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Ramy Katrib has been at the forefront of digital storytelling for over 25 years, with his post-production company, DigitalFilm Tree, earning a reputation as one of Hollywood's most technically adventurous post-production houses. He joined Bryan and Adam to explore the past, present, and future of digital storytelling.
If we got something wrong or missed something, please file a PR! Our next show will likely be on Monday at 5p Pacific Time on our Discord server; stay tuned to our Mastodon feeds for details, or subscribe to this calendar. We'd love to have you join us, as we always love to hear from new speakers!
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What is Oxide and Friends?
Oxide hosts a weekly Discord show where we discuss a wide range of topics: computer history, startups, Oxide hardware bringup, and other topics du jour. These are the recordings in podcast form.
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Why don't I do some typing while you kick it off? Ramy, thank you so much for bearing with me on that.
Ramy Katrib:Yeah, definitely. Sorry
Bryan Cantrill:about Oh, Rami, welcome. First of all, we will not accept your apologies for Discord and an app that is like made for, I would say Gen Zers, but I think it's actually younger than that. I always feel like and I get I just apologize because there just doesn't seem to be a better solution out there for this. Yeah. Both chat and audio and but you I always feel like, you know, especially with the the offers that Discord makes for me.
Bryan Cantrill:You know, I get that, like, klaxon in my brain that tells me I'm in a space meant for children. Like, this is inappropriate that I'm here.
Ramy Katrib:No. I I have so many friends that use it that are not children at at all. They're actually very, accomplished. I just haven't gotten around to it recently. So I got caught off guard.
Bryan Cantrill:Oh, I'm so sorry. I will.
Ramy Katrib:Yeah. Thank you so Yeah.
Bryan Cantrill:It's good to see you. Yeah. So, Ramy Katrib, it is so great to have you with us. I'm really excited for this because I think that, you know, looking at at the the kind of the the entire history of digital storytelling or storytelling, I should say. Like, has always been caught up with technology.
Bryan Cantrill:To me, it's kind of it is interesting that storytelling is so deep in our humanity that we want to use technology. Am drawing too big an arc here? It just feels like I just, you know, was like I felt I was kind of going back to the Greeks as I was thinking about this. I'm like, oh, this has always been I'm sure this is not a deep thought. But this is something that we've always been eager to apply our technology to is this very human experience of storytelling.
Bryan Cantrill:Am I I getting high on my own supply over here?
Ramy Katrib:No. No. I mean, it it I can point you to something, that I encountered at Stanford where they willfully include storytelling for their mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, programs like ME310, where when I fortuitously met with the folks up at Stanford, was like, wow. They discovered that there's a correlation where if you're really technically brilliant, you're probably deficient in some kind of creative storytelling aspect. So yeah.
Ramy Katrib:And so it's been going on since, like, 1969. It's just for whatever reason, Hollywood does not commingle well outside of Hollywood. It's almost like, you know, they have a monopoly on production value or good storytelling where they know exactly how to make people, you know, tear up, right, or smile at just the right moment. But no, think story is now expanding into every possible sector, especially non Hollywood corporations in particular. But I'll pause there because I can get into a wormhole sometimes talking about story.
Ramy Katrib:The bottom line, it is the best commingling of technology or the sciences and creativity by far.
Bryan Cantrill:Yeah, interesting. And I think in terms of also using technology to tell, so you've got both kind of telling the story as a technologist, but then using the technology to tell a story. So I guess it goes both directions there. Yes. And I mean, you were, I mean, very relatively, I mean, right?
Bryan Cantrill:In terms of actually, you know, using a digital editing, basically what didn't exist when you started your career, right? I mean, am I
Ramy Katrib:That's correct.
Bryan Cantrill:Am I getting hit? It must been wild to realize like, a minute, we actually might not need film at all. I mean, was that because that must have been a wild and heretical thought in the mid nineties, late nineties.
Ramy Katrib:100. I mean, people would actually get upset at the idea, Right? That film or celluloid at the time, you know, it was the, you know, nineteen ninety four ish. Kodak was still a monolith. Right?
Ramy Katrib:They had all the all the patents on digital, which is ironic. Colors Man. Color science. They had it all, but there was they couldn't fathom the idea that film would not be the thing because it had been part of our culture for the better part of, like, a hundred and twenty years. And then it happened really quickly.
Ramy Katrib:In fact, really, our origin story is when Steve Jobs returned to Apple after he'd been ousted, and he he changed up the product SKU. He killed off a bunch of products. And then then he came up with something called FireWire for the people that are older that remember that. It was like I triple e thirteen ninety four protocol, but it, you know, it transmitted digital video and audio over a dainty little wire. And that really, in my view, is the beginning of the consumer digital revolution right there.
Bryan Cantrill:Yeah. That is really interesting. And I can say, I mean, Steve Jobs coming back to Apple is such kind of an interesting period of time. I feel that we we can't mention him killing products off without making at least a passing reference to his WWDC keynote in 1997 that, I think Adam, I'm sure we've made reference to on this podcast before because it's so it's such an unbelievable keynote. But among other things says that Focus is saying no and talks about all these cherished things that he's gonna kill off.
Bryan Cantrill:But then Firewire is one of those things that he kinda creates coming out of that. Yeah. And what was his like, what was the motivation there behind Firewire? I mean, he clearly saw the the the need for this. I mean, I I obviously had kind of a much more of a media disposition than other folks in tech at the time.
Ramy Katrib:Yeah. I mean, what what we saw because we ended up authoring their educational program for all the pro applications, the usage of FireWire across, like, you know, applications like Final Cut Pro or DVD Studio Pro or Compressor, all these desktop applications in the early 2000s, he wanted to simplify the process. He wanted it to be easy for people to transmit video and pictures and audio, to that iMac, which was a breakout success. It was one little connector, it kind of gave you all the IO capability to shoot on digital video. It's got DV, Digitize it into your Mac.
Ramy Katrib:It's essentially a quick time. And then iMovie and Final Cut were the ways that you can publish. This is so before social media or So it's like the dawn of Google was kind of a novel company at the time. And so, he wanted to simplify the process. They were very maniacal about making it easy, simplifying it.
Ramy Katrib:And then the way they did that was they garnered interest in what they called the prosumer or consumer part of their market by having successes in Hollywood, unlike TV shows and movies. They leveraged the successes there to make marketing campaigns like, be a pro. Edit like they do in Hollywood. And so and they they still kinda do that to this day. But what's ironic now, they tell stories.
