Today’s guest is a true pioneer in the burgeoning field of virtual reality theater: Deirdre V. Lyons. She’ll share her groundbreaking work in VR at the Ferryman Collective, such as her innovative productions like “Welcome to Respite” and “Gumball Dreams,” and discuss the intricacies of producing entertainment ranging from films to webisodes. Deirdre shares the challenges of onboarding audiences to VR experiences and the quest for viable business models in the VR space.
Deirdre also delves into her collaborative efforts with universities to demonstrate the potential of VR in theater and discusses her participation in festival circuits.
Guest: Deidre V. Lyons, Co-Founder, Producer, Director, Writer, Performer, Ferryman Collective
Deirdre Lyons has been in over 75 Film and Theatrical productions throughout the West Coast. In L.A., she formed T.H. Espian Productions with her partner Stephen Butchko. Their first production was the Los Angeles premiere of Escher’s Hands, a dramatic work by Dawson Nichols that played for a six-week run at the Lillian Theater. The two went on to produce and perform in the award-winning short film Katrina; a web series called The Fantasy State; a documentary; and the critically acclaimed short film Good Behavior, which won Best Short Film at the Temecula Film Festival.
In 2016 she began working with immersive theater productions, she was part of the original cast of JFI Productions’ The Willows, which enjoyed three remounts due to its popularity. Other immersive projects include the JFI Productions’ Creep LA shows Entry, Lore, Awake, Haus of Creep, and Creep (2021). She was the “Lost Princess” in the final chapter of Speakeasy Societies Kansas Collection, and with a Spy Brunch weekend event entitled Cold War Lounge: the asset. Deirdre has participated in multiple activations, including one-night launch events for the movies Ma, Birds of Prey, and The Conjuring 3. She appeared at Comic-Con promoting Sacred Lies and AHS 1984. And was cast in Tyra Banks’ immersive world Model Land.
Her Virtual Reality work began when The Willows was filmed and released as a 180 VR film on the Amaze app available through Steam, Oculus Rift, Oculus Go, Samsung Gear VR, Windows Mixed Reality (WMR), Viveport, and Google Daydream. She also appeared in Freakin’ Weekend, another 180 VR film from Amaze Productions. In 2019 she joined the ensemble cast of The Under Presents, a time and mind-bending immersive theater experience in VR that was selected as a finalist for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Innovation in Interactive Media, and won the VR Awards Experience of the Year. She was Prospera in a Shakespearean production from the same studio, Tender Claws, called The Under Presents: Tempest, a theatrical and technological first: a live, part scripted/part improvised, immersive theatrical experience that audiences attend from home, using a virtual reality headset that is experienced as a one-person show to small intimate audiences.
She then started producing live VR immersive theater experiences with a group of creatives that formed Ferryman Collective, including her husband Stephen Butchko, starting PARA and Krampusnacht, the latter a finalist for the PGA Innovation Award, and The Severance Theory: Welcome to Respite which premiered at Tribeca, went on to be an Official Selection of the 78th Venice International Film Festival, the Kaohsiung Film Festival, Anny Fest, Church of VR and is the winner of ‘Best Narrative Experience’ at London’s Raindance Film Festival, winner of XR Must ‘Best Live Experience,’ winner of ‘Best ixi Experience’ from Giioii as well as an ‘Immie’ for ‘Outstanding Achievement in Live Virtual Reality Production’ and a finalist for the 2022 PGA Innovation Award. It is currently in production for shows in Korea with Korean actors.
She is a teaching artist, speaker, and occasional lecturer at Chapman University. Gumball Dreams is Ferryman Collective’s fourth production, winning the audience award at SXSW for XR Exhibition Competition, it will have its international premiere at the 79th International Venice Film Festival and is her directorial debut.
Links of Note:
Deirdre: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deirdrevlyons and https://www.deirdrevlyons.com
Ferryman Collective: https://www.ferrymancollective.com
Instagram – ferrymanvr
Facebook – @FerrymanVR
Twitter – @Ferryman_VR
Transcript
Am catless. I have to enjoy them virtually. And we're kind
Speaker:of talking about virtual adventures today. So, Deirdre, thanks for joining us
Speaker:today. And we've been talking about doing
Speaker:this for a bit that I've been a fangirl of what you
Speaker:guys are doing. Can you maybe start us out and talk
Speaker:about what the company is doing and then what you're
Speaker:doing? Yeah. Yeah. Woof. So
Speaker:this has been kind of a
Speaker:long and short three years, right? So we sort
Speaker:of started out in 2020, and all of a sudden, we went
Speaker:from not doing much, it's a pandemic
Speaker:to creating some of the top VR
Speaker:experiences in live VR theater and showing
Speaker:them at some of the top festivals in the world. And we're like, wow, how
Speaker:did we get here? So right now, mostly,
Speaker:I put a lot of time into that, as well
Speaker:as meeting and hanging out and
Speaker:talking to different XR people, either in real
Speaker:life or over
Speaker:a video call of some sort, talking to people
Speaker:who are interested in it, who are either in education
Speaker:or wanting to produce themselves or just
Speaker:wanting to learn how to do it. So I end up talking to a lot
Speaker:of people about that kind of stuff, which I really enjoy. Tonight I'm going to
Speaker:the west side digital mixer, and I usually go to XR women,
Speaker:which is a really great group, on Wednesday mornings. And I just try to stay
Speaker:involved in the community and chat because it's such a great collaborative community.
Speaker:So that's what I'm doing personally and the company, while we're working
Speaker:on so many things. So
Speaker:we just finished doing PXR, which is a great conference in
Speaker:Canada, because Canada pays artists to do things, which is
Speaker:lovely. And so they have this beautiful conference that they started in, I
Speaker:think, 2020 about performance in XR. It's held in virtual
Speaker:reality. Yeah, all of it's in virtual reality. But this
Speaker:year, they brought in a couple of places where people could put headsets on
Speaker:and experience it that way. And we did two things.
