The University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography put on a virtual event on March 29 featuring speaker Anthony Geffen that brought viewers through a journey of immersive storytelling and gave a sneak peek into the future of technology, teaching audience members that it’s not far from becoming our reality.
Anthony Geffen is the CEO and Creative Director of Atlantic Productions and recipient of numerous Emmy Awards and British Academy Awards. His presentation included multiple videos of his work, as well as numerous pictures to show some of the projects he is working on for the future.
Geffen used his determination and his drive to make the films that he thought were really important to make. For example, he really wanted to make a film about the coronation in England, and it took him 27 years to convince the queen to agree to do it. He finally convinced her to do it by talking to her about the Netflix show “The Crown.”
“My final thought to her was, if you don’t do this film, everybody will think that the actress is in fact the queen and not you, and that’s what my children will grow up thinking,” said Geffen.
Geffen’s team was also the first team in 15 years to go to the remains of the Titanic. With that footage, they were able to make a film and a virtual reality experience out of it, so people could feel like they were actually there, looking through the shipwreck.
Another really interesting film that he talked about was “David Attenborough’s Natural History Museum Alive.”
“We decided to bring back 10 of his creatures, which you’d obviously never see, using scientists to actually perfect them in the right way,” Geffen said.
This film depicts different creatures that are part of the museum using CGI, and took many scientists and filmmakers working together to make the animals look as real as possible.
Geffen’s presentation also touched on using VR experiences to solve some problems and provide experiences that are really going to help people. One example involved Geffen and his team being approached by surgeons in Shanghai who wanted to build a VR experience that shows what happens to the female body at every stage of pregnancy. This was needed by the surgeons because a lot of the older women who were pregnant also didn’t know how to read, and would better understand a visual depiction. It will be available in China next year.
“You literally put on a headset and walk inside the body and you go through every stage of pregnancy, and it is utterly extraordinary,” said Geffen.
Related to that, Geffen has also explored how to allow people from different countries to see different parts of the world that they might never get the opportunity to see. He has been exploring this idea using Augmented Reality (AR) in people’s phones, so you feel like you are really at the Great Pyramid, for example, and can interact with your surroundings.
Geffen believes that this emerging VR and AR technology is going to be bigger and better soon through a radical change in storytelling, and that it is going to be a really powerful, unique way to tell stories.