Ramy Katrib:And here we are twenty five years later, and we're working on their shows now that they're a content creator, which is Right. Yeah.
Bryan Cantrill:So
Ramy Katrib:real that it came full circle.
Bryan Cantrill:It did come full circle. And so as during out you kind of post firewire, I assume that things are now being shot in that kind of early two thousands. Things are beginning to transition from film to digital. I mean, at what point is it just like all the I I assume nothing is really shot on film at this point. There's always some you know, I've actually I I say that in my teenagers, like, wanna buy vinyl for no good reason, which kind of warms my Gen X heart.
Bryan Cantrill:So I don't wanna, like, argue them out of it, but, it's also a little bit ridiculous. I'm sure there's some Gen Z or that's that's shooting on film just to be contrarian, but I but I assume everything has been shot on TV for fifteen years.
Ramy Katrib:Yeah. I would say so. I I would say by 2015, it it essentially had settled where the majority of projects, both TV and feature films, were shot digitally, you know, on cameras like the Arri Alexa or the Sony cameras. But I will note Christopher Nolan film was shot on film, The Odyssey. And then last year, really acclaimed film, the one It
Bryan Cantrill:was shot on film. Odyssey was why is that? Why is that, yeah. Why is he shooting on film? I mean, I'm sure that that is it well, I'm sure he's got very good reasons for it.
Ramy Katrib:One battle after another. That was another really acclaimed film, all shot on film. So it's mostly because of the the the the the format size, the fidelity of how much information you can capture with a 70 millimeter film versus a, you know, a 65 millimeter digital sensor. So at the end of the day, film is still probably the gold standard in terms of the amount of information it could imprint on the emulsion versus an electronic sensor that is trying to do the same thing. So and there's, like, some folks that are still purists who have, essentially, the leverage to to still shoot on film.
Ramy Katrib:And there's a company mhmm.
Bryan Cantrill:Well, I definitely remember I mean, I shot on I I mean, I would you know, like, like a lot of people that has too much money. I was interested in, you know, like SLR photography and was definitely a film purist for a while. I'm like, you know, my I got my Agfa Chrome Pro three that is and I remember being like, you know, let me know when you can shoot at 12 megapixel because that's the and like, well, okay. Yeah. It turns out we can do that.
Bryan Cantrill:So it means like the the the the the even the grain of the finest film got passed pretty quickly. So I'm I'm, I'm amazed that film is still holding on.
Ramy Katrib:Yeah. Yeah. And and, and by the way, the majority of our shows now, shows like, Rooster or Shrinking and others are shooting at eight ks resolution as a matter of routine.
Bryan Cantrill:We're
Ramy Katrib:well past four ks resolution And for whatever it's worth, all the platforms, whether it's Netflix or Amazon or even Apple TV, are all what they call high dynamic range. So you have a lot of really bright, bright scenes when they're bright and really dark, dark scenes when they're dark. So it gives you kind of another level of visual fidelity is now commonplace just in the last year on all the platforms.
Bryan Cantrill:Well, I was gonna I was gonna ask. So in terms of, like, what that additional resolution buys you, and it it like, what creativity creatively it buys you? Sounds like it it gives you just more that you can go do.
Ramy Katrib:Yeah. Like, imagine a dark scene where there's seven exterior lights along a street. Your ability to make those really pop out or make them muted, you just have more range, more options, more versatility. Or, you know, to to shoot a scene where you can see the silhouette, everything else is, you know, distinctly dark, but you can still see what's going on. Those are all the benefits of this extra latitude that you have with high dynamic range to, you know, sometimes it doesn't really serve the story.
Ramy Katrib:So it's just background. But there are times where the color and the brightness or darkness of a scene is integral to the story being told. So it just gives you, you know, more tools, so to speak.
Bryan Cantrill:And it also definitely creates more infrastructure problems for you, I'm sure, in terms of just like, okay. A lot more storage. Like, all the numbers go up in terms of and I I I assume you it's already, it's a lot of data you're moving around.
Ramy Katrib:Yeah. Yeah. And that's how we came that's how we we we were introduced to a mutual friend. But, yeah, you know, I will say that our industry is very data heavy. For example, a normal show will now average, you know, five to 10 terabytes a day, so you multiply that by six or seven days a week times six months.
Ramy Katrib:So you can just do the math. It's a pretty decent like payload, data payload, and then there's new means of imaging where you're actually combining, like, 20 cameras at the same time. So now essentially one 10 terabytes times 20 is your new daily payload and that's to do things like Gaussian splats, is something I look forward to talking more with Oxide about because it is a storage and compute lift to say the least. We're still wrapping our minds and hearts around it because, like, imagine, like, a director will shoot, you know, hours and hours of footage across 20 cameras and the whole idea is that meshes those cameras to create a three d space or what they call a Gaussian splat, which then gives us all this remarkable capabilities to relight the scene or shoot the actors or the humans from different perspectives. And that is just, I guess, the continuing evolution continuing evolution of imaging technology and the data This
Bryan Cantrill:is super interesting. So in what do I mean, to what degree is this happening emerging? I mean, it's it is really intriguing. This kind of four d Gaussian splatting. I mean, you should know that Adam was a math concentrator, so he sits up in his seat whenever you remember whenever Gauss comes in.
Bryan Cantrill:Yeah. Tell me Yeah. Gauss. Yeah, exactly.
Ramy Katrib:Yeah. Remember, like, photogrammetry and then for a hot second, Nerfs were really popular? So I guess you would say Gaussian splatting both has two at least in Hollywood, there's three d Gaussian splatting, which is shooting environments like sets that exist in the physical world, but now you have a digital replica of them, which is super cool because when you strike it down from the physical world, what if you want to shoot in that environment again? You have to then rebuild it physically. So, this kind of allows you to reshoot in these environments in perpetuity.
Ramy Katrib:So, that's three d Gaussian splatting. And then four d Gaussian splatting is humans, capturing humans. If you watch the latest Superman by James Gunn, remember the scene with Bradley Cooper, the father of Superman when he's in, what is it, Krypton, where they look holographic. If you saw that movie, that was four d Gaussian splatting, an example of it that actually made the screen. But it's still relatively novel, right?
