Interview: Dave August

Hi Dave, thanks for having this interview with us! Could you tell a bit about yourself?
I am the Interactive Creative Director at OOOii. It works out fantastic for me as its a unique position where I can use all my background in one place. I have come out of a mix VFX, film, advertising, interactive, and software development. That combined with what I think is a little ADD and OCD in all creative people there are always new challenges to immerse myself in as pretty much every client comes to us and says we want something no one has ever seen before.

You will be speaking at the Adobe Usergroup XL event, what will your talk be about?
My talk is going to give people a taste of what we do at OOOii. I will be talking about some of the stories behind some of our recent projects and about the design process we use in building technology for film. Beyond the film side of OOOii, I am going to dive into the exciting challenges we are looking at going forward. We are living in a time where we are getting a whole new set of tools and its up to the community of interactive designers to define a new language of design.

_{Fast And Furious}

Do your interfaces actually work? Do they really react to the user’s input? Or does biggest part of the magic happen in post-production?
The reality is its a combination of all of those. Many of our interfaces are working and interactive on set but as we are trying to envision technology of the future we are often building more complex elements in Post. In the past, a large majority of work had to be done in post but advances in real-time technologies have allowed for more and more complex interfaces working on set. As far as actor control, it becomes very situation dependent. Often we are the man behind the curtain controlling the graphics off-screen, but when possible we try to allow the actor to actively control or influence the graphic in order to get the best performance.

_{Deja Vu}

How does the work of OOOii differ from a ‘traditional’ visualeffectscompany?
Typically when people think of a traditional visual effects company they think of an ILM or Sony Imageworks that are all-in-one shops focused on photo-real imagery. The reality is there is more and more specialization in visual effects with companies who are experts in creatures, or environments, or effects. Directors and production designers come to us when they are looking for technology to help define their cinematic world. Our specialty places us in an excellent position to work side by side with other talented visual effects companies and individuals.

_{Minority Report}

I think working at OOOii would be a hell lot of fun. Are there projects you haven’t done yet, and like to do with OOOii?
OOOii is definitely a fun place to be. We are fortunate to be in a position where we can work with so many talented people and really help shape peoples imaginations in what is possible. I think what I am most looking forward to now is a director like Steven Spielberg to call to create a film with the kind of visual and technical requirements of a Minority Report. Minority Report was an amazing look into the future for its time but over the last decade the advances in technology and ideas has been amazing and if we were to sit down and draw out a film taking a look at 2030 and beyond the possibilities are really exciting.

In movies you don’t tend to see a lot of interaction with the interfaces. Usually a lot of bold eyecanding and bleeping sounds. Do you still consider the usability of the ‘application’?
We actually spend a lot of time trying to map out real interaction and logical evolutions of technology. As much as we can we try to extend existing technology to give the audience the ability to ground it in what they know. This is probably my favorite part of the job as it gets really challenging to imagine how things might work without having to worry about the internal guts of actually making it work. Where it becomes a balancing act is in addition to showing cool tech, before anything else comes the story. With the kind of quick editing and fast paced action that is often involved in these genres it often becomes necessary to make things obvious to the audience to help reenforce the story point. However, I can tell you as a designer it always hurts a little to put huge text in a interface your a foot in front of. Our internal name for this is “Big, Red, and Blinking”.

_{Star Trek}

One of the movieclichés are interfaces with a lot of bleeping sounds. Why do almost all fictional interfaces bleep?
I don’t know what to tell you on this by the time it gets to the sound department it is way out of our hands. I think someone decided in the 70s that those are the noises that computers make. Plus consider those great sound effect CDs no one would ever be able to use again. Then of course you can always start up a mac and well its a fun ride of boings from there.

_{Minority Report}

Live environments as witnessed in Minority Report, Star Trek and Fast and Furious are exaggerated of course, but do you think that within five years spaces like this will be common?
I think we are just getting started in what will be the largest shift in how technology effects our world since the PC invaded our homes in the 80s. We now have the technology or soon will to incorporate advanced technology, information, and true natural human computer interfaces into just about everything. This fundamental shift comes in the way people now require near instantaneous access to everything and anything from anywhere. In addition to this mass consumption of information, as it is becoming of tool of the populous there is a requirement to make this information easily accessible. This is forcing designers and engineers to rethink interaction to make it more intuitive which we can now accomplish by being able to manipulate the virtual world in a way the makes sense in the physical one.

Thanks for the interview, and good luck Thursday!

Wil je Dave August én vele anderen horen en zien spreken tijdens Adobe User Group XL? Stuur dan een mailtje naar prijsvraag@fontanel.nl met de reden waarom jij daar heen moet