CEO. Then it went
into a data visualization sequence. Hologram disappears. Now he’s
showing — using data in a three dimensional space — some of the
ways the technology is going to transform and affect their business.
And this, by the way, is a huge, huge, huge company. I’m not
sure whether I’m allowed to use it as a case study publicly, so I’m
being a little discreet, but a huge company. Anyway, he gives the
intro. There’s awesome data visualization showing how technology’s
going to transform their business. And then it ends with him coming
back and kind of wrapping it up. He said that, in the 35 years he’s
been working at the company, that this was the first time he’s ever
seen the CEO smile. So that was kind of a nice thing.

Alan: Wow. That’s incredible.

Christina: And it’s also now
preserved forever. He only had to do the presentation once. He can
now show it to anybody, anywhere. It’s this evergreen piece of
content that will live on. Incidentally, the executive that we
captured — who had been at the company for 35 years — is leaving
this fall. And so, in some ways, this presentation was his legacy;
talking about his dreams for how he wants the company to progress
when he’s gone. That was really cool.

And then also one thing we’ll do at
Metastage — which I think is always cool — is while he’s in there
— you know, this is a guy that has a family and some kids — I said,
“you know, well, while you’re here, why don’t we record
something for your family, too?”

Alan: Awww, I love that.

Christina: Yeah. You always feel
the energy shift when that moment happens. He got up there and said,
“it’s February 12th, 2019. And I want to tell my family this,
this, this, and this, and tell them how much I love them and how
proud I am.” And it was just this moment where he realized —
now, he’s not going anywhere; he’s not like a super old guy — but he
realized that this little piece of content might actually live on,
and be something that his family could cherish later. And so that was
also a nice moment. And that’s just one example. I’ve got more.

Alan: The preservation of
people, places, and things using volumetric is beautiful. I know a
mutual friend of ours — Simon
Che de Boer — he’s running around the world capturing places; he
does photogrammetry of places. If you take the photogrammetry that
he’s creating of these real places around the world, and you take the
videogrammetry that you guys are doing and put people into those
places? The possibilities are literally endless.

Christina: Definitely. And as a
former documentary filmmaker and journalist, making sure that real
life is preserved and a part of this new virtual landscape — I think
— is an important mission.

Alan: I agree. There’s places in
the world where we still have unrest, and cultural landmarks are
being destroyed. We have to — have to, have to — at least
get them as a digital [simulacrum] — you know, obviously, if we
can’t protect them physically — if we can get a digital version of
them… the fire in Paris is a great example of that. Notre Dame
Cathedral. They have rudimentary LiDAR scans of the building; they’re
not perfect, but they can recreate the building digitally, and then
use those three-dimensional drawings to recreate the actual building.

Christina: Yeah.

Alan: It will never be the same,
but at least they can get close.

Christina: Yeah. And with
volumetric capture, you don’t have to be as concerned that… first
of all, it’s really, really easy process. You don’t have to put on a
mo-cap suit or points, and go out and make a bunch of different
facial expressions. Super high-res face scanning, with the purpose of
being animated later, is a really, really intense process.

Alan: Oh, my goodness. People
don’t realize. It’s a full day, just to be able to say “hello.”

Christina: Yeah, it’s a full
day, and it’s really intense on the performers. Volumetric capture is
super easy on the talent. You just go out on the stage, action, cut,
and you’re done. Off you go.

On our end, we like to take a little
more care than that. We’ll do some tests to make sure your hair looks
right, or your clothes look right, and all of that. We’ve done
celebrities at Metastage that we’ve had a very, very limited amount
of time with. But as long as we can give them a once-over to make
sure they’re volumetrically friendly, they can go out and be off in
no time at all. And you have the added comfort of knowing that this
isn’t going to be something that is puppeted and rigged to say things
that you didn’t want to say. This is really you. It’s capturing you
and making sure that you are coming across in the way that you
actually want to in your real life. It’s a preservation technique.
It’s a performance tool, but it’s nothing to be nervous about. That’s
one of the things that I want to make sure gets across, because I can
imagine an actor, for instance, getting nervous about the increased
digitization of actors.

Alan: “What are you going
to do with my avatar?”

Christina: Exactly.

Alan: It’s interesting, because
some friends of mine, they own a company and they do photorealistic
avatar creation. And they have a side business producing adult
content avatars.

Christina: Right. You don’t even
have to go much further than that to understand how that could cause
some pause for an actor that takes pride in the work they do and how
they do it. Volumetric capture really is video, but it’s a fully
three-dimensional video. That’s a key differentiator.

Alan: So what are some other use
cases that you’re seeing pop up for this type of technology?

Christina: Well, one of the
great projects we did this past fall — and I can talk about it — is
we did something with the CEO and president of the Royal Caribbean
Cruise Line. They’re giving you a virtual tour of the ship. And so,
this has some great and broad applications for a lot of businesses
that, maybe, do a lot of onsite tours. One of the great things that
VR and AR can give you is access. Access to places you can’t normally
go. Access to people you couldn’t normally engage with.