Ramy Katrib:It's still up and coming because it is a huge data compute, data storage, data payload lift.
Bryan Cantrill:And presumably a lot of compute as well. But then it sounds like just gives you enormous freedom to go do all sorts of things after the fact. The and is your kind of gut like, wow, this is this feels like the conversion from film to digital. Is this something that's gonna be specialized or do you think this is going to be ubiquitous across storytelling?
Ramy Katrib:That's a good question. Our intuition is that as long as it could be simplified, kind of like what Apple did way back in the day, it will certainly become ubiquitous because just imagine the freedom of relighting and reshooting your actors from different angles after the fact or at your leisure. That's kind of beyond compelling.
Bryan Cantrill:Right. Then when you shoot the actors, are the actors then kind of on a green screen? Are they are they are they in a studio with with 20 cameras around them? How does that how how does that work?
Ramy Katrib:That's actually it's funny that that is literally being mapped out as we speak. So we realize that some of the players in the industry there's a company called X Grids which makes hardware software. There's another company called 4DV dot ai, I believe it is. It's clear that you can bring the cameras to where the people are, which is really neat. Or you can set them up in a traditional stage or insert stage where the people come technology and then you scan them there.
Ramy Katrib:So it could happen in either scenario. You just need if you're doing it on a stage like at Warner Brothers or, you know, any stage, You just need to have the folks who can set it up and administer it, if that answers your question.
Bryan Cantrill:I did. I kind of actually you, I kind of fell down the x grids hole, when you mentioned x grids. I've never seen it before. Adam, like, we we we've got money. Why are we not buying one of those?
Bryan Cantrill:Or or several of them. I just Yeah.
Adam Leventhal:Exactly. One
Bryan Cantrill:Money can be exchanged for goods exactly. We what why does Oxide exist if not to exchange venture capitalist dollars for, these crazy things? These I'll I'll
Ramy Katrib:I'll share with you after the fact. I got I recently got permission to share the the scans we did of Rooster, the the what is it? The actor sorry. I'm horrible. The the show on HBO, shrinking bad monkey.
Ramy Katrib:We did the sets, and they look phenomenal. So think of the the solve that they created, which is LIDAR meshed with RGB four k video, and it's meshed together. So you go through an environment and just systematically scan it, and it'll tell you, like, I need more more time over here in this corner. And then you start post post processing. That's where the compute comes in.
Ramy Katrib:The more compute you have, the faster you can process it. So for us, it took us, like, for one, you know, one set, which was, like, six or seven buildings, you know, it took us, like, over a week, one to two weeks of just throwing all the compute we had in our building at it. And the results are remarkable. And I can show it to you now that it was like, I wasn't able to publicize it, but now I can. So you'll find it interesting.
Ramy Katrib:So the XFit camera really does make it easy. It's one great solution to combine LiDAR. So now you have measurements of space, which is hugely helpful for people that are like production designers or just builders for that matter.
Bryan Cantrill:Yeah. Or just dorks who wanna screw out of the camera. I'd like I I feel like we can find a lot of uses for this thing, Adam. Yeah. You know you know,
Adam Leventhal:Bryan, I I didn't realize it, but I've actually Gaussian splatted myself, which is which sounds like something that, like, Tobias Bluth would be sitting here. But, you know, with the with the camera on your phone or whatever, I was using it to to scan my son's head. That's using similar technology, obviously, at a much smaller scale. But Yeah. Yeah.
Adam Leventhal:You know, same kind of idea.
Ramy Katrib:Yeah. It's interesting that the experts product that you're probably looking up online. It's not intended for humans, but we just for the hell of it started shooting ourselves. And it it actually does a pretty good job, like, with skin, skin tone, the light, you know, how light interacts with skin and clothing is always a thing. So, you can see that it's going to advance, you know, markedly in the coming years.
Ramy Katrib:The fact that we already have the amount of resolution that we have where we can reshoot a scene in a virtual environment that does not exist anymore is one huge indicator. I mean, if you're going back just three, four years, it was just not possible. Like photogametry was just not good enough, so to speak. And here we are.
Bryan Cantrill:I mean, that is like, that alone just feels amazing. When you have these kind of, you know, these kind of, iconic sets that you can now have completely digitally in a way that you can really meaningfully manipulate. Like, I'm like, you're not just kind of creating the images, but you actually have the actual, the the the actual mesh that you can then do all sorts of things with. It just feels yeah. I'm I'm blown away.
Bryan Cantrill:This is amazing. And it's also like considering what it is. I'm obviously already justifying it to myself. It's not that expensive. I mean, is kind of stuff that can be I mean, I guess to to your point, Rami, about like this needs to be able to get into the hands of people.
Bryan Cantrill:And presumably that means easy to use, but also at a at a price point that is not totally debilitating.
Ramy Katrib:Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I I assume a lot of folks here in audience, like, use game engines. Right?
Bryan Cantrill:I think it is a fair assumption. I'm not representative of our audience in this regard. I'm so sorry. But, yes, I think it is a very that is a very fair assumption. Yeah.
Bryan Cantrill:Yeah. Exactly. Adam Adam will speak on behalf of our our much cooler audience. Yes.
Ramy Katrib:Yeah. Well, I mean, it because that opens up all these avenues where now you can willfully go out and create your own sets that are some kind of mixture of the real world and then digital things that you add to the scans of the real world. So now you can use all the tools like the cinematic tools in Unity or Unreal, and you've got like three d sets, which used to be really hard to do a few years ago. Now you can essentially go out scan something and then bring that three d mesh into unreal and start shooting within it or manipulate And then you can also use tools like nuke, which is commonplace in traditional visual effects. So that is a tool anyone can use that will bridge between Unreal and Nuke or vice versa so you can start compositing things in a three d environment.
Ramy Katrib:Again, I this might sound rudimentary, but, like, a few years ago, it was really hard to do stuff like that. Now it's just becoming easier.
Bryan Cantrill:It's amazing. Alright. So I gotta act actually kinda ask you about what appears to be a tech dead end for storytelling. I would love your take on it. I'm putting my thumb on the scale.
Bryan Cantrill:Virtual reality. Where do you see VR in this? Because I it's been really interesting to watch my kids go in and out of VR headsets. Yeah, always think it's a it's a bad sign when the kids are selling it to the next kid. It's like that should be like red alert.