Speaker:We brought our show, find Willie, to that, which was directed by Witten Frank
Speaker:and I helped produce it and assisted her with that.
Speaker:But it's actually kind of a cool show because it came from
Speaker:Korea. It was a Korean show developed by the
Speaker:Gyoi Immersive Studio. They had this VR show
Speaker:that they wanted to take to south by Southwest, and they're like, we need an
Speaker:English version. So we ended up doing that for them
Speaker:and taking it to south by Southwest. And so we were doing performances
Speaker:of Find Wheelie with some Canadian actors. So it
Speaker:was this really great collaboration of the US, Canada and
Speaker:Korea. And then we were also doing a navigating the
Speaker:festival circuit. So if you have a project and you wanted to
Speaker:know how to navigate that. We did a sort of crazy
Speaker:VR experience where people came into
Speaker:VR, or you can watch on a zoom or a
Speaker:YouTube, they were streaming it as well. But people all came in
Speaker:and we got them into a space, and then we brought up the slides, and
Speaker:then after every slide, we blew them up with macaroni and
Speaker:cheese. I know it sounds crazy, but,
Speaker:yeah, so each slide would get blown up with macaroni and cheese. And we did
Speaker:this thing where the festivals and the conferences, you could only talk 1
Speaker:minute each. And we had like different team members from the team
Speaker:doing one slide to talking about south by Southwest or
Speaker:Tribeca or Venice, and then blowing it up after a minute like, oh, sorry, I
Speaker:didn't quite get there all the way. So we did that. And I've also
Speaker:been part of the jury, along with my husband, Stephen
Speaker:Butchko, who also does this crazy VR thing with
Speaker:me and helped, started and co founded the
Speaker:company with the other team members, Braden Roy,
Speaker:Brian Tull, Christopher Lane, Davis, Whiton Frank. We're
Speaker:all the ferryman collective, because there's a collective,
Speaker:this group of us, and so we're during the Raindance
Speaker:festival, which we will announce the winners coming
Speaker:this weekend for Best VR
Speaker:Short Film. Best VR Music Video, and best immersive
Speaker:experience is the one I'm doing. I'm doing all three of those,
Speaker:and Steve's doing two of them anyway, so that's crazy.
Speaker:So many things. And you've hit on some of the interesting
Speaker:issues of VR, both in terms of how do you find
Speaker:audience, language, the festival circuits. I'd
Speaker:love to come back to all that stuff, but I'd like you to walk
Speaker:us through your history. A
Speaker:was what was Deirdre's excitement when she was in high
Speaker:school? Wow, you're going far
Speaker:back. I am. So were you a tech person, a
Speaker:visual person, deals person?
Speaker:None of that? No, I was not. I was a performer. And we
Speaker:can go back even further. I've been a performer since I was, like Teeny
Speaker:Tiny, since I was very, very young. Started dance classes when
Speaker:I was three, and then started doing shows in
Speaker:my grade school. I think my mother heard from a teacher
Speaker:that, oh, she really likes this. She has
Speaker:a spark, which now,
Speaker:knowing what I know, the talent
Speaker:versus the idea of
Speaker:growth is a little bit of more of an
Speaker:interesting topic to me, because I always felt like I was told I was
Speaker:talented, which was great, except for the fact that
Speaker:within that, it's harder to
Speaker:process failure. Right. And it's harder to process growth
Speaker:and having a growth mindset, as per
Speaker:the author of Mindset, Carolyn Dweck,
Speaker:I believe.
Speaker:Yes, that woman, she's fabulous. I learned
Speaker:so much reading her book, but a side,
Speaker:so she has a spark. So then my mother started taking me not only
Speaker:to dance classes, but to plays. And I did stuff in school. And so I've
Speaker:been performing since I was super duper Young, and that's kind of always what I
Speaker:want. Let me ask you a related question. Was your mom
Speaker:a performer? Was your dad a performer? Were they
Speaker:closet performers that didn't let it out? Because for some
Speaker:people, part of the journey step is that their parents were
Speaker:already creatives or already performers, so they kind of got the
Speaker:journey. And for some people, they
Speaker:were aspiring performers. And so we're living through some of their
Speaker:kids journey. Yeah, for sure. My
Speaker:dad was not came from a farming background,
Speaker:and then he worked for Mabel and then
Speaker:onto at T and then onto Lucent Technologies. So
Speaker:he mostly ran phones and started out climbing the phone
Speaker:poles and moving up through the ranks
Speaker:of a tech in that space. And
Speaker:my mother was always a bit.
Speaker:Like. She
Speaker:gave me all of these amazing things, but she could have be distracted quite
Speaker:easily. So for a very long
Speaker:time, I was the focus of
Speaker:her life. And I think that maybe she thought she
Speaker:was a good singer and that she would have liked to pursue that, but
Speaker:it was never anything that she actually did. So I
Speaker:appreciated all of the support that my family
Speaker:gave me growing up, which is not always the
Speaker:case. So I'm very lucky. So you didn't face the, you
Speaker:must be a lawyer, engineer, teacher, the
Speaker:defined narrative channel. No. Gosh,
Speaker:no. I was always on the path of
Speaker:performance and such.
Speaker:There was a moment where I was like, is this really what I want,
Speaker:or is this what my mother wanted? And it was just something I always came
Speaker:back to. So I continued pursuing it. Moved
Speaker:from Seattle, Washington, to Los Angeles,
Speaker:continued pursuing it here. Got here in 98. So I've been here a
Speaker:long time and just knocking on doors, and none of them
Speaker:are opening right. People are like, well, it's hard to get the part.
