The speaker left Google to start their own company, Vray Pictures, which focuses on creating immersive content using virtual reality (VR) and machine learning. They believe that these technologies can work together to create artistic and functional experiences. They discuss their collaboration with the Google machine learning team on the Deep Dream project, which involved creating VR experiences based on AI-generated images. They also touch on the importance of interpretation and framing in storytelling within the VR medium.

- The speaker believes that storytelling is not as important in VR as it is in other mediums.
- They describe storytelling as a means to an end, and in VR, the focus should be on crafting worlds that transmit the core values of the story.
- The speaker discusses the concept of flow in video games and how certain games allow for exploration and freedom while still offering a linear narrative.
- They mention specific games like Myst and Red Dead Redemption as examples of this balance between exploration and storytelling.
- The speaker emphasizes the importance of embracing technology and using its limitations to enhance storytelling in immersive experiences.
- They mention games like Florence and Black Box as examples of innovative storytelling that utilize the unique capabilities of mobile devices.
- The speaker discusses their transition from working at Google to exploring new projects and ideas in the VR space.

- The speaker discusses the human condition and the inherently funny experiences and spaces we create for ourselves, such as watching the Weather Channel.
- They talk about their experience creating VR content and the importance of understanding how spaces engage with us.
- They mention their desire to work in a 3 DoF environment and explore the basic building blocks of VR.
- They mention four upcoming projects, including one with a big IP, one with an architect, a fringe game, and an immersive audio project.
- They emphasize the importance of immersive audio in creating a sense of being in a space.
- They discuss the challenges of storytelling and the flexibility in defining roles in the creative field.
- They mention the concept of probabilistic experiential editing and the need for creativity and confidence in defining new terms and concepts in emerging mediums.
- They predict that VR will evolve beyond its current name in the next 10 years.

- The speaker believes that VR and AR will coexist and fulfill each other's gaps in the market.
- They mention the shift in Google's team names from Google VR to Google AR VR, indicating the convergence of the two technologies.
- The speaker believes that compelling content is lacking in both VR and AR, but sees potential for the two technologies to work together.
- They mention the potential for VR to have a meditative and therapeutic quality, such as in hospitals.
- The speaker shares a personal story about realizing they needed glasses while working on VR due to stereo disparities.
- They discuss the potential for VR to create powerful emotional experiences and the ethical concerns of capturing and reliving all memories.
- The speaker expresses hope that as long as harmless and enjoyable experiences like hedgehogs on plasma screens exist, there is hope for the adoption of VR and AR.
- They conclude that VR and AR are currently bringing joy to people and have not instilled fear like other technologies.

- The speaker discusses their experience with AI and how it has become a normal part of their daily life.
- They talk about their background in filmmaking and their transition to working with VR at Google.
- They explain the process of adapting traditional storytelling to VR and the importance of finding the truth in the story.
- They discuss the considerations and limitations of VR technology in creating a meaningful experience for the audience.
- The speaker gives examples of storytelling in video games and how they can evoke emotions and create a narrative.

- The speaker discusses the key but non-obvious thing missing from VR to become mainstream, which is focusing on areas beyond entertainment and games, such as education and other professions.
- They emphasize the importance of using VR technology artfully and finding where it can have the most impact.
- The speaker talks about their experience with social VR, including the potential for storytelling and the fear of negative experiences and mistreatment.
- They mention the need to be careful when creating VR experiences, particularly those involving guns, as they can have a more visceral impact on users.
- The speaker shares their love for their German Shepherd mix dog and how VR can be used to capture meaningful memories.
- They express excitement about exploring the conversation between VR and reality and how it can impact our lives.

- The speaker left Google to start their own VR company, Vray Pictures, focusing on immersive content and machine learning.
- They discuss collaboration with Google on the Deep Dream project, creating VR experiences from AI-generated images.
- The speaker emphasizes the importance of crafting worlds that transmit core values in VR storytelling.
- They mention games like Myst and Red Dead Redemption as examples of balancing exploration and storytelling.
- The importance of embracing technology and using its limitations to enhance storytelling in immersive experiences is emphasized.
- The speaker discusses their transition from Google to exploring new projects in the VR space.
- They mention upcoming projects, including one with a big IP, an architect, a fringe game, and an immersive audio project.
- The speaker predicts that VR will evolve beyond its current name in the next 10 years.
- VR and AR will coexist and fill each other's gaps in the market.
- The potential for VR to have a meditative and therapeutic quality is mentioned.
- The ethical concerns of capturing and reliving memories in VR are discussed.
- The speaker expresses hope for the adoption of VR and AR, as they bring joy and lack fear.
- The importance of finding the truth in storytelling and adapting it to VR is emphasized.
- The need to focus on areas beyond entertainment and games, such as education, is mentioned.
- The potential for storytelling and the fear of negative experiences in social VR are discussed.
- The speaker shares their love for their dog and how VR can capture meaningful memories.