Bryan Cantrill:But I don't know how how do you see it? I mean, I'm sure there were folks who believed that VR was going to be the future of storytelling.
Ramy Katrib:Yes.
Bryan Cantrill:And it feels like that's not happening. Is that a fair statement?
Ramy Katrib:I mean, I think so. Apple had, made a sizable investment, because we're in proximity to them. I think it's kind of getting stale.
Bryan Cantrill:I've got a theory on this. This is not a this is a deep thought. This is not a deep thought, rather. This is in the Adam, in the tradition of of World War two being stressful. The and other obvious observations we've made.
Bryan Cantrill:I think that part of a a big problem with VR is that it is not social. It's something that like if you do it with your because like and if you if you put on VR goggles with like a teenage boy in the room Yeah. You you are absolutely gonna watch out. A 100%. Like you your business is now unprotected in a way that is very primal.
Bryan Cantrill:And I gotta say, when I see one of my teenage boys on the VR headset, I'm like, God, wanna put them in the nuts so bad. Yeah.
Adam Leventhal:We are all teenage boys when someone else puts on a
Bryan Cantrill:We are all teenage boys. We are all teenage boys. Someone else puts on a VR headset, and you're like, the time is now. And I there's something about it that says, like, no. No.
Bryan Cantrill:Like, the it's appropriate now. Now that you that this is a good thought that you have of assaulting your your child.
Ramy Katrib:You know, I'll I'll I'll share something with you. A few years ago, we were getting, like, pretty notable directors to come into our facility. And, you know, a few years ago, we would have their sets, like in Unity or Unreal where they can peruse their own vision, their own environments. And we said, if you really want to introspect your environment, put on these goggles. And some people loved it.
Ramy Katrib:It was like jaw dropping to them because imagine just facing your own story. Right? You conceived in your own head. And then we visualize that you put on the goggles and you can go in any corridor and go through doors and but what was telling is some people really did not like it. It was unnerving to them.
Ramy Katrib:That we did not assume for. I guess that was like our that was our blind spot. Some people found it not not just that they were neutral towards it. They were kind of against
Bryan Cantrill:Offput. Yeah. Right. Offputting. Yeah.
Bryan Cantrill:Interesting.
Ramy Katrib:Yeah. And we and we didn't see that coming because we thought at most it's benign. Right? Like, you don't like it. That's cool.
Ramy Katrib:But I don't know if that was just an early indicator that it wasn't gonna scale at least in what I call the enterprise storytelling world.
Bryan Cantrill:Yeah. Well, I think it like I I think this is where you get to the this aspect of storytelling that is so deep in our humanity. Right? I mean, I feel that we it's the kind of the through line through all of humanity is our desire to tell stories and to listen to them. I mean, it's amazing that we, you know, we colonize humans colonize the earth without writing.
Bryan Cantrill:And like, that's all being conveyed effectively orally and effectively being a story is a huge part of it, right? That the and our I mean, I just think it is so in our the deepest parts of our animal brain. We really hang on story. And I feel that like the problem with VR is it didn't kind of unlock that humanity. It kind of it was stuck in this literal uncanny valley of storytelling where it's like, this should be compelling, but it's not.
Bryan Cantrill:And I, why is it not compelling to me? And I'm like, I think it's not compelling because I'm here in virtual world kind of alone exploring it like, okay, your avatar is here too. But like, actually, we're both kind of alone wherever we are. We're not actually like, at the movies together, or we're not actually, you know, to the contrary, I'm worried you're gonna hit me in the nuts the entire time, at least with my own children.
Ramy Katrib:So You know, I I don't know why it didn't translate. I I don't I don't assume to to know why because I can tell you that the I have so many friends from the gaming industry who design, you know, sophisticated games, and that is so over the top story driven.
Bryan Cantrill:And Interesting. Yeah.
Ramy Katrib:And and if and if you interact with folks both from linear Hollywood storytelling and from the gaming industry, there are so many commonalities that I thought that this is the coolest thing ever. It's like the intersection of, like, the gaming industry copying Hollywood in terms of, like, how things look, like golden hour and then vice versa. One of my friends, Leventhal, who is, you know, a luminary in, like, vision science and and the gaming gaming industry, he loved to watch movies, and he inspired what he did in terms of gaming features. I found that fascinating because I'm not you know, I wasn't paying attention to games. Then then all of a sudden, the game engine came out of nowhere and helped us in Hollywood to architect stories and, you know, what they call previsualization so that you don't have to spend more money than you have to shoot in the physical world.
Ramy Katrib:So all of a sudden, we were right at the intersection of both industries. I I think we still are. Now you can add AI.
Bryan Cantrill:Yeah.
Ramy Katrib:Right? Because AI, you can spawn a world or a simulation out of thin air just for fun. And, you know, now that is gonna affect how writers interact with the in in the writer's room, They check their ideas in terms of what a story will be. So I always see the intersections.
Bryan Cantrill:Now that we've touched on that, let's get into that because I obviously, AI is rocking everything, but Hollywood especially. I mean, it's I think it's, again, rocking many things. What what is the kind of the what is your thinking on how this is gonna affect presumably, I mean, just about every aspect of storytelling at some level, but maybe, I don't know, maybe it it won't be as fundamental as it seems.
Ramy Katrib:No. I I I think it's definitely already is fundamental, fundamentally changing all the crafts. Right? So we used it recently and we're one of the first companies to do something that got on air on a because I'm not sure if I can say it. I'm gonna just talk about it abstractly, but we were working on a show that's popular, and we did something called out painting where the you know old shows that are squares?
Ramy Katrib:Remember, like, for all the old folks here, when you're growing up, your TV was a square. Right.
Bryan Cantrill:Yes. Yes. Yes. We Adam or I know. We're raising our hands.
Ramy Katrib:That's called a four by three aspect ratio. So you're talking about, like, easily forty to fifty years of content that's, like, square, maybe even more. So, you know, a showrunner did not wanna flash back to a scene that was square. He wanted to flash back to something that looks cinematic, which is 16 by none. So long story short, we created the sides using generative AI, and lo and behold, it worked out really well, like to the point that if you're watching it, even the forms on Reddit did not pick it up unless you were really astute.
Bryan Cantrill:Wow.