Speaker:No, it's hard to get the audition. There
Speaker:are thousands and thousands
Speaker:of people who look just like you. And just to have the. You actually
Speaker:need the right agent. You can't just have any agent. You've got to
Speaker:have CAA for anybody to look at you because
Speaker:there's so many. There's so many
Speaker:know, people said, you got to produce your own stuff. So we started producing stuff.
Speaker:We did a play, we did a short film, we did webisodes, we did documentary,
Speaker:we did another short film. We did lots of different things,
Speaker:and those went well, but never really opened in the way that
Speaker:we were kind of hoping they would. And then I started
Speaker:doing live immersive theater in Los Angeles with some of the
Speaker:top companies in LA. So
Speaker:JFI, just fix it Productions, speakeasy Society,
Speaker:these are just theater that's taken off the
Speaker:proscenium stage and put in any kind of a
Speaker:location, laundromat, house, apartment,
Speaker:school, warehouse, whatever location,
Speaker:restaurant. It's a little like a murder mystery without the dinner
Speaker:theater aspect to it. Right. I was going to say this is
Speaker:an aspect of live performance that I would suggest most
Speaker:people don't know exists. Yes, It's a niche. The
Speaker:niche, but they know. So fun. Tony and Tina's wedding, if they were
Speaker:in Los Angeles for a long time, that had taken over
Speaker:not the Friars Club, but had taken over a facility in LA, and it was
Speaker:a big tourist attraction. But even longtime LA people may
Speaker:not be aware of the entities that you just commented on.
Speaker:So what did you learn from that part of the adventure?
Speaker:Oh, it was so fun. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Tony and
Speaker:Tina's wedding was big. Some people may have heard of sleep no
Speaker:more in New York. Tamar was a big, long running,
Speaker:immersive theater piece in Los Angeles that was in
Speaker:the believe. There was a big movement in immersive and
Speaker:sight specific theater back in the 70s where people were
Speaker:pulling things out of the theater and making a performance out
Speaker:of different spaces. And
Speaker:it's just so much more intimate. You
Speaker:are actually talking to an audience member oftentimes having
Speaker:a scene with an audience member, even though they don't know
Speaker:what's going on or the line. So it's incumbent upon the actor
Speaker:to inform them of that and guide them while you're
Speaker:interacting with them. But I would suggest sleep no more. Didn't do
Speaker:that all that well. Only went once, and it was like I got pulled
Speaker:into a scene and I'm going, what the heck's going on?
Speaker:And I'm not the only one. I had to go sit in a corner for
Speaker:a while and put my head in my hands because it was just so
Speaker:dynamically overwhelming.
Speaker:It can be overwhelming. I have heard that before, although I haven't seen sleep
Speaker:no more. So I don't know much about it
Speaker:other than what I've read. I wish I could. It's
Speaker:closing, so try to see it. Well, it was interesting also because I
Speaker:know I was standing in line to go in and people behind me. It was
Speaker:$100 ticket per person. Yes. And the people behind me had been
Speaker:doing it five times already. So there is a bit of
Speaker:the bring other people and repetitive factor
Speaker:that some people are willing to do these interactions more than
Speaker:once. Yes. Because most of the time there's different tracks
Speaker:that you can go and experience. It's not usually just you've
Speaker:seen the plaY, but did you follow Macbeth? Did you follow Lady Macbeth? Did
Speaker:you follow the Rosencranst and Gildenstern?
Speaker:Oops, sorry, wrong play.
Speaker:It's just a niche of theater
Speaker:that people, if they find it, often get hooked and
Speaker:will and love it and will come back more and more. But it is
Speaker:definitely a different experience because you are
Speaker:interacting and immersed in a different environment than what you're used to and what your
Speaker:brain says, oh, I know what I'm supposed to do here. I'm supposed to sit
Speaker:in a seat and be quiet now. All right, I watch a play face. Forward
Speaker:and then not have things happening around you.
Speaker:And also often,
Speaker:I would say hard to scale so that you
Speaker:have a troop doing a show in New York, Los Angeles, San
Speaker:Diego, wherever it is, and people know of it. But
Speaker:there isn't a history for a lot of these, of scaling,
Speaker:of having a scalable business model. Yes, they are much
Speaker:more intimate in general. They are built that way because
Speaker:people are looking for something different than being in the nosebleed section of the
Speaker:Amundsen. People are looking for something different than seeing a gazillion
Speaker:pre recorded things on TV and streaming. So having this
Speaker:experience that feels intimate and profound and
Speaker:different than what's generally out
Speaker:there has got people excited and seeking it out. And I do
Speaker:think it is a special experience. And I think as
Speaker:we continue on with all of the pre recorded content
Speaker:that keeps bombarding us, because I remember the days
Speaker:when it was just network television, and then we got cable and oh my God,
Speaker:look at all these channels. But now we got cabing and streaming and all of
Speaker:these different streaming services that you can sign up for,
Speaker:as well as TikTok and all the YouTube. It's
Speaker:a lot. And sports, right,
Speaker:which also looks at some of the similar issues, but not the repeatability.
Speaker:So when was this timeframe?
Speaker:So I was doing all of this stuff, and
Speaker:I saw some of my colleagues working at a you
Speaker:in a photo on Facebook, at a Facebook group. And I was like, I know
Speaker:those friends. Those are friends of mine. What are they doing? BecAuse it said,
Speaker:noah Nelson from no persinion says, if you don't know what they're doing at Tinderclaws,
Speaker:you should check it out because it's really cool. I'm like, what are they doing?
