← The Digital Executive
The Digital Executive
Nimrod Harel on Illusions, Innovation, and the Future of Virtual Entertainment | Ep 1054
00:15:31
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Foreign.
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Welcome to Coruscant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast. Welcome to the Digital Executive. Today's guest is Nimrod Harel. Nimrod Harel serves as the founder and CEO at Game Changer, a revolutionary virtual production company. He is also a software engineer and a master mentalist. Nimrod is a creator and host of several worldwide mentalism TV shows. Inconceivable, Psycho, Invisible and prime time game shows like the Big Picture, Beat the Grid Family, Piggy Bank. Today he combines his expertise in tech and illusions to lead Game Changer into a new era of entertainment and as a disruptor in the television production who is bringing its groundbreaking virtual studio technology to broadcasters, studios and gaming companies across the globe. Well, good afternoon, Nimrod. Welcome to the show.
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Hello, how are you?
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Absolutely amazing. Thank you for joining. I appreciate it. I know you're in Tel Aviv, Israel, I'm in Kