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Simon Crownshaw serves as Worldwide Media and Entertainment Strategy Director. In this role, he oversees the global industry team and manages the overall strategic direction for Microsoft. He provides leadership and direction to teams across studios, broadcasting, sports and live events and the solutions that power those focus areas. In addition to supporting the hundreds of global customers and helping them harness the power of Microsoft to enable media workflows, he is focused on media cloud adoption and the critical data and AI elements that will enable people and processes.
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Microsoft
As a respected member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), British Academy of Film Television Arts (BAFTA), and the Visual Effects Society (VES), James Knight has had a front-row seat to the exciting evolution of the media and entertainment industry. Currently serving as the Head of Global Media and Entertainment at AMD, Knight plays a pivotal role in shaping the future of visual effects and virtual production, steering the development and implementation of innovative digital solutions. In his capacity, he manages all of AMD's studio relationships worldwide, which includes major studios and VFX & post houses, putting him at the intersection of technology and storytelling in the global entertainment sphere.
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AMD
Global Objects
Jess Loren is a seasoned entertainment professional, tech entrepreneur, and internationally published author. As CEO and founding partner of To Whom It May Concern, a production services company, and Founder and CEO of Global Objects, she leads the charge in democratizing access to digital replicas of the world. With over 15 years of experience, she has overseen production & experiential projects for brands like Netflix, Hulu, Apple+, Microsoft and NVIDIA, and is a voting member of the Television Academy and a member of the Visual Effects Society. Jess's research on the brain's response to visual imagery continues to guide her work in virtual production, creative development, and experiential marketing.
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Jessica Hawk is the product marketing leader for Microsoft's Data & AI business, focusing on product strategy, GTM, sales enablement, industry alignment and driving market making execution and outcomes. Prior to joining Microsoft, she was a co-founder of Capax Global, a National Systems Integrator Partner, that grew into a global services company offering a variety of consulting services and eventually focused exclusively on Microsoft's Azure Application and Data Platform. This led to phenomenal growth and a merger with Hitachi Solutions where the combined companies became one of the very few Microsoft-only “Super Partners” who were able to deliver on all aspects of Microsoft’s Azure, Dynamics and Power Platform solutions. She remained on the executive team at Hitachi Solutions as Senior Vice President of Operations, overseeing its Azure Cloud business including P&L, product strategy, finance and operations, recruiting and team development, and acted as the Executive liaison to Microsoft for both Capax Global and Hitachi Solutions.
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Microsoft
Andy Beach is the CTO for Media and Entertainment Industry at Microsoft. In this capacity he is responsible for the technical strategy for our three clouds -Azure, Dynamics, and Office 365 as they relate the M+E industry. He collaborates closely with product groups and account teams to help customers and partners in developing their media related technology solutions and reference architectures that address their rapidly changing needs.
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Microsoft
Global Objects
Erick Geisler is a recognized technology leader and two-time Emmy winner serving as the Chief Technology Officer of Global Objects. With extensive expertise in innovative fields like Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs), generative AI, LIDAR scanning, and photogrammetry, Erick spearheads the development of realistic digital environments, democratizing access to digital replicas of the world. A voting member of the Television Academy and a member of the Visual Effects Society, he combines his technical prowess and artistic vision to drive the success of various projects across diverse platforms. His leadership at Global Objects is shaping the future of digital experiences across multiple sectors.
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Jackie’s work as a VFX artist and supervisor is widely recognized in the industry, recently becoming an Epic Fellow. She contributed to many top grossing films such as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows II, Tron and Jurassic World. Her extensive roster of credits include film, music videos, live events, and commercials. Within CG Pro, as a co-founder, she is deeply involved in curriculum development, community building, and assisting students in finding rewarding positions that take advantage of their newly acquired skills. She has recently started a diversity non-profit called CG Empowers that provides scholarships for diverse groups to help retrain and up level skills in computer graphics.
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As the VP of Virtual Production, Addy is immersed in Studio workflows and Industry standards for real time visualization for film and television. Addy is building a Disguise creator community and strategies that will further the proliferation of Virtual Production.