Speaker:So I emailed Samantha, or I actually emailed the company. I didn't know Samantha
Speaker:at the time saying, do you need more performers? And she's like, yeah, it's the
Speaker:holidays. Come work for us. So this is like November of 2019. I
Speaker:was working on a couple of other projects, and
Speaker:then, of course, March of 2020. I've
Speaker:been working on this VR
Speaker:game, for lack of a better word, which was going really well. The
Speaker:concept is sort of like these players go into this
Speaker:world that looks like a vaudeville stage and they can
Speaker:see and see and interact with each other, but they can't speak.
Speaker:And then all of a sudden, they run into what they think is an NPC.
Speaker:And then the NPC turns to them and says, hello, do you want a
Speaker:martini? Or something to that effect? Because there's. I'm going to
Speaker:pause this a second, because we're saying, I always like
Speaker:to back up and go, not everybody understands what we're talking about. So, Tenderclause. Yeah.
Speaker:Which I fangirl Samantha's work. I just love, love, love.
Speaker:Tenderclause is a virtual
Speaker:reality game and environment
Speaker:and building space, I guess, for lack of a better
Speaker:delineation, where you go into something that looks like an orange and
Speaker:brown tone shifting desert, and then you're going into.
Speaker:You could either go into an environment where you just hang out or that you
Speaker:could buy a ticket and be watching people be characters
Speaker:in the space. So it was sort of taking that
Speaker:idea that you would see non player
Speaker:characters be player characters. So that NPC non player
Speaker:character. It's not
Speaker:assuming that I've got this automated thing person that
Speaker:is just giving me lines, that it's actually sitting
Speaker:through an experience with actors. So for a lot of people, Tenderclause is the
Speaker:first time they saw something like that. Yes. I like to call them
Speaker:the Cadillac of experiences. Yes. They were brilliant in what they
Speaker:created. And the live actor portion
Speaker:of the underpresents was only supposed to go three months. And
Speaker:then because of the pandemic, it ended up extending to over a
Speaker:year. And within that, they developed the Tempest, which was
Speaker:a Shakespearean experience because you never knew
Speaker:when the actors were going to show up in the underpresents. It was just very
Speaker:random, but this, you could actually go to the theater, buy the ticket, and
Speaker:see the show and interact with an actor, you and up
Speaker:to six people. So that won a bunch of awards.
Speaker:The underpresent won a bunch of awards. It was a
Speaker:brilliant concept and executed beautifully that
Speaker:ended up having to close. They're off doing stranger things now, which is
Speaker:super awesome and Bravo for them for getting such great
Speaker:IP. And that was my first foray
Speaker:into VR theater as a performer. But when that shut down, it
Speaker:was still the pandemic, and I was like, whoa, what are we going to do
Speaker:now? And Brian Tull, who
Speaker:is one of the reviewers
Speaker:and fans of immersive theater and of the
Speaker:underpresents, was like, well, I know enough about unity to
Speaker:build something in VR chat. I hate that Halloween has been
Speaker:canceled. Maybe we could do that. And Braden Roy was
Speaker:like, I'll write it and perform in it. And I was like, okay,
Speaker:well, I'll come in and I'll help you with the actors and the scheduling. And
Speaker:I got my husband Steve to help as well. So the four
Speaker:of us started pair, which was sort of a 20 minutes proof of concept,
Speaker:went brilliantly. And then we moved into
Speaker:Krampus Knock, which was like a month and a half later, which was like a
Speaker:Christmas themed version of a VR theater production.
Speaker:And that went well. And we submitted it for the PGA
Speaker:Innovation Award. Thinking, okay, so we're going to set up this
Speaker:for later. Sorry,
Speaker:your cat is thinking about now. Well, and
Speaker:Charleston was trying to take down your calendar back there. Yeah, she wants down.
Speaker:She's going to jump. There she goes. All right.
Speaker:This is an interactive conversation for those watching on YouTube. You
Speaker:can watch the Cat. It's an incentive for those of you who listen to go
Speaker:to YouTube and watch the cat. That's right, the cat getting down,
Speaker:because it was time to get down now in Cat World. So that's what
Speaker:cats do. That's what cats do. They have no sense of time. It's cat
Speaker:time. So PGA is Producers Guild,
Speaker:and so it's a finalist. Oh, very
Speaker:cool. Thank you. We're like, so it's working.
Speaker:Wow. All right, so this is
Speaker:Peach. It was the Innovation Award. We didn't think we'd even get
Speaker:considered, but we did. And then we're like, this is working, so let's move
Speaker:on to something else. And I wanted to do something that sort of
Speaker:highlighted intimacy. I wanted to take all of our lessons from the previous productions and
Speaker:put them into a new production, take some time. And I talked to
Speaker:a friend of mine whose show I had done in real life, in the immersive
Speaker:theater realm, and I'd done the voice of the Shadow. I was like, I think
Speaker:this would work really well in VR. Do you want to do it? And she's
Speaker:like, it's a pandemic. Okay, let me buy
Speaker:a headset. And off we go. So she came on board. We
Speaker:did. Welcome to Respite, which was
Speaker:about an hour VR piece. It was about an
Speaker:adult going back into the memory of childhood. It deals with
Speaker:dissociative identity disorder and what that would
Speaker:have been like had you had symptoms of that as a child but not knowing
Speaker:what it is. And there's this sort of beautiful
Speaker:love from the parents that you feel, even though they're having issues.