Ramy Katrib:So that was that was a really Yeah, it was amazing. And we all, you know, and we almost got in trouble because, you know, corporations are all like, you can't work with this company or that company. And it's way above our pay grade. Right? We we work with all companies.
Ramy Katrib:We're super research and development based. But sometimes your clients have scuffles with other companies. You don't know why. They just say, you can't work with them. Or like, okay.
Ramy Katrib:We can't work with them. But, anyways, we succeeded is my point. And it was very noncontroversial in that. How can you be angry at filling in the sights of a frame? Seriously.
Bryan Cantrill:Right. Right. You're not you're not putting any actors out of work. You're not doing this is you're bringing writers out of work. This is all this is that feels very, and this is what Adam has to do when I send him an image suggestion for the podcast, which is always of the wrong aspect ratio.
Adam Leventhal:That's right. Story of my life.
Ramy Katrib:Not painting.
Bryan Cantrill:So that yeah. That is really, that's really interesting. And so,
Ramy Katrib:yeah. I I was just gonna say, what a great example. So now we're socializing with our friends and colleagues going, why don't we attack the world's four by three? There's tons of it. It's just sitting there doing nothing.
Ramy Katrib:What if we reimagined it, like recolored it and brought it to life? Like, to me, that is super exciting because you're using tip of the spear technology to readdress the past. I I love that because most people are preoccupied with new stuff, which is great. So are we. But no one's even paying attention to the old material.
Ramy Katrib:It'll really take a strange group to resist that. You know, it's just sitting there. It needs to be resuscitated before the the mediums that it's stored on atrophy, like LTO tape and and film, right, over time.
Adam Leventhal:I love this idea of, like, the the the thing that is stopping a new generation from discovering mister Ed is the aspect ratio. I I love this idea.
Ramy Katrib:Oh, yeah. Oh, dude. We would blow mister Ed up. In fact, we will we will we will find, like, an old tape and just summarily restore it at the highest possible quality just because we can't help ourselves, just to see what the outcomes can be. We restored an old Michael Jackson VHS of Billie Jean is Not My Lover off of VHS.
Bryan Cantrill:Oh, wow.
Ramy Katrib:You would never ever presume that our final result came from VHS because we couldn't. We were blown away ourselves. It's just technology is moving so fast, and some people call it super resolution. You know, everyone is kind of trying to crack know, taking something old and bringing it up to a new level.
Bryan Cantrill:I I would know that your your answer is quite a bit more culturally weightier than mister Ed. It feels like mister Ed because Adam, mean, I'm just mister Ed feels like, actually, I'm kinda surprised. I wasn't like a mister Ed hasn't been rebooted, honestly, given it just feels like it'd be
Adam Leventhal:You're right. No. Like, starring Jack Black. Absolutely.
Bryan Cantrill:Right? It feels like it kind of I mean, it it kind of writes itself. And maybe it will write itself. Maybe that's the point, actually. Maybe we can can restore.
Bryan Cantrill:And so so, yeah, that is definitely wild in terms of just not the the like the restoration. And then the augmentation, do like you're like, this, like, can't possibly be controversial, but this was wasn't the the Ted Turner got into like, when he tried to colorize the classics. Right? He Yes. It and where did that it feels like would that have the same controversy today?
Bryan Cantrill:I don't know. You know? It feels like
Ramy Katrib:That's a great question. There are some people on the Internet, like on YouTube, that are restoring old properties and colorizing them, even doing out painting very much like I'm describing. It seems to be less controversial when you readdress old material. Speaking of which, you guys heard about the restoration of the Wizard of Oz at the Sphere in Vegas. That has now become a cultural phenomenon.
Ramy Katrib:It's generated a ton of money. At first, it was like doom and gloom, like melancholy in Hollywood because people were like, it wasn't faithfully restored and so on and so forth. When all was said and done, more people have seen the wizard of Oz than anyone could ever because of that restoration. Sometimes it sells out three times a day, and those are our friends at Warner Brothers, our friends at Google DeepMind, and our friends at The Sphere. Like, we just happen to have relationships with all of them, and they did it.
Ramy Katrib:They pulled it off, and and they're still improving upon what was a four by three film, a square film, and it was out painted to 16 k by 16 k resolution. If you can just consider that for a second, what a feat that is. And it it it it resonated in the culture.
Bryan Cantrill:Well, in the Wizard of Oz has gotta be one of the very first color films, I would imagine. I mean Yes. Because, I mean, I mean, they they use that as a I mean, the the Yeah. Spoiler. Right.
Bryan Cantrill:The the spoiler alert for the wizard of Oz. You know, after, you know, after all the hate mail we got for our spoiler for Moby Dick, Adam, I'm I'm I'm I'm very mindful of this, but as a spoiler alert, it color's important. Color's important. Color becomes important. Keep watching.
Bryan Cantrill:Keep watching if it starts off as but I did not know that he made it a sphere project. I mean, I I wanna go see it. I think it'd be I mean, it feels like also that's the kind of thing that would lend itself very well because that was, I mean, easier to do it feels like than Casablanca, but I I don't know. I mean, I kinda wanna you're opening my eyes.
Ramy Katrib:Much harder. No. It it was it was a it was a huge lift because all the characters are so different. Right? The textures are so different.
Ramy Katrib:So they had to create, like, teams that just concentrated on Tin Man and Straw Man. Those are, like, became vertical businesses just concentrating on the characters and their texture. Yeah. I I think if you have things that are more uniform, it tends to be easier.
Bryan Cantrill:It tends to be easier. No. But I mean, from the pure entertainment value, I could see, like, it feels like it's the the story and the production is amenable to that kind of I I mean, I wanna go see this like in the sphere. I didn't realize they'd done that. I think it would be it sounds like it's amazing.
Bryan Cantrill:It'd be fun to go watch. So the and that was also what did they do as they were recasting that for what's involved technically for in the sphere? I've not been there. Adam, have you been there? No.
Bryan Cantrill:I I mean, I've heard great things. But
Ramy Katrib:I mean, it's it's just the it's the largest screen, on earth. I think if it's 18,000 people and so think of it as like a geodesic, a partial geodesic dome, and it has haptics. So for certain shows that like, you know, YouTube played there and Grateful Dead type bands and, you know, experiences where like microdosing is like recommended happens So it is one of a kind venue which is now being replicated elsewhere. So, I think Vegas was the very first. There's a little baby version of it in Burbank, California, a little baby dome next to Burbank Airport.
Ramy Katrib:And the whole idea is just to experience something, like, imagine IMAX. If anyone's ever been to an IMAX theater, it is really jaw dropping if you go to a proper IMAX theater. So this is like IMAX on steroids.
Bryan Cantrill:Well, and it does feel like I mean, I think it's it's certainly interest Adam, have you did you have you seen the Odyssey? Nope. I haven't. No. I I
Adam Leventhal:But I'm waiting to see it in IMAX because it was shot both in film and on IMAX film. Like, it's intended for IMAX.
Bryan Cantrill:Yep. And like we are there are very few theater I mean, whether it's like, you know, 40 theaters, something like that nationwide, whatever it is. And it's a small number of theaters nationwide and they're booked out for weeks. Which I think is kind of interesting that, I mean, mean, no one is kind of Not that he's doing it single handedly, I think people are kind of thirsty for that in movie theater experience, provided that it feels like something they can't get on their couch. I mean, it feels like it's interesting to me that that people want to get back to the theater.
Bryan Cantrill:I don't know if they're ever gonna get back. I mean, it will never don't know. Do Rami, what's your take on this? I mean, if he feels like he can never like it's never gonna go back to what it was where the theater was the only way. I mean, pre VHS, it was like
Ramy Katrib:So it's really interesting that you brought that up, Bryan, because, I think last week was a milestone and theatrical revenue that matched the pre COVID ceiling or threshold. I'm pretty sure about that, give or take. But so think about that since COVID it's been like an apocalypse in theatrical anything, theatrical businesses, and it just kind of got back to where it was before. So I don't know. Maybe this goes back to your point earlier that, you know, story is social.
Ramy Katrib:People love not just to see something on a big screen, but just to subconsciously be affected by how other people are affected versus the virtual goggle, which doesn't doesn't really I think so.
Bryan Cantrill:I think it's think it's social. I think you also just like because my kids really like going to the movies in a way that is a little surprising. And it's like, I think part of it is like you go with your friends and like everyone is off their phone, right? Everyone needs to focus on the story on the screen. I think that social aspect is And then when you add the kind of the spectacle aspect, I think that, you know, there was that moment, I think, where, you know, theaters are obviously adjusting, where they were trying to give you what is effectively your in home experience, but then charging you a lot more money for it.
Bryan Cantrill:It's like, all right, that's not going to work. It's going to have to be something else. Yeah. But it's interesting, I mean, certainly the Odyssey and I also think it's helpful. One question I've got is how long is the Odyssey gonna play in IMAX?
Bryan Cantrill:I mean, I'm hoping that it plays for because it used to be that movies would be in the theater for a really extended period of time. And you had this kind of social effect where people could watch it and like it, and then their friends would go see it based on that or they would And it felt like that aspect of seeing things in the theater had we we kind of lost that a little bit, but it feels like the Odyssey could be there in theaters for, you know, four months, five months.
Ramy Katrib:Yes. It'll be there no less than six months and arguably for a year because it's already kind of creating new it's creating new thresholds are being established. It came out, and it did really well internationally. So, you know, it's it's I hope I hope, like, physical mediums like IMAX and the sphere stay solvent and succeed
Bryan Cantrill:is Totally.
Ramy Katrib:Such a challenging business. I would like
Bryan Cantrill:to point out though that this movie we're talking about, it's the motherfucking Odyssey.
Ramy Katrib:Yeah.
Bryan Cantrill:I know. This is not a new script. You know? Like, this is like we this is so goddamn old that and there's a great radio lab on this, by the way, that we people do not did Homer see the color blue? Have you have you seen the have you you No.
Ramy Katrib:Have you
Bryan Cantrill:you have seen this? No. Oh, god. Were they so there's this the the color blue, first of does not appear anywhere in the Odyssey. It's always the wine, the wine dark sea.
Bryan Cantrill:And there is this hypothesis that because blue basically doesn't exist in nature. It exists in very rarely in nature. And if you but we are able to synthesize blue and once we were able to synthesize blue, then blue is everywhere. Yeah. And there is and like, there's this kind of question about why is the sea not blue in the Odyssey?
Bryan Cantrill:And I there's a there's a great radio lab on that that we can link to. But I'm just saying, this is an old story. This is a story that is so old that reasonable people disagree on whether we had the color blue or not
Ramy Katrib:when the story is right. Fascinating. Sorry. I don't wanna I just pulled it up, but it's like heavily utilizes blue tones to visually evoke melancholy vastness and the isolation of Odysseus' journey. Wow.
Bryan Cantrill:Yeah. Interesting. That would that's interesting. I wonder if I'm I'm sure no one is, you know, so multilevel on all this stuff that I'm sure is deliberately, tacking into that. But I just think I mean, it's there's something that's interesting to me about the fact that, this is this is how old these stories are.
Bryan Cantrill:This is like we're retelling these same stories in but in new lights, of course, because they are this is like so deep in our nature. And it's it's kind of amazing to me that that it's the Odyssey that is I mean, I feel like all that I mean, the superhero movies, too, we're all the same. I, you know, we constantly do we invent our own mythology as we should, I mean, as as everyone does. So
Ramy Katrib:Yeah. I I just bad,
Bryan Cantrill:but I like it.
Ramy Katrib:I just have to call out the storytellers in, the social media realm and people who are independent. It's so interesting that they are starting to engage, you know, with vendors and providers that have historically provided their services or their facilities to Hollywood productions. And just in the last six months I can think of at least a dozen experiences where friends and colleagues either own or operate businesses, whether they're service business or hardware or software businesses, are now being approached by people that are not of Hollywood. They're just, they're from the greater social media world or what they call influencers. So I think there's a, my impression right now is there's a huge cross pollination event happening mostly because of the stranglehold so to speak or not, no, that's not the right word.
Ramy Katrib:Just kind of the position Hollywood has had on production value is not just for them anymore. I think it's fracturing. So as a result anyone can do something above average if they're so inclined. But you know most people who endeavor to tell stories have a mediocre outcome because it's so hard. Technology does not make your life any easier in terms of telling a good story in the same way that it's against you.
Ramy Katrib:It's neutral. Storytelling is not affected by technology in either direction, if that makes sense. Right? You still have to go through the toil of telling a good story.