So, there’s two ways of doing the
virtual tours. But the way that the Royal Caribbean did it was the
CEO and president give you a tour of the ship using the Royal
Caribbean Celebrity Cruise app. You can basically make their
holograms appear in different rooms of the ship, and they tell you
about the design, the features, how the ship was built, and why it
was built the way it was built. That is an app that anybody can
access. If you type in “Celebrity Cruise app,” you can
access the CEO’s intro when you’re not on the ship, and the rest of
the holograms can only be accessed on the ship. So, it’s kind of this
cool site-specific augmented reality experience.

Alan: That’s really cool. So,
you have to be on the ship to actually experience the full thing?

Christina: Exactly. You can see
the intro — which is really cool, and you can get an idea for it.
Richard pops up, and he’s holding a model of the Celebrity Cruise
ship in his hands. And he says, “we built this ship using 3D
technology — the most advanced 3D technology. And so we thought it
was only appropriate to use the most advanced 3D capture technology
to explain to you why we built the ship and some of the features.”

Alan: Amazing.

Christina: At that point, he
puts the ship down, and you can explore a little bit of it on the
app. But the rest of it, you have to be on the ship to experience.

Alan: Is this an AR app for your
phone?

Christina: Yes, it’s an AR app
for your phone. Another fun selling point of the Microsoft system and
Volucap system that we use at Metastage is that, the assets are
really, really beautiful, and also super small file sizes, so you can
actually activate them using a mobile device. So yes, using your
phone, you open the app and like magic, he appears right in front of
you, and you can walk around him as if he’s standing right there. He
integrates fully into the scene.

Alan: Incredible. Can you just
send
me the link
to the app and I’ll put it in the show notes, for anybody who
wants to give it a try.

Christina: Yeah, totally. So,
that’s great because it gives people access to Richard and Lisa, who
would never get access to them normally. And from the CEO side of
things, it allows them to reach their customers in this really
intimate and friendly way, without actually having to go out and
shake everybody’s hand. For businesses that maybe do a lot of tours
on site, but would like to give access to more people without
actually having to take the time, energy, and resources to give them
the physical tour, you can do a capture of the facility or the
warehouse or wherever it is, and then integrate your CEO or star
employee or whatever into that environment. And you can give somebody
a realistic and authentic virtual tour of that place without having
to — like I said — dedicate the time and resources of actually
showing them in person.

Alan: You know, this comes back
to something that pops up on every single episode of the show;
training. Immediately, when you said that you could give people a
tour. Imagine: for new employees, working on a cruise ship must be a
daunting experience. The training just to train people where things
are on the ship, it’s got to be incredible to do that. And one thing
that I think Metastage and volumetric capture will really drive home
is the fact that some people are really, really great at training,
and some people are not so great. Maybe they’re great at creating the
content, but not presenting it. Now you can have the best person
train every single employee.

Christina: Exactly. You can get
your star employee to walk them through the process, show them
physically how to do it – which, depending on what field you’re in,
being able to show somebody with one’s body how to do something can
be crucially important. And you’ve immortalized them. That employee
may move on to another position, but you’ll always have that spirit
and that knowledge captured for years to come.

Alan: Employee on-boarding,
training; but I also love this idea of being able to download the
app, see it, it says, “well, the rest of it is on the ship.”
I think there’s so much that can be done with this type of capture.
We’re only really just scratching the surface.

Now, Metastage is not the only
volumetric capture system out there, correct?

Christina: Correct, yeah.

Alan: There’s 8i. There’s what,
Intel Studios? Maybe some other ones that we don’t know about. But I
think there’s more companies realizing the potential of this. What
sets Metastage apart — in my opinion, it’s obvious, because I’ve
seen the results — your partnership with Microsoft really sets it
apart. I’ll let you speak to that.

Christina: Sure. A lot of
volumetric capture stages, from just the outside appearance, will
look similar. You’ll go in and you’ll see a bunch of cameras, all
facing inward at a stage, so it can look on the surface like they’re
all the same. But the truth is, the real magic is in the software.
What the Microsoft Mixed Reality software does better than any other
volumetric system on the market is not only create really clean,
high-fidelity captures that look great in the body, in the face, and
don’t have a lot of artifacting, and look good from every angle that
you happen to be viewing the captured asset from. We are also able to
compress those captures to super tiny file sizes, which — if you’ve
ever tried to make a project for virtual or augmented reality — you
know how important that is.

If you’re making a training app for
your employees, or you’re doing something like the Royal Caribbean
cruise line, you can’t have a 10-gigabyte application when this whole
thing is done. It needs to be something small that isn’t going to
take up a ton of room on their phone and that’s easy to distribute.
There’s other things, but that alone is the key. Ask any other
volumetric caption stage how big their final file size is. Microsoft
has just really got it down to some really workable file sizes. We
know that you’re doing it — let’s say for the HTC Vive or the Oculus
Rift, or you’re trying to do it for a mobile phone device — we can
export at different settings to optimize for mobile AR. Or if we can
push it a little more for VR, then we can add a little bit more
quality. But regardless, like the Royal Caribbean cruise app, when
you download it and you see Richard, he looks really fantastic. So we
can get our files sizes down to… for a minute of volumetric
capture? At 50 megabytes. That’s 5-0 megabytes.