Speaker:And then there's also this sort of shadow monster in there
Speaker:that's pretty scary. And I have to say, I think our VR version was a
Speaker:little scarier than the real version because we were able to do some really fun
Speaker:stuff with VR and take advantage of the fordances of VR. We were able
Speaker:to shrink our audience member down to a child size avatar
Speaker:who's, like, seven years old looking up at their parents, and over the countertop, which
Speaker:you haven't done since you were that age. Like, it's weird because
Speaker:your mind's like, I'm an adult. I'm an adult. And your body's going, but I
Speaker:feel like a child again, and all these chemicals and emotions are
Speaker:happening at the same time. So that was really successful. We went
Speaker:around all over the festival circuit. It was really
Speaker:well received. We were like, oh, my God. It worked way beyond
Speaker:our imagination, and we were just so
Speaker:grateful. And we're going to continue on with this story to the chapter
Speaker:two and three and four is going to be about a three or four chapter
Speaker:series. And Lindsay got pregnant. So happy
Speaker:for her, but not so good for continuing with our plan of the
Speaker:art theater along this storyline. So we
Speaker:pivoted to a new show called Gumball Dreams, which I had this
Speaker:idea for a show that was
Speaker:built around worlds that already existed from one of our team members, Christopher
Speaker:Lane Davis. He'd built these over the pandemic, and before I'd even met him, he'd
Speaker:had these done, and they're just amazing and stunning, and I wanted more people to
Speaker:see them. So I said, hey, what do you think of the script? He's like,
Speaker:I love let's. And then we worked on it together to make sure it fit
Speaker:his lore. He put the world together around the show, and then
Speaker:all of a sudden, we had another show going around the festival circuit. It was
Speaker:just, like, also really well received, and people loved
Speaker:and deals with issues of death and
Speaker:dying. Dignity. Death and
Speaker:dignity. And then also acceptance and
Speaker:gratefulness and joy and love and the
Speaker:journeys that we are all on in this lifetime.
Speaker:So that was really good. But to
Speaker:sort of round this story up, because it does
Speaker:continue on a little bit with. Then we went to find Willie, and now we're
Speaker:doing him in Cany Alley. But to sort of round out sort of
Speaker:more of the history of how we got to where we are now
Speaker:is that I feel like I was set up perfectly for this, right?
Speaker:I feel like both Steve and I moved to LA. We were both set
Speaker:up perfectly because we'd both been working
Speaker:in immersive theater, and we'd both been doing. Just took those
Speaker:skills and moved them right into VR. And immersive theater,
Speaker:in my opinion, just fits VR so
Speaker:well as a platform, as a storytelling mechanism, and all of the
Speaker:different sort of ways you can do immersive theater
Speaker:fit in this magical and mystical
Speaker:environment that you can create and do things that you can't do anywhere else in
Speaker:the world. So that's sort of the origin story
Speaker:to wrap it up. Very cool. I'm going to back you up on a few.
Speaker:I just got back from a trip to Europe, and while I was gone, my
Speaker:husband goes, I borrowed your Oculus Rift, and I
Speaker:stuck it in my computer out in his man cave. And I'm going, you know,
Speaker:I've got newer gear, right? I could let him use
Speaker:my oculus two with my pink edging thing, because I've got my three
Speaker:I'm working with now. But for a lot of people, they don't have any
Speaker:of this stuff. So trying to help them envision what they're doing
Speaker:for VR chat. So VR chat
Speaker:is shockingly large in its many ways, and you don't need a
Speaker:headset. You can just use your PC and wander
Speaker:around just using the keys on your computer, but it's not the same
Speaker:experience. But you've got lots of people hanging out,
Speaker:doing lots of interesting, weird things,
Speaker:creating lots of weird spaces, including things
Speaker:I won't talk about on the podcast, but include
Speaker:sleeping in the platform and doing all sorts of stuff. So you've got an experimental
Speaker:space already that people don't need a headset.
Speaker:So as a pilot space where there are
Speaker:parts. So I guess part of it, my surgeon general's warning is
Speaker:listeners do not go to VR chat without somebody
Speaker:else with you who knows VR chat, because you could very quickly end up
Speaker:with green scrub brushes chasing you around and all sorts of things going on.
Speaker:So do go with an escort, but this would be an escort that someone would
Speaker:be signing up to. I want this experience. So it's
Speaker:an open space. It doesn't cost you money, really to produce
Speaker:in it other than what you upload into it. So as a play space
Speaker:for creatives wanting to do something like this, it's not that
Speaker:you've got to find $100,000 spending for building out a tech
Speaker:space, et cetera. You sort of expand on VR.
Speaker:Chat is an early development space. Yeah. It's not made for
Speaker:theater. So I can tell you that onboarding is
Speaker:so challenging and difficult because it is like teaching people to
Speaker:drive a car to get to theater. You're like, come to theater. See it? ThEy're
Speaker:like, yes, okay. I'm like, okay, so now you're going to have to put on
Speaker:a headset and download an app. And there's like, all these different steps. I mean,
Speaker:in a lot of ways, it's not so different than how we learned to use
Speaker:our phones because those are all apps as well, but
Speaker:it feels different, and people are still learning about
Speaker:it. And yes, not everybody has a headset, but maybe their
Speaker:nephew does, maybe their kid
Speaker:does. And they're like, I can actually see theater in this. I'm like, yeah,
Speaker:you can. And so we're basically
Speaker:teaching people how to experience this form of
Speaker:theater, and that's difficult. Onboarding is always a
Speaker:challenge, so we try to incorporate that into the storyline. We
Speaker:try to incorporate that into make patient with them, helping them with
Speaker:different ways of accessing it. We try to be
Speaker:available on, like, a Zoom or a video call. So if somebody's like, I can't
Speaker:figure this out, they can actually speak to a human. So
Speaker:it's been a very challenging platform, but also an amazing
Speaker:platform because unlike some of the other social VR platforms,
Speaker:of which some of your audience may have heard of. So Verizon's
Speaker:Mozilla hubs, what used to be Alt space rec
Speaker:room, you can actually upload any avatar
Speaker:and any world as long as it fits in within the parameters
Speaker:of quest. If you're going for a quest world or
Speaker:PCVR, and
Speaker:they are great, they have
Speaker:an incredible community. And
Speaker:it's true, you shouldn't go into a public space because you will run into a
Speaker:bunch of six year olds who are not supervised, and their parents probably shouldn't
Speaker:have let them go in there in the first place, and they're running around being
Speaker:like, so silly and as annoying as you can
Speaker:imagine. So going in and finding they have now the groups feature
Speaker:where you can find a group that would be of interest to you. Like there's
Speaker:trip is doing a meditation group in there, and
Speaker:that's really cool. And there's like
Speaker:a beautiful sign language group in there that teaches
Speaker:people sign languages. There's different people doing
Speaker:Japan culture and language
Speaker:classes and all kinds of amazing communities. If anybody has
Speaker:a chance to watch the movie called we met in virtual
Speaker:reality, a friend of mine was the director of that.