Company Description: disguise has a twenty-year history powering the world’s most spectacular visual experiences including live concerts for artists like Beyonce, location-based experiences like Illuminarium, virtual productions for Netflix and Amazon Prime and extended reality stages for companies like Siemens and Verizon and broadcast coverage for ITV and TUDN. disguise is a real-time production platform delivering the next dimension of visual experiences, bridging the physical and the virtual. Its combination of 3D visualization software, cloud solutions, platform, hardware and services provides creatives and technical teams the ability to realize any creative vision - no matter the complexity. Recognized by the Financial Times as a 2022 Tech hero, disguise is also a recipient of the Engineering, Science and Technology Emmy Award and Queen’s Award for Enterprise: Innovation.
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disguise
Aaron Behman is the Global Lead, M&E at AMD. In this role he looks after various media workloads including artist workstations, virtual production and ICVFX, rendering, transcoding and CDN. He works closely with partners, customers, and internal stakeholders to identify opportunities for collaboration, develop new technologies, and create new business models to help accelerate the transformation of the media and entertainment industry. Prior to moving over to AMD, Aaron was at Xilinx for over 15 years where he had responsibility for the broadcast and pro a/v embedded market and most recently ran product marketing and product management for Xilinx’s high density data center video transcoding solutions.
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Lux Machina
As a principal and founder at Lux Machina Consulting and CTO of NEP Virtual Studios, Phil Galler strives to push the boundaries of technology and design in the entertainment industry. Focusing on in-camera visual effects, real-time mixed reality and the future of film making and live broadcast, he has been fortunate enough to find himself at the crossroads of technological innovation and creativity.
Before starting Lux Machina Consulting, Phil worked as a programmer and project manager for one of the largest entertainment technology vendors in the world, handling design and execution of some of the most preeminent shows in the entertainment industry.
Passionate about developing new tools that span high-end media servers, automated lighting, LED, and projection, Phil works across a wide variety of entertainment formats to tackle complex, large-scale entertainment projects and finds ways to empower Lux Machina’s clients with versatile design options, new technology, and unique solutions.
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Rick Champagne leads Global Media & Entertainment Industry Strategy and Marketing for NVIDIA. Rick works closely with customers and industry partners in the film, television, broadcast, and advertising industries to promote the advancement and adoption new technologies. With a long history of managing products such as the Autodesk 3ds Max and Maya Entertainment Creation Suites, Softimage, Mudbox, and Painter, Rick has been in the service of artists and technologists for over two decades. He maintains close ties to industry as a member of the Visual Effects Society, HPA, and Royal Television Society. He also serves on the Board of Governors of the Advance Imaging Society and as a committee member of the Academy Software Foundation.
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Rick Grandy is a Principal Solutions Architect at NVIDIA focused on graphics and machine learning for the Gaming, Advertising and Media & Entertainment industries. Rick has nearly 3 decades of experience in visual effects and animation with industry leaders Industrial Light and Magic, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Digital Domain, Bad Robot, and others. His work initially centered on the development of digital characters and animation tools. Over time it grew to cover the VFX pipeline end-to-end including real-time previsualization, asset management, post-production, and ingestion/delivery systems. At NVIDIA, Rick has spent the past 5 years combining his experience with the latest in production technology and advanced research to help our customers build the solutions necessary to perform magic on the screen.
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NVIDIA
Cinematographer Erik “Wolfie” Wolford specializes in commercials, features, and XR production using LED volumes and Unreal Engine.
As a cinematographer, Wolfie is known for his beauty lighting styles. His latest work includes a Miley Cyrus music video, the feature film Unicorn Diaries, multi cam show Elevator Pitch season 8,9 and 10, and the tv show The GOAT CODE.
Wolfie helmed high-profile XR productions using LED volumes and Unreal. These titles include, Mr Spam Gets a New Hat produced by David Prescott and directed by academy award-winning William Joyce. His television credits include Season 8 of Elevator Pitch, which used LED sets combined with practical sets. On Redbull’s Plane Swap, Wolfie shot live-action hosts integrating virtual sets in Unreal with practical sets lit to match seamlessly. For Riot Games Porter Robinson, Wolfie lit virtual sets in Unreal and then shot live-action content using LED Volumes. Wolfie serves the global market from Hollywood CA.
Wolfie came up through the lighting department in the 1990’s lighting features, music videos and commercials with legendary directors Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, Mc. G and Francis Lawrence. Soon Wolfie was joining lighting crews on big-budget features including Shane Black’s Iron Man 3, JJ Abrams Star Trek: Into Darkness, and Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar where Wolfie specialized in miniature set lighting.