Alan: Holy crap.

Christina: Yeah.

Alan: 50 megabytes.

Christina: For a full minute of
capture. And then it scales up, depending on our export settings and
what your final platform is. That’s pretty incredible.

Alan: It is really amazing. I
think what people don’t realize is that when you’re pushing out this
type of 3D content for a phone, for example, it doesn’t actually have
to be as high-res as you would think, because you’re already looking
through a high-res screen at another image in 3D space. It has to
look clear, but people are like, “oh yeah, I need 4K video in
AR.” Whoa, wait a second. You’re looking at a screen within a
screen. The maximum of it is really only going to be 720p. So there’s
some little tricks that people don’t realize.

Christina: Right. And I show
people the Royal Caribbean app all the time, and they think that
looks better than any volumetric capture they’ve ever seen. And
that’s at our smallest export setting.

Long story short: quality at low file
sizes is the key difference between Metastage and other capture
facilities. But there’s also some added benefits. For instance,
there’s the Microsoft toolset that we deliver along with our
captures, which includes gaze retargeting. One of the things is, when
you’re watching biometric capture — because it’s an authentic
performance of what happened — if I’m watching it, and I step to the
right or the left, it might look like the person is looking past me.
So gaze retargeting will allow the head to subtly follow the viewer.
If you’re trying to make it look like the capture is looking at the
person watching it, there can be a subtle gaze retargeting where the
head just sort of follows the viewer. That’s a standard tool that we
deliver with our captures to the client, along with some relighting
tools for game engine. Almost like… I want to call them “Instagram
filters” for the capture, that allow you to give a little bit of
a dramatic look, or sunset lighting. Those all go along with it as
well.

Beyond that, we offer full end-to-end
project integration. When we first opened, we were offering just holo
capture. But it’s become clear that for some of our clients, they
don’t necessarily have access to game engine developers or
environment creation. So if you come to Metastage and you’re
interested in doing this kind of project, we can produce the project
from conception to completion for you. Or, if you’re a production
company or agency that already has access to those professionals,
then we can simply just do the holo capture and deliver that to you.

Alan: That’s incredible. So, I
know there’s a lot of people listening that are probably thinking,
“oh man, I want to use this. I want to jump in.” Let’s talk
about price. I don’t know if this is something that’s really
expensive. What does a minute of footage cost to develop? What does
the process involve? If somebody wants to dive right in and say,
“yeah, I want to host a two-minute video in AR for my
shareholders,” what would something like that [cost]?

Christina: Well, the prices
start around $15,000, and then it goes up from there, obviously. It
is — I would say — very comparable to what commercial video
production rates are, if that’s something you’re familiar with. And
it’s much, much cheaper than mo-cap and animation.

Alan: To put things in
perspective, to create a photorealistic digital avatar — rig and
everything — you’re looking at, what, $10,000 a second?

Christina: Yeah. I mean, it
depends on the team you work with. It depends on how detailed you
want the face and head to look. But I would say that that’s the price
it costs to get through the door and get something going. And then
obviously, the more content you’re trying to capture, the prices go
up from there.

Alan: I’m really excited. I know
you invited me for a tour of the stage. I haven’t been to LA yet
since we talked about it, but I definitely want to come down and
check it out.

The other thing that I noticed about
Metastage — and I watched the video that you showed — is that it’s
designed like a studio. It’s designed to be in congruence with what
actors and actresses and people doing professional video are used to.

Christina: Absolutely. That is
important, and our production-savvy client-facing staff want you to
have a seamless client experience, and a fun production day; that at
the end of it, you say, “oh my gosh, that was really fun and
easy. I’d like to do more of that.” And so, “easy and fun”
has been kind of a mantra at Metastage since the beginning, and I
think we’ve been successful with that. All of our clients have had a
really good experience, and then on top of it, were surprised when
integrating the assets that it was as plug-and-play as it is.

So yeah, if you’re interested at all,
please don’t hesitate to shoot us a line. You can contact us on our
website and we’ll do consultation with you. We’ll hold your hand.
We’ll work to get your goals achieved using this, and hopefully
something that will be great for your business for years to come.

Alan: Well, is there anything
else that you want to share before we wrap this up? It’s been a great
interview and I can’t wait to record a message. You know, you
mentioned about the family, and I’ve been thinking of it ever since.
I just want to record not only myself, but my children at their age
now. Because as they grow up, you’re never going to get them at this
age again. And it’s like capturing them in a time capsule.

Christina: Totally. And that’s
one thing we have been talking about, having a different pricing
model for something like that. I think that’s really important. I
totally understand the desire to want to capture your family; almost
like a family portrait in this really interesting, three-dimensional
way, that you could then stand next to later and marvel at the
changes. Long story short, I do think that at some point we will have
a way for average people to come and capture their families, as well.
We’re just figuring out exactly how that works with our professional
soundstage.