Speaker:And that is shot entirely in VR chat. And it is
Speaker:about, I mean, it doesn't say that in the film, but it is, and it
Speaker:is about people and their relationships they had
Speaker:mostly during the pandemic and
Speaker:how beautiful this space can be when it's
Speaker:at its best. So, yeah, it is a very challenging
Speaker:platform. It's a bit like
Speaker:Facebook, but in VR maybe kind
Speaker:of like that, if you think of it as a social space.
Speaker:And yeah, I'm happy to take anybody on a tour if they
Speaker:want to see it. Well, I was going to say. So part of the opportunity
Speaker:and challenge is VR chats. Very busy, lots
Speaker:of things going on. How would people. I
Speaker:take a look at some of the challenges with doing any type of content in
Speaker:VR. That's discovery. So people not only have to get a
Speaker:headset on, but again, VR chat you could go to on
Speaker:your screen. It's just not going to be as engaging.
Speaker:And you can hook up an old headset to your computer and use it. You
Speaker:don't have to have the most current things, but
Speaker:Discovery and then payment was two other folds of it that you
Speaker:wouldn't walk in and big sign saying, come to your
Speaker:stuff.
Speaker:How are you dealing with discovery, ticketing,
Speaker:community building? And then what are you building in now?
Speaker:Are you still doing VR chat as a space? Are you using any of the
Speaker:other platforms or building into the
Speaker:new sort of spatial computing ish new tools?
Speaker:I find that we'll start there because I want to also talk
Speaker:about the same thing with the festival circuit, because I get the festival
Speaker:circuit as an expensive
Speaker:dance where you want to get
Speaker:noticed, but your average VR user never finds you there
Speaker:either. You get discovered and talked around. So can
Speaker:you talk about Discovery and maybe the nerdy way to say and
Speaker:business models? Right. So how does this work?
Speaker:Because I know a lot of people who create stuff into VR, and then they're
Speaker:going, oh, yeah, it was fun. So where's the people
Speaker:and how do I create a business model, other than having to go
Speaker:through quest and paying them 30%
Speaker:of everything I get. Yeah. So right
Speaker:now, we're just so small
Speaker:and we're not making any money
Speaker:that is. Well, we make a little bit. It's like latte money, right? Like a
Speaker:little bit. And we are able to make sure our actors are taken care of
Speaker:and all that. But it's not like we're not like we
Speaker:have any sort of big
Speaker:plans as of yet. We're kind of like
Speaker:exploring this space. I feel like I accidentally stumbled in. Into
Speaker:something that people got excited about and the timing was right,
Speaker:and so now I'm just walking through doors that are open and seeing where
Speaker:it leads. Right. Because I have that ability in my life, because
Speaker:of the circumstances that are surrounding me to be able
Speaker:to explore this platform. But it's still not my full
Speaker:time anything. It's just this thing that we're growing in that we
Speaker:hope will and expect to grow into something else. So the business
Speaker:model, for the most part, is the same as theater, right. It's the
Speaker:same sort of idea about
Speaker:building your community. You could maybe do a subscription base if you
Speaker:wanted to, if you had that many productions to do.
Speaker:You can go the sort of nonprofit route and
Speaker:get funds for your arts and things like that.
Speaker:Some of theater companies I work with is they will do things
Speaker:like pop ups for different movies and commercials
Speaker:and stuff, and that will pay them a big chunk of money, and then they
Speaker:can do the arts version of the stuff. We wouldn't be able to
Speaker:do this right now if it was expensive.
Speaker:So most of our team is just. We're just working it away with the
Speaker:belief that it will grow into something because it's not there yet. The audience
Speaker:isn't there yet. People who love our stuff will then go
Speaker:off and look for other people's stuff and see their stuff. They become very
Speaker:much fans of the genre, but there's not a lot of people out there doing
Speaker:it. So the idea is to bring more. That
Speaker:builds up the audience, that creates more interest. And that's
Speaker:part of the festival circuit, too, is to get the visibility out
Speaker:there so people can understand and get excited about and
Speaker:find what it is that we do. And
Speaker:we're so busy doing shows, doing
Speaker:runs, doing things for universities that we actually don't have a lot of
Speaker:time to even do, like, sort of a public offering
Speaker:grabbed by this university and that conference to
Speaker:do internal stuff. So that's kind of where we're at.
Speaker:We're a little under the radar. We're still developing. It's not a
Speaker:viable business model yet. We're still building
Speaker:the audience, and I do think it'll get there,
Speaker:but it's just creating right
Speaker:now. Can you share what you're doing with universities?
Speaker:Because I'm aware of educators in
Speaker:XR and other groups that are trying to help
Speaker:universities get up to speed in XR. Are you
Speaker:working with people who are building programs or doing demos or what's the university
Speaker:side? Usually universities will come to us and they'll want
Speaker:to have us either talk or do a performance
Speaker:or do a backstage tour or some combination of those
Speaker:things. And we've worked with Aaron
Speaker:Riley in Texas. We actually taught with Charlie
Speaker:Fink at Chapman University doing a show
Speaker:on XR performance. We've
Speaker:done stuff for the University of know, different
Speaker:cohorts from Canada who reach out to us and ask us
Speaker:to know, can you do a show? And then a talk back?