Jessica Brillhart - https://twitter.com/brillhart - is the founder of Vrai Pictures - https://www.vrai.pictures/ They’re an independent immersive content studio.

Before founding Vrai, Jessica was the Principal Filmmaker for VR at Google.

The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon - https://twitter.com/craigcannon

***

Questions
00:00 - Starting Vrai

10:00 - Story in film vs. VR

12:15 - Gaming

19:30 - Conditions at Omaha - The Weather Channel in VR - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uu3hyBXNmX0

22:15 - Jessica's upcoming projects

27:25 - Andrew Peterman asks - How long until we'll be able to create 3D 360° video from cell phone hardware+amazing software?

29:50 - Matt asks - Where do you see VR in 10 years?

30:05 - Michael Hodapp asks - Does VR still have long term mass adoption potential, or will the market shift to AR?

32:00 - Will people be in VR for a significant percentage of their time in the future?

40:35 - Virginia Pigato asks - How can a traditional storyteller adapt to vr?

49:50 - Can Olcer asks - What key but non-obvious thing is missing for VR to become mainstream?

51:45 - Matt MacVey asks - What are some of the most exciting or scariest parts of social VR and what is the storytelling potential of social VR?

55:15 - Tony Cassara asks - What kind of dog do you have?

So I, this actually ties into my past actually.

I started as their first filmmaker with the creative lab.

I moved on, 5 years later into the Google VR, on the Google VR team, which is now the Google AR VR team.

I don't know, they might be different now, I don't know.

But the, so I became the principal filmmaker for VR at Google, which again, talk about titles, it's like the fanciest of titles.

So I helped develop, so jump, which was their, VR live action kind of capture ecosystem, for live action, VR footage.

And I was making stuff and working with the engineers and the more that I was working there I think I found it was very, very tough to be reactive.

In the beginning it was super easy because it wasn't, like VR was still pretty new and no 1 really knew what we should be doing with it yet.

And then once it started to solidify, it was much harder to turn the big ship towards the things that I thought were important.

Namely, you know, I thought that there was something really interesting parallels between the machine learning team

the Google brain team and also what was happening on the VR team.

And just in terms of the mediums, how similar they were both in how they've become more present in our lives, how they both kind of were like, everyone was really excited and then, oh no, it doesn't work.

And then it was like, wait, we found this weird thing that actually makes it work great.

So like for VR, it was like cell phone technology.

And with machine learning, I was like, right, logic is wrong.

Like it's actually preventing us from doing the right thing and then teaching these, you know, systems how to learn.

And so suddenly they both are on this trajectory.

And from a creative standpoint, you could see some really interesting stuff coming from both teams.

And I felt that there was a lot of ways that we could work together on stuff.

I also felt that there were lots of interesting pockets of artistic pockets where we could create content.

It wasn't going to be like, you know, with the big studios, it wasn't going to be like the big IPs.

It was really going to be, in these places that needed it, probably more than Hollywood And, you know, like thinking about ways that it could be functional and helpful for people, but also be artistic.

Cause like films actually serve a function serves a purpose, you know?

And so VR could also do it, any sort of immersive content can.

So I felt it was all, and I had before also worked with, I had worked on some stuff kind of envisioning what the future would be like when glass was around.

And it clearly worked because everyone now is wearing glass, so we're great.

So for me it was like I'm really interested in this other layer of immersive stuff, but I also believe that it's not 1 technology or another technology.

I believe it's all kind of going towards something.

So a combination of that belief and wanting to be more reactive and honestly just working on the stuff that I felt was important to me to work on.

Once that all sort of became more clear, I felt that once I had left Google, the best course of action for me was to actually create my own company.

And so Vray Pictures is the company, Vray for short, and it has all the letters in it.

But, So I didn't want all the letters in my name because I always thought that was a little weird for me.

I mean, it exists in the ecosystem and some people wear it really nicely.

For me and my company, I was like, I don't know.

And then I was in Paris with my partner and he had said, I had asked him, you know, what's the word for true?