Bryan Cantrill:Yeah. And I I feel that, like, it's gonna be really interesting to see how some of this AI stuff shakes out because I can see how it is a tool at the margins for this. But it is hard. Mean, I don't know, maybe I'll just be But like, I mean, Adam, you've presumably seen some of this like people will remake Seinfeld as And if they can have AI just kind of whip it up. And it's like, it's a sugar high, but it's not really compelling.
Bryan Cantrill:And it's going to be interesting to see how that ends up being used or I'm sure misused.
Ramy Katrib:Yeah, we're excited about mixing those two worlds. To us, that's kind of where we find our our, like, center of gravity is, like, if you're a production designer who's worked for twenty five years, I don't think AI is gonna happen to that production designer. I think the production designer needs to happen to it, if that makes sense. That makes so much sense to me because they have all this experience. So why would you take that off the table?
Bryan Cantrill:Yeah, totally. And you put you put that tool in in that kind of like veteran hands and you could do extraordinary things.
Adam Leventhal:Yeah. There was this interesting quote I saw from Dave Eggers claiming that Judd GBT was silencing an entire generation. The idea being that rather than people telling their own stories or having their own narrative or discovering their own voice, that they're that they're leading more and more on these tools. So as you say, Rami, like putting these tools in the in the hands of experienced folks is one thing. I do wonder if if it enables or stifles the variety of stories that we hear.
Ramy Katrib:I mean, for someone who's who's been part of a particular craft and it's part of story, I can can tell you right now that there's 16 essential categories or crafts within just like doing a TV show minimum. So just imagine if they created, a digital colleague that made them more productive, made themselves more productive. I think that's gonna expand the storytelling business just in my view. I don't think it's just gonna similarly replace the key roles. I think it definitely is gonna replace a lot of roles that are kind of not complex.
Ramy Katrib:And that's already happened like before, so that's not new. But if you're talking about a craft like art direction or set design or set construction or even how you electrify a stage or an environment. Think there's just going to be like massive productivity gains by virtue of AI, but really favoring the key technical and creative talent. I guess that's just my take on it. Right now it doesn't feel like that in the greater Hollywood space.
Ramy Katrib:Right.
Bryan Cantrill:Yeah. I think right now, mean, right now the fear levels are a little high. In part because I just feel like in every domain, we haven't really settled yet. I mean, there's just and There are so many different kind of, I guess, plausible future outcomes. And certainly speaking for software engineering, Adam, where it just feels like people have all sorts of ideas about And I think it's like not very productive to think about this as replacing.
Bryan Cantrill:I think we've said this many times over, but that these are extraordinary powerful tools in the hands of people that know what they're doing. And they're really in the hands of people that don't know what they're doing. It's kind of like power tools of people that don't know what they're doing. It's like, it's not like you really, you're gonna, you know, like, you're not gonna be like, hey, I can go build a house now because I have a power tool. It's like, no, no, you still don't know what I'm doing.
Bryan Cantrill:I'll still manage to kill myself doing that. Yeah. But it allows someone who knows what they're doing to actually do that much more quickly. I just feel like you're just also gonna democratize it so much. And I just feel this is like, your ChatGPT example, it's like, in my kids immediately using ChatGPT to troll people on Nextdoor, Adam, Just in terms of the creativity of this is like, you've got so much that you can go to.
Adam Leventhal:Opening up whole new vistas.
Bryan Cantrill:Whole new vistas. I know it was, which was unfortunately too easy. But it feels again, like in every domain, we we the future is very, very, very uncertain. But I I love this idea of going back to the old content. And especially once you have those, if you were to get you doing these kind of the Gaussian splatting of these sets just feels like it's gonna give us so much future tools in terms of the kinds of things we can go do.
Ramy Katrib:Yeah, for sure. And one of one of the shows I wanna bring back, which was one of our OG shows, is Scrubs, the TV show, the medical Yeah. Medical comedy, which, by the way, started in, I think, 2001. And so we we worked on it way actually, season two, which was 2003. And here it is making a comeback, so to speak, like, successfully.
Ramy Katrib:And I'm like, oh my god. Would it be so cool to restore that, bring it back where the people that made it are part of the process. Make it easy for them to see see the new outcomes, the new framing, the new color. Anyways, that's that's one project that makes a lot of sense. I can think of so many others.
Ramy Katrib:You know, everyone kinda grew up with, like, their favorite shows, and chances are they're four by three if you're old.
Bryan Cantrill:Yeah. Your your favorite shows or mister Ed failing that. Actually, you know, we had an interesting three's company came up a couple times on Friday in two
Ramy Katrib:Oh my god. I'll do that one for free. I watched that when I was growing up. So if we ever get our hands on three's company, I will just do Yeah. Like, maybe the first season just for Shits and Giggles for free.
Ramy Katrib:Because I grew up with that show.
Bryan Cantrill:Yeah. You know, now maybe the time to mention that I this is when I knew I was I was getting older, Rami. I I dropped what I felt was the pitch perfect threes company reference. This is maybe like 2011, 2012. And the I'm sure I've bored you this.
Bryan Cantrill:We had, elevator repair was going on in the building. Yeah. And they were the two elevator repairmen were shouting to one another across like four different floors. And it was deafening in the office that you would hear them shouting one another. And they're saying things like, get the bigger one, shove it in.
Bryan Cantrill:That was great. Yeah. Harder. That's good right there. And I say, I feel like I'm Mr.
Bryan Cantrill:Furley walking in on Jack and Chrissy repairing the shower.
Ramy Katrib:Yes.
Bryan Cantrill:And I am just like, I felt like a I felt like I touched the hand of God when I made that reference. I'm just like, I and I am
Adam Leventhal:I was just so doing a stroke check. Oh,
Bryan Cantrill:100%. And I like announced this to kind of like the bullpen at Joynt, and it is an absolute still pond. And I think you're right, Adam. I think it's a people like, I think he is fine. I think he's actually snapped.
Bryan Cantrill:Actually, he is he did he have, like, LSD in his coffee or something? Like, he has finally, like, lost his mind. And then I just like I mean, obviously, it's a three's company reference. Everybody gets a three's company reference. Again, this is, one of these aging moments when you realize like, wait a minute, not everybody gets a threes company reference.