Speaker:So that's mostly what it has been thus far. Not
Speaker:really building a show with a university, but showing them
Speaker:what we've done, what's possible, and talking to them
Speaker:about
Speaker:how we got here, and why we're doing what we
Speaker:do. Very cool.
Speaker:I'll put in the show notes that there's actually a whole bunch of university
Speaker:organizations that are all trying to find their way in this space. So it's
Speaker:interesting that that's kind of a leading edge space. And Aaron's doing
Speaker:cool things at UT Austin and other stuff, so
Speaker:there's lots of cool things afoot, but a lot of
Speaker:universities are getting their feet wet, so it's an interesting time to be doing
Speaker:that. Yeah. You talked about scalability as well
Speaker:and asked about scalability. And I would say that scalability in this
Speaker:space is the same way you would scale in an immersive theater space.
Speaker:So you've been to sleep no more. So you know how many people were there,
Speaker:but you also know how many actors they had and how big this space
Speaker:was. So we're not there tech wise,
Speaker:so it doesn't matter if we had that many people who wanted
Speaker:to come, we just couldn't do it. So it's actually a great
Speaker:time to explore the more intimate immersive theater experiences
Speaker:that only have 3510 audience
Speaker:members and one or two or three actors. And
Speaker:that's where we're at right now, is just sort of honoring the tech and
Speaker:its ability and then teaching people how to experience
Speaker:it and waiting for the
Speaker:platform to grow interesting.
Speaker:And it's at a time where in real life, immersive
Speaker:experiences there's people playing with scale. So
Speaker:fever and doing all of the fever things. I didn't realize
Speaker:until I was just in Barcelona that they're from Spain,
Speaker:that they've got all sorts of immersive stuff that they've got built
Speaker:out and are scaling out, that are getting people thinking this is
Speaker:immersive, which is going to potentially cause some interesting
Speaker:issues that are very scalable concepts. Once you land it in
Speaker:one city, then I can take that and duplicate it everywhere
Speaker:with generic IP. So we
Speaker:are changing the space a little bit about expectations.
Speaker:And not everyone's done a nice, intimate, immersive theater piece
Speaker:to know what that is in real life. So it's kind of an interesting bridge.
Speaker:And then during the pandemic, before the pandemic,
Speaker:people were larping. So live action role playing, so they
Speaker:were being the characters and then having their friends
Speaker:be the non player characters, too. So creating a narrative in a
Speaker:physical space. So you do have a lot of people who are still kind of
Speaker:playing in that space. And if you haven't larped from our
Speaker:wonderful audience here, go play with LARPing. It is fun
Speaker:and somewhat strange. And there's people who
Speaker:LARP, you would never know LARP that go do that, who are actually
Speaker:members of the Screen Actors Guild, so they won't let their LARPing be
Speaker:photographed. That
Speaker:could be a whole nother show, I'm sure, on weird things with
Speaker:LARPing. So what are you then
Speaker:doing for your living side of the equation? This
Speaker:is a building experience. Are you acting
Speaker:and doing other things? Yes, I'm part of the Willows, which
Speaker:is an immersive
Speaker:theater experience here in Los Angeles
Speaker:that's come back like five times
Speaker:now because people love it so much. And they've spent
Speaker:the time building the company and building their reputation and building their audience and
Speaker:the community. And so it's just very popular.
Speaker:So I do those shows. I also
Speaker:am assistant to a gentleman, and I help
Speaker:him for sort of logistics with his company.
Speaker:So I do that as well, which I do from home, which helps
Speaker:to be able to have a more flexible schedule.
Speaker:So those are the types of things that I do
Speaker:to not only keep creative, but to make sure that
Speaker:I pay the rent every month. Because being an artist
Speaker:in America is very hard. It's a capitalistic based
Speaker:society. We value
Speaker:so much money, but not
Speaker:necessarily artists. What we tend
Speaker:to reward are celebrities
Speaker:and their viewership that they can bring to
Speaker:any product, whether that product be a nonprofit or
Speaker:an item or a show. You know, that
Speaker:is what generally people are after
Speaker:when they move to Los Angeles to become an actor
Speaker:is the celebrity, because that's really where you can actually make a
Speaker:living, whereas most actor artists that I know
Speaker:are having a very hard time making a living and
Speaker:often have many side gigs that
Speaker:help support their artistry. Hyphenates. You're a
Speaker:hyphenate? Yeah. And a lot
Speaker:of our guests have had multiple tiers of jobs that all kind of fold
Speaker:into each other, both over time, but also at the same
Speaker:time, to be able to pay for being a creative and to make that all
Speaker:work. We're heading into a world
Speaker:of
Speaker:immersive imaging, new tools, and tech
Speaker:that is letting the content be in a
Speaker:real space. With the new quest three and
Speaker:the Vision Pro coming out next year, does
Speaker:that change you guys'imaginings on where you can take
Speaker:narrative? Sure. One of our team members, Witten
Speaker:Frank, has this really great idea and
Speaker:script that she's working on for the idea of doing, like, a Seder
Speaker:in a pass through kind of environment,
Speaker:and she's working on fleshing that out and
Speaker:seeing if she can get that to a point
Speaker:where it's ready to get produced. But, yeah, that would be something
Speaker:that would use, like, the pass through technology and, yeah, that
Speaker:opens up so much more options in
Speaker:storytelling and fun and for artists and creatives
Speaker:around the world, being able to play with the idea of
Speaker:bringing something into your space, bringing
Speaker:the art, the play, the event into your personal
Speaker:space, as opposed to us taking you and putting you on an alien
Speaker:planet or something like that, you'd actually bring and
Speaker:welcome all these things into your house and, like, how cool is
Speaker:that? Or out in the world, as people have been taking the new quest three
Speaker:headset and going to Disneyland and going to bars and
Speaker:going to restaurants and taking the world in and seeing
Speaker:overlays on the world, which, yes, keep reading the ask me
Speaker:anything from the quest team going. We did not anticipate that. We did
Speaker:not anticipate that pass through would go out into the world. So kind of an
Speaker:interesting question. It's a little challenging for, like I had said,
Speaker:they don't work great in the sunlight, so it can
Speaker:be better inside,
Speaker:but that's where we're going.