And he had known I was looking for a name.

So V-R-A-I means true and actually means real depending on how you use it.

So at that point you're like, okay, well, I can't not.

And so, you know, this makes absolute sense.

And so I started the company in January and it really does in a very odd, eerie, but wonderful way reflect the stuff that I care about, which is how all these letters, all these, you know, you can pick it apart even in thinking, you know, it's, it's visual arts, it's a mixed reality.

It's all this, all these various things that we, we, we talk about, we'll all come together, work together in really wonderful ways and actually lead to whatever this new immersive environment will be.

And I think, you know, right now we're seeing each as like these separate paths and I think it's really not gonna matter.

I think you see the same thing happens in science.

It's happening right now where like, physicists and mathematicians and CS people are all learning Python.

And it's converging into 1 thing, just through computers.

So maybe your deep dream project is the most clear example?

I mean, that was really funny because that's sort of, so in Seattle, so the Jump team, I think is still in Seattle, I don't know, but they, so the engineers that are working on the, like the computer vision people that are working on the Google live action VR rigs are planted in Seattle, the same office.

And it used to be on the same floor as a, as the, a Google machine learning team that was literally adjacent, like next to each other.

Kind of, well, they're both computer vision teams.

So I think that was the whole, that was the reasoning behind, I don't know.

But I would visit the Seattle team and then I was fortunate enough to make friends with this particular machine learning team, AI team.

It was run by this guy Blaise Aguirre, E.R.Kes, who's amazing.

So him and some friends of mine who were working on this team were literally sitting 2 feet away from us.

And I had gotten an email from Clay actually on the Google VR team saying AR VR team or whatever had emailed me and put me in touch with with them saying you know they're actually they're announcing Deep Dream they really need a video person to help them out.

And so, you know, they're asking me what I had.

I originally just showed them stills of the stuff that I actually filmed in VR.

And we started having this conversation around, well, I was trying to push on them the idea that, well, if you're able to dream up on top of the stills of these VR clips, then surely you could do it in such a way that we can actually experience it in VR.

And it was a bit of a back and forth being like, well, the fidelity might not be that great.

I don't know if it's going to be interesting.

And then finally they, they, Doug Fritz, who was working on the team

the time, and he, he actually gave it a shot, worked his magic and we were like, Oh, this is actually kind of compelling.

I mean, we're just like dreaming up on stuff and it was really, it was really fun because I think, there was no expectation.

It was literally just us working together to see what we can come up with.

And we actually worked with Ross Goodwin on having his system, which was trained on Faulkner and Vonnegut separately, to actually write prose about what it saw.

And then it would recite it on using this voice Myra, which is an Irish speaking, Irish dialect speaking, Apple voice, Apple, you know, Mac OS voice, which made it really just unbearable because it was like, and we both sort of like, this is kind of interesting, but it's like, it's sort of calls to mind, like less is more in a VR space.

It's like, once everything's like kind of acid trippy, like hearing this like Irish American speaking, fabricated lady speaking Vonnegut interpretations to you just isn't ideal.

I mean, it makes sense when you like change out every variable, it just completely throws you for a loop.

Because it's all kind of close, but sort of nonsensical.

It is, I mean, I think what's great about what Ross does is that it actually does, It is very poetic, but it gets dark very quickly because well, at Vonnegut, Vonnegut is a little bit more upbeat, but Faulkner is like, you know, like, so, I consider her a she, cause I hear Myra all the time, but it's, she's, she sort of says these phrases that are like sometimes very kind of like normal normalized about like the world, like, you know, a man with a hat on a hilltop, you know, why is he there?

What is, you know, she'll go off on that.

And then She'll, then she'll be like the darkness, it looms.

And we're all just like, this is, this is weird.

I mean, what's interesting is that there's, it's all pretty surface stuff.

And the depth is stuff that we bring to it, which I really thought, I think that part to me is very fascinating.

Like how we interpret it is really where the story, where the emotional foundation comes from.

So this is actually like a big topic I wanted to jump into, which is like framing, right?

So in cinema, obviously it's a director, cinematographer working together to create the picture that transmits a story to you.

But in VR, like obviously you have a certain amount of control, but how do you think about that, like the framing in the storytelling?

And I think that's the main problem is that people think, you know, I think story is extremely important to the medium.

I think storytelling is kind of like, it's sort of like you want to get to something that's important.

you take a pill to make you feel that way.

Like say like, a sleeping, I need to go to sleep.

I don't recommend that saying that's something you should do.

I think storytelling is the act of taking that pill.

So it's like, yeah, you may take that pill.

It's a means to an end, but in itself it's not the end.

And so for film, storytelling was the way that you got to story.

In a lot of mediums, the telling part was actually really important because you couldn't actually take those people and put them where you were thinking.

And now you're in a medium where you can.

It's like if you think of it as, you know, kinetic versus potential story.

It's the idea that actively I am trying to take you and put you over there.

So it's this kind of active thing that's, that's occurring for VR.

The way that I've been looking at it is it's more potential story It's I'm crafting worlds that you where you when you go there the story is something that you can decode, right?

it's like how do these worlds transmit the story or represent the story, right?

So that no matter how you interact with that world, you're able to sort of decipher or get to the core values of what that story is trying to transmit.

It's a bit in the same line as like an Aesop fable in a way.

It's not about the turtle or the bunny, it could be anything,

It's about that's the core value of the story, that's what we want the takeaway to be.

And so in my mind in VR or any immersive content, if you can get that piece, that truth transmitted to that person, doesn't matter what kind of experience they have.

They walk away with what was most important

And how do you think about that in the context of video games?

Do you think that is just a transition to immersive content?

Do you think it's there for certain games already?

I think certain games provide, what's interesting about games for me is this idea of flow, which is, it's very musical in nature, the best games are, where they give you the capacity to explore at your leisure.

know, some of my favorite games have been like something like Myst.

You know, I actually love Red Dead Redemption a lot because, you know, yeah, okay, it's really stressful.

This like rail that we're putting you on.

Maybe you just want to take a break and train some horses over there, and that's fine.

And then you can duck back into the story when you want to.

This idea that you can be in a completely explorable place, you can do all sorts of things that you want, but then there is this rail that you could go on and duck in and out of.

It is definitely a different kind of game if it's like, okay, you do have this and that's all you can do and you can't move forward until you do that.

Like a super Mario brothers is a great example.

And I mean, I think that's something that we need to be aware of as creators in the space, too.

Like different games serve different purposes.

Pong's different than Super Mario Brothers, which is different than Myst, which is different in some ways, or a lot of ways from Red Dead Redemption too.

Like Red Dead Redemption at least gives you, you know, elements that you're used to dealing with.

Like it works sort of similarly the way the world works.

Like, okay, that's a gun, that's an evil person, that's like, it's easy to kind of decipher it.

In Myst, the whole point was that you had no idea what you were doing.

You're pulling lever, the first thing you do is there's a book on the ground, and then you go, and then there's a lever, and you don't know what the lever fricking does.

And you're like, is this gonna be the rest of the game?

I feel like I don't really know what these things do.

And many of those games like pre-internet were so hard.

Now you just go on YouTube and it takes 2 minutes to figure out what you're doing.

Actually, 1 of my, there was an old game from the 90s called Amber Journeys Beyond, which is actually, has been an inspiration on a recent project.

And it's really great because there's some, well, it was just a really great game.

It was sort of a Myst-ish copy made by 2 guys.

I don't think they made anything after that.

But they ended up, well, you can't play it anymore, unless you have an emulator and a piece of hardware that will help you run it.

But they have, there's a bunch of playthroughs on YouTube.

And I actually sat there with a glass of wine and literally watched my, I remember, it was such a beautiful experience, actually, where I'm like, okay, I actually love watching other people play these games.

And the commentary is really beautiful, too.

I think 1 of my recent favorite games is from Davey Reid in The Beginner's Guide.

It's wonderful because it literally sets it up and says this is a 45 minute game because most of these games you're like, I don't know if it's gonna take up my life, but it's basically you're on rails, but it's him and he kind of gives you, he voiceovers it and it's about this other game creator who's created kind of these weird psychological, like very basic games.

It's like he builds this character that you never see.

And this character is someone you explore through the pieces of games as this character is made.

And Davey is taking you through it as if he knows this person, but then you start to question whether or not this narrator actually knows this person or not, or if this person gave Davey the permission to showcase his games like this.

So suddenly you start to question everything As you're going through this kind of game, I think it's really brilliant.

I think any game that kind of takes the format and then through your interactive, through the interactivity, through your agency, kind of makes you feel these different things.

games, especially, and I think that is where immersive needs to go.

Florence, which I think just won the Apple Design Award for like best designed game.

This guy, Ken Wong, who was the designer on Monument Valley as well, started his own company in Melbourne.

