Infinity Festival v. 5.0 Explores the Edge of Technology, Media and Entertainment

For someone who has been writing about the intersection (or, I prefer to say, the collision) of media, entertainment and technology for decades, Annual Infinite Music Festival in Los Angeles It can be a bit like a candy store, with the opportunity to investigate the cutting edge of all these areas of change in one place.

This year’s fifth gathering was held at Goya’s Studio in Hollywood from November 2nd to November 5th. Even for those wishing to get stuck in traditional entertainment, it featured some familiar names: comedian/game show host Howie Mandel, Napoleon Dynamite He himself is Jon Heder, Bollywood voice-over AR Rahman and actor/virtual reality director Elijah Allan-Blitz, whose credits include VR experiences that accompany the work of Ken Burns and Michael Pollan.

The conference will also include presentations and panel discussions from sponsors such as HP
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Nvidia and XLA, visit the nearby immersive entertainment venue Lighthouse Art Studio (Immersive Van Gogh) Courtesy of sponsors Lighthouse Immersive and Impact Museums, There’s also a section called Art + Tech, which showcases the work of 15 artists who use technology in an artistic way, including Giuseppe Lo Schiavo, Carlos Luna James, Tiffany Trenda, Teek Mach and Luke Haynes. For the first time, there will be a career fair and student lab to help potential clients enter one of the fastest growing entertainment fields.

So what ties it all together?

“The show has always been a professional conference focused on how storytelling can be enabled through technology, really focusing on the media and entertainment categories,” said Lori H. Schwartz, the show’s lead curator. “Story is part of how all business categories communicate their products, and in terms of[media and entertainment]it’s also at the heart of the actual product. So our audience has always been a mix of creative, commercial and technical resources focused on producing content Business.”

In this case, it’s no surprise that Allan-Blitz will be talking about another of his VR projects In retrospect, Brie Larson, who debuted last month on Disney+. Mandel will talk about something far from his usual haunts, Proto, which allows people to send their own interactive holographic imagesto audiences thousands of miles away. Proto could be a gold mine for a cartoonist who isn’t sure audiences like his jokes.

Heder partnered with Verified Labs to develop a collection called NFTs Knights of Tagon, Art inspired by Heder’s own spider-like hands and a fondness for imaginary creatures mixed together, similar to the Napoleon Dynamite.

Perhaps the most high-profile conference event at the conference happened before it started. Two-time Oscar winner Rahman (slumdog millionaire) Immersive Cinema Chairs for Film Festival, Intel’s
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Ravi Vihar will premiere Lemaske, It’s called a “full-length sensory movie experience”.

“We’re very excited about how this event has grown over the past five years and is known for being a highly relevant, can’t-miss festival,” said Infinity Festival President Hanno Basse, CTO at Digital Domain. “But we’re just getting started. As more and more people see the unique value of our fusion of entertainment and technology, and more and more industry leaders see it as the ideal place to discuss innovative ideas, we think the Infinity Festival can The offerings are limitless.”

The festival will also include mini-summits focused on a variety of topics, including a SoCal Women’s Summit, with panelists MESA, the trade group for women in Hollywood tech and Hollywood’s behind-the-scenes technologists. Virtual production is one of the hottest trends in video creation in Hollywood, and the entire workshop will be sponsored by HP’s Z-series computers and peripherals and graphics card maker Nvidia.

“The exciting things about how the show has developed reflect several trends,” Schwartz said. “The pandemic has accelerated technological innovation and remote work. The democratization of the tools provided by our many partners, and the increased access to these tools by creators around the world, has created interest and understanding of the content we reflect at the festival. A perfect storm.”

Schwartz outlines several trends changing Hollywood and getting the show’s attention:

• “Virtual production is now a very important focus. It has revolutionized production processes and created new jobs.
• “Artificial intelligence and its impact on all aspects of media and entertainment.
• “The cloud and how it enables many of the remote work solutions that have really emerged since the pandemic.
• “Under the umbrella of Web3, NFTs are undoubtedly fan engagement (mechanisms), but also the virtualization of experiences, whether it’s VR, (augmented reality) or a mix of the two.
• “Experiential or immersive venues that take traditional home entertainment to the next level.”

This conference is perfect for Los Angeles, which is home to not only all the Hollywood studios, but a huge and growing tech presence, including Apple’s huge production center
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TV+/Beats Music, Google/YouTube, Amazon Prime Video and Netflix
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most of its Los Angeles operations are located just a few blocks from Goya Studios, where the conference is held.

“We’re a real show, it’s a product of Los Angeles, the home of Hollywood, adjacent to the unique cultural history of Silicon Valley,” Schwartz said. “Los Angeles has become a true birthplace of technology solutions for content creation.”