Speaker:The idea that it'll be the sunglasses that Meta's
Speaker:already put out, which just have, like, you can listen to music, you can take
Speaker:a photo, but eventually the tech will get
Speaker:fast enough, small enough that those glasses will be able to
Speaker:do the overlays that you want to see, and you'll be able to
Speaker:say, hey, I want to know what apartments are for rent in this
Speaker:area. And all of a sudden you'll see all of the apartments for rent and
Speaker:you're like, I really want to live in this area. I'm going to call these
Speaker:guys. Right? Like the idea of being able to do that, or looking into a
Speaker:car engine and saying, okay, what does that do? And. And how do I change
Speaker:the oil? Because my dad never taught me that. Right? Being able to put
Speaker:on some glasses and do that. But also potentially taking
Speaker:theater with you, right? Taking theater into a forest, taking
Speaker:theater into a different space, or people being. Choosing different
Speaker:space overlays to be engaged in the theaters, which,
Speaker:wouldn't that be. So cool, going in the forest and having some sort of
Speaker:Arthur and the sword and the stone, or like
Speaker:some sort of fairy play. Wouldn't that be fun? It would be totally
Speaker:fabulous. So what have
Speaker:we not talked about? You've covered a gamut of the great adventures
Speaker:that you've been on and that the collective has been on. Anything
Speaker:else that you'd like to mention before we wrap up?
Speaker:I've learned so much in this
Speaker:space. I've learned about visibility.
Speaker:It's very important to bring
Speaker:up what it is that you're doing and your projects in a space
Speaker:where they get visibility, which is one of the reasons why we
Speaker:do the festival circuits. Even though it is rather expensive to
Speaker:travel to these places.
Speaker:I say rather expensive. Yes, it's expensive. Let me just say that it's
Speaker:expensive. They don't pay you to come. It's the other way around that
Speaker:you're travel and bring everything with you and everything else. But
Speaker:with our stuff, we actually often
Speaker:have our actors working from home.
Speaker:We don't go to all of the festivals that we've been in. Some of them
Speaker:we can do completely, virtually. It just depends on the festival. Sometimes
Speaker:they actually will pay a show running fee. Sometimes there's an award
Speaker:that is associated with winning, and that's
Speaker:something as well. And then eventually you start doing stuff and
Speaker:people start noticing you. Then they'll ask you to come and
Speaker:speak, and maybe now there'll be a fee with it. Not
Speaker:at the beginning, but as time goes on.
Speaker:So there is a great value to visibility
Speaker:that I think is underestimated. And I
Speaker:would encourage everyone to, whatever it is that you're
Speaker:doing, try to get out there somehow,
Speaker:go to places to network, talk to people,
Speaker:write an article, get on the
Speaker:podcast with our lovely Gigi here and hang out.
Speaker:Do all of the things that you can think of doing to raise your visibility,
Speaker:because that will help people find you. People who are looking for you want
Speaker:to find you, and that's how it will help. Also, tech has
Speaker:been a great gift for me because it's really hard.
Speaker:It's so hard that you have to accept when things go wrong and you
Speaker:have to go, oh, what do I do if my fellow actor falls off a
Speaker:wiFi? And how do we pivot when, you know,
Speaker:when things crash, you have to
Speaker:start going, okay, I have to let go of this perfectionism or
Speaker:this wanting to make everything right because you're holding on to some
Speaker:fear that if it goes wrong, then you're a
Speaker:failure or the project's a failure, or allowing
Speaker:yourself to give yourself the gift of imperfection and trusting yourself to
Speaker:pivot when things go
Speaker:haywire and be like this
Speaker:happens is the best gift I could have given myself
Speaker:because it's allowed me to explore
Speaker:and enjoy the
Speaker:exploration along with the creativity and the work that we've done.
Speaker:Very cool. So would you like to reach out to you? And
Speaker:how should they reach out? You guys can be found at your website,
Speaker:which is ferrimancollective.com.
Speaker:Yes. Who would you like to reach out and
Speaker:how would you like that to come in? So, yeah,
Speaker:either through the website. You can also follow us on all the socials
Speaker:because we do try to post fairly regularly. DM
Speaker:us on those because I'm very bad at following comments.
Speaker:We love to talk to anybody in this space because most anybody
Speaker:in some way can help us. If it's somebody who's looking to create their own
Speaker:project and just want to know what it's like, then maybe they
Speaker:will create a project and that will get an audience and that will help build
Speaker:the audience. If it's somebody who wants to
Speaker:build a world or wants to do
Speaker:development and stuff like that, reach out to us and
Speaker:chat with us and see if it's a good fit.
Speaker:Happy to chat with most anyone about what it is
Speaker:that they're doing or to talk about
Speaker:their passions and excitements. Right now we're so new.
Speaker:It's all an experiment and we're all collaborating on this
Speaker:together. Well, thank you for joining us. We'll put
Speaker:ways to find you in the show notes and hopefully you guys in
Speaker:the audience will go enjoy one of your shows in
Speaker:your headset or computer near you. So thanks for joining
Speaker:us. Thank you, Gigi. Have a beautiful day.