He's an amazing creator and he, this game Florence is all about using, you use your phone the way that you would normally use your phone, But the story, you feel for the story based upon the way that you would feel for conversations and interactions with your phone.

So moments of frustration is like not hearing back from the person for like 3 minutes.

Like how fast you like how you reveal things, like the whole idea of swiping.

It's not we try to shove a lot of this stuff through preconceived notions and conventions where embracing how technology works now and using those limitations as a means of telling a story in some capacity or understanding a story in some capacity.

I think that to me is really fascinating.

that's Have you played, have you played the game?

I think it's called like black box or something.

The iPhone game where it's all the puzzles.

So for instance, like 1 of the puzzles, you have to put your phone in a freezer and the temperature has to hit a certain amount and then you unlock it.

That's exactly, I mean, it's stuff like that where I'm like, that's just so, because it makes you question your

And I think that's an interesting thing because that story is potentially as good as some of the films that you've seen.

You know, and it, again, it's like, it's not one-to-one, but it still gets you to the same place mentally and emotionally.

So, okay, so when you left Google, did you have a project in mind or were you just going to client stuff?

I think that the, what I ended up doing first was I kind of got a lay of the land, sort of explored what other people were doing, talked to some folks, thought about the things that I wanted to do.

I think for me, I needed a little bit of time to sort of get a sense of what was out there.

It's difficult because when you work for a company for that long, you're like, oh, okay.

Like my problem was water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink kind of where it's like, oh, I have all this stuff, but I can't do anything with it.

And then 1 of my limitations was like, beyond that was, you know, I had, I had seen where interactivity was going.

I could see where augmented reality and VR could talk to each other, where machine learning techniques and VR could talk to each other.

I couldn't do any of that other than the stuff that I could kind of sneak through.

I think in frustration I made what I believe to be sort of like a VR gif type thing, which was the Weather Channel project that

I don't mean to be down on you because I know there are other really ambitious ones, but that was my favorite.

Yeah, it's most people's favorites because they get it.

It's, and it's also like, it's hilarious.

And it's 1 of the things that people are always asking was, well, how do we make comedy in VR?

And I'm like, it's not, it doesn't have to be a literal thing.

You know, you don't, it does not have to be like slapsticky or like, here's, you know, fricking like Jerry Seinfeld telling you a joke.

Like it's, it's literally just like, what, what is the human condition?

Like what have we created for ourselves in light of spaces and experiences that are just inherently funny.

And the Weather Channel just happens to be, like watching the Weather Channel is 1 of those things.

It was like, little infomercials, Yeah, it was really great.

And I think that to me, and I made that in a day.

Yeah, no, but I mean, but considering how long it usually takes to make VR, it's insane.

I don't care if they watch it on YouTube in low res or high res.

Like it's 1 of those things that you could just show anyone.

And I still think that that stuff's very important as well.

So it was all that stuff and just this idea that I felt that I, Yeah, again, being reactive, seeing how everything works together, creating a wide variety of stuff.

I think I did wanna, but I also really wanted to create, like I had to work in a 3 DoF environment or like a 360 stereo environment, which for me was actually really great because it forced me to understand how something like just looking around was still very interactive.

It wasn't, because I think that how we actually experience a space and how those spaces engage with us, that is an important part of this medium.

I don't know if I wouldn't necessarily come to that conclusion if I had made it immediately like volumetric and 6 doff and you can, you know, you can speak whale.

So for me, I think that was, it was important to have those limitations so that I could see within the, or I could explore within the medium, just some of the basic building blocks of what made it so special.

But that, that said, I really wanted to make volumetric sick stuff, whale calling VR experiences.

And I wanted to work with different technologies and different VR companies and really expand what I was doing.

And I felt as someone who was in the space early enough and who had the fortune of sort of being around the medium and its sort of second resurgence, I felt that I had the opportunity at that moment to actually do some good.

So I can't, yeah, I was thinking about what I could talk about.

And I can't, I feel like I, I've been told I need to be patient and probably not talk about anything yet.

But I think I can say that 1 of the things that has been really amazing is the response to me going solo-ish was really, was pretty good.

I mean it was like I got so many people coming up wanting to work with me and, you know, pretty like big names and IPs and so on.

So The projects that I have, I can say that there are 4 projects.

1 is with a pretty big IP, which is a series, which we're in development with right now.

I'm still working out how that will work, but we're excited about it.

See all Y Combinator transcripts on Youtube

Jessica Brillhart, Immersive Director, on VR and AR