Bryan Cantrill:In fact, nobody gets a threes company reference because I'm the oldest person in this room by like a decade. And so I kind of look out over to the steel bullpen. And, Adam, our colleague, Keith Wieslowski sees me getting increasingly desperate. I'm sort of this like also, like, I'm sure, you know, people think like this guy's just had a stroke. And now I'm like having like a fight or flight reaction because I like nobody is I just people are giving me such a flat look.
Bryan Cantrill:And finally, Keith says, I I think I know what reference you're trying to make, but I also know why none of them are gonna get it. I'm just like, okay, I but it's like Three's Company ultimately is a it is a pretty narrow window. It's not a big one as it turns out. I'm not sure how well it ages too. So I'm you know, I will be I will definitely watch your Three's Company remake even if it gets canceled by the rest of society.
Bryan Cantrill:I will watch it. It's my my pledge to you, Rami. I Because, yeah, that was stuff we grew up on.
Ramy Katrib:I will will urge who owns that IP is it's usually some kind of IP holder who is encumbered by some kind of challenge in the in in real life.
Bryan Cantrill:Yeah. The, ironically, you, your audio was extremely scrambled for you describing how you're going to restore the audio. It's gonna be interesting. I think we should actually Adam, we can apply AI and actually, restore Romy's lost audio of explaining how to get Three's company pride away from its, Craven IP holder.
Adam Leventhal:Love it.
Bryan Cantrill:Yeah. And Rami, this is not you. This is almost certainly Discord. Just to No worries. I love this idea.
Bryan Cantrill:And I More generally, I think it's just really interesting to mean, thank you so much for joining us in terms of looking at the few Because I think that people are so gripped in fear that it's important that we open our eyes and realize that there's a lot of really exciting stuff that's gonna happen. It's gonna change storytelling in a lot of ways, but the fundamentals are not gonna be I I think we're still gonna be telling the Odyssey. I think this is I think it's
Adam Leventhal:Expanding fair to the Homeric cinematic universe.
Bryan Cantrill:You know, it's very Lindy as the children say, Adam. Yeah. The Homer is very Lindy. I I so I I feel we're gonna well, Rami, thank you again for joining us. Really appreciate it.
Bryan Cantrill:This is the the 40 gaussian splatting stuff is so fascinating. We gotta go buy a couple of these cameras, Adam, and then we can the x grids. I I don't know what we're gonna do with them, but, I mean, how can we
Adam Leventhal:We'll figure it out. Absolutely.
Bryan Cantrill:We'll figure it out. Exactly. It just feels like there's there are a lot of exciting stuff.
Ramy Katrib:For sure. And and it'll be great to collaborate with with you guys on, something as practical as that. Because remember, if you turn on on if you turn on that camera, you're just generating data. There's a
Bryan Cantrill:God bless it.
Ramy Katrib:Yeah. There's no I mean, you can just keep it on. Think about that for a second. So we can we can talk about that further.
Bryan Cantrill:Well, I do think it's actually worth touching on that because like the I mean, these things are data hoses. Yes. And there is going to be I mean, the future involves I mean, obviously we're we're dealers of compute here. So we are, you know, we've got a we've a dog in the fight. We wanna make sure that that computers are important in the future, but it does feel like there's gonna be a lot more compute on these things.
Ramy Katrib:Yeah. Actually, in closing, celluloid was precious. So you had to stop at ten minutes if it was 16 millimeter and you had to put it into a dark bag, put it in a dark bag and change it and you better not mess up because if you flash the film, that's it. It's over. What whatever you just did, whatever just organically happened is over forever.
Ramy Katrib:So think of that dynamic of celluloid, which is so precious and finite. And I guess the same thing is happening again. Right? Is you can't just keep that camera on indefinitely because you have to deal with the ramifications of that. I just I just realized that as you were saying, you know, what you were just saying, it's kind of interesting.
Ramy Katrib:Film is precious. I think data is precious, I guess.
Bryan Cantrill:Yeah, that's really interesting. And that we the when we can solve those kinds of infrastructural problems and, as compute continues to become cheaper and cheaper and cheaper and storage becomes cheaper and cheaper and cheaper, we just open up new vistas in terms of what we can go do. And yeah, I mean, obviously our nightmare is that no one needs computers. I mean, that would be very bad. So it's very really what we're very pro four d Gaussian splatting and anything else that will consume compute.
Bryan Cantrill:But there are a lot of then thorny problems that we got to go solve. But boy, it seems like it's gonna be a really exciting future.
Ramy Katrib:For sure.
Bryan Cantrill:And I can't wait for that Three's Company reboot. That's what I'm
Ramy Katrib:I'm gonna work on that. Literally I'm gonna follow-up with you. I'm gonna find out who owns that bad boy and who's got the liability, and we'll figure this
Bryan Cantrill:out. And then we can I mean, like, also, like, okay? Look. I get it. Like, we colorize Casa Blanca.
Bryan Cantrill:Everyone's up in arms. But if we have mister Ed wander through Jack and Chrissy's apartment, it's like, are any purists really gonna be upset about that? It feels like we can I like I
Ramy Katrib:I just feel percent? There's gonna be there's gonna be people so pissed off about that. Right. Maybe not the best example.
Bryan Cantrill:Right. Right. I've actually managed to inflame two two two demographics long at war with one another. The three's company demographic and the Mr. Ed demographic.
Bryan Cantrill:Yeah. Well, we you know, we're gonna finally bring peace to our time. You know? This is like this is like Pakistan and India playing one another in cricket. You know?
Bryan Cantrill:It's very important to actually
Ramy Katrib:Let's just not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Let's let's keep them, let's have wins. Good, clean wins.
Bryan Cantrill:Good, clean wins. I like that. Good, clean wins. Okay. Alright.
Bryan Cantrill:We'll we'll table my my my Mr. Ed three's company crossover for now. Rami, thank you again for joining us. Really, really appreciate it. Just wild to get a look into the future of digital storytelling.
Bryan Cantrill:It's a lot of really exciting.
Ramy Katrib:It's a pleasure. Thank you, guys.
Bryan Cantrill:All right. Thanks, everybody. And Adam, sorry, it's been a little bit of a hiatus, but I'm glad to be back in the saddle here, complete with audio problems, which is great. So we're back to normal here on Oxide and Friends.
Adam Leventhal:Good to be back.
Bryan Cantrill:All right. Thanks, everyone. See you next time.