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and Head of School,
CG Pro
Edward has deep hands-on experience in the CG world. He has worked for ILM, Disney, and Digital Domain on blockbuster films – Jurassic World, The Lion King, and Jungle Book. Widely recognized as a cutting-edge technologist, he has led teams of developers in architecting and enhancing VFX related software. As co-founder of CG Pro, he creates and teaches dynamic courses focused on Unreal Engine, VFX tools and the emerging world of Virtual Production.
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CG Pro
Lux Machina
Dani Bellar Pilukas is a technology leader at the intersection of creativity and production, with an impressive career spanning companies such as Cirque du Soleil, Tait, and Walt Disney Imagineering. Her expertise lies in redefining the way technology fuels creativity on a global scale. As an Imagineer, Dani led Walt Disney Imagineering into a new era of attractions, and played a key role in the creation of immersive experiences such as Pandora - The World of Avatar, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, and the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction in Shanghai, China. In her current role as the Director of Physical Production with Lux Machina Consulting, Dani continues to lead technical and creative teams in supporting Virtual Production and In Camera VFX LED Volume work across the globe, fueling the power of innovation and collaboration to transform the entertainment industry.
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Lux Machina
Jason Schugardt is a Solutions Architect for NVIDIA helping customers connect to the best solutions at NVIDIA. With over 25 years of experience in the Visual Effects industry he has worked on numerous blockbuster films, including the Academy Award-winning The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Disney's The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Peter Jackson's King Kong, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2, and Steven Spielberg's Minority Report, and many others. Driven by his passion for exploring cutting-edge technology, he's led innovative VR and AR projects, pushing the boundaries of technology in story telling. At NVIDIA, Jason enjoys leveraging his deep expertise to help clients harness the power of generative AI and Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs)
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NVIDIA
Tommy Snyder is the Director of Product at Evercast. With a passion for harnessing technology to create transformative products, he aims to be a visionary for innovation in the film space. He brings over 10 years of experience in the tech industry, consistently leading cross-functional teams to deliver cutting-edge solutions that push boundaries and delight users. Tommy holds degrees in Information Systems & Film from Colorado State University. He was a key contributor to the sale of a small startup, which led to his role as Director of Photography for NBCU for 5 years.
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Matt Jefferson has over 25 years of experience in supporting software developers, strategic technology partners and solution integrators to build and deliver innovative solutions for broadcast, film and live streaming. He recently completed his 13th year at Blackmagic Design leading strategic partnerships and developer relations.
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BlackMagic Design
Film & TV Visual Integration
Monolith Studios
Matthew Edgerton is a globally recognized executive in the areas of Technology, Strategy , Creative Development and Humanitarian Initiatives.
He currently leads the Global Media Strategy for the Microsoft Division of Accenture Cloud First, where he directs efforts to drive joint go to market initiatives and product innovation within the M&E space.
As an active writer and producer he has a special interest in the areas of Science Fiction, Drama and Surrealist concepts that push the envelope spurring our cultural zeitgeist to new heights.
Within the humanitarian space, he most recently drafted a set of novel climate rating metrics and scorecards for induction into the United Nations Climate initiative.
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Microsoft Business Group
Accenture
As Business Development Manager for the Americas at Blackmagic Design, David focuses his efforts on expanding the use of the creative tools for visual media production. His passion for innovation and technology are paired with his respect for craft and storytelling.
David’s career spans over 25 years in visual arts and media production.
David started his professional journey in the early 1990’s as a documentary filmmaker working on various projects in and around the high performance military aircraft industry. The experience exposed him to the full gamut of the production workflow from cameras to post production.
David saw new and exciting prospects to visual storytelling through the emerging computer aided production technologies in the mid 1990’s. He worked on industry leading productions utilizing advanced composting and green screen technology in both broadcast and motion picture pre-visualization while working for Discreet Logic, later Autodesk Media & Entertainment.
In the early 2000’s David was the project lead on the implementation of real-time graphics technology at CNBC and later NBCU, where in 2008 the use of fully immersive virtual set production was highlighted by NBC News coverage of the Presidential Election.
David established his own technology and production company in 2010 and worked to provide the real time visual effect technologies he had help pioneer at the studio and network levels to a broader audience of users. He continued to innovate techniques and technologies in the virtual production market leading up to his current role with Blackmagic Design.
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Blackmagic Design
Damien Stolarz led the technical team that developed Evercast’s Emmy-award winning video production & collaboration software. He is an innovator in the areas of real-time communication and peer-to-peer networking, and has authored numerous technical books including Mastering Internet Video (Addison-Wesley). He holds a dozen patents in the areas of security, AR/VR, interactive television, mobile device integration, and artificial intelligence. Damien received a degree in Computer Science/Engineering from UCLA and is a registered patent agent.
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A seasoned producer, Daisy Leak keeps on pushing boundaries to shape immersive experiences of the future.
She brings more than 13 years’ experience to her role as Director of Production at Magnopus, working on Emmy-nominated MISSION: ISS, the acclaimed Remembering for Disney+, and the multi-award-winning Expo Dubai Xplorer for Expo 2020.
Before joining, Daisy spent eight years as a producer at The Walt Disney Company, working on social games and interactive—from initial idea through to launch and live ops. She loves working with technology and entertainment teams to solve problems that push augmented, virtual and mixed reality experiences to a whole new level.
Prior to her career in production, Daisy was a successful TV and film actress with appearances in Cloverfield (2008) and Criminal Minds (2011) and worked as a stand-up comedian at the Improv Hollywood.
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Oscar-winning visual effects specialist Craig Barron has spent his career evolving visual effects into new and immersive experiences.
Joining Magnopus in 2014, he’s been helping to shape the future of virtual and augmented reality in filmmaking and beyond. Starting out at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), he played a part in the visual effects for films such as The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. He then went on to produce VFX for feature films, commercials, television, computer games and IMAX from his own studio, Matte World Digital. It was there he worked on Zodiac, Alice in Wonderland, and Hugo.
Over the years, Craig has contributed to the visual effects on more than 100 films, bringing artistic visions to life for Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, and Tim Burton to name a few. He received an Emmy Award for his work on By Dawn's Early Light, and an Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects on Batman Returns. In 2009, he won an Oscar for Best Visual Effects on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
At Magnopus, Craig has led the creative team on numerous award-winning projects, including the original short film Remembering for Disney+ which was produced using virtual production techniques.
Craig is a film historian, museum exhibit curator, and educator with a focus on the history of visual effects in classic films—from Hollywood’s studio age to the modern era.
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Evercast
JP Castel is an independent producer who studied filmmaking at UCLA and started his career at Paramount Studios working under legendary producer Robert Evans. He then went on to produce several independent projects including KRISHA, which premiered at SXSW and won both the John Cassavetes Independent Spirit award and the IFP Gotham award before it was acquired by A24. JP’s recent features include INIT!ATION, which premiered at SXSW and was acquired by Saban Media in 2021, and STALKER, which won Shriekfest’s best thriller feature in 2021 and was distributed by Vertical Entertainment. In 2020, JP joined Evercast as a technical producer and now explores the challenges of remote collaborations and what the future may look like as the Vice President of Product.
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Tommy Snyder is the Director of Product at Evercast. With a passion for harnessing technology to create transformative products, he aims to be a visionary for innovation in the film space. He brings over 10 years of experience in the tech industry, consistently leading cross-functional teams to deliver cutting-edge solutions that push boundaries and delight users. Tommy holds degrees in Information Systems & Film from Colorado State University. He was a key contributor to the sale of a small startup, which led to his role as Director of Photography for NBCU for 5 years.
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LORI H. SCHWARTZ is a true technology catalyst (‘Tech Cat’).
As a leading advisor in marketing and tech innovation, Lori collaborates with executives of multiple brands, tech, and content companies to ensure their understanding of emerging content models. Los Angeles-based, Lori is a CNN Technology contributor and an active MC and Host for BtoBevents.
Lori’s StoryTech initiative facilitates communication between storytellers and technology companies. Her trends briefings, curation, and tour products for large events have become well known globally through the work @CES, @NAB, and @IBC.
Previously Lori was a Governor for the Television Academy’s Emerging Programming Peer Group, driving thought leadership for the future of interactive media. She was Chief Technology Catalyst for McCann Worldgroup, North America where she drove tech and content innovation and was the key principle to launching the highly regarded IPGLAB where she facilitated emerging media upfronts for Microsoft, Intel, General Motors, Nestlé, and Sony.
She has been profiled as one of the “30 Executives Shaping the Evolution of Media and Technology” by Variety and “100 People to Have Lunch With” by MediaPost Publications.
An active spokesperson, Lori launched Digital Hollywood’s ‘Women’s Entertainment and Technology Mentor Program’ and is a recipient of the Lucy Hood Digerati Award for her contributions to the Television Academy. She is the proud mother of Sadie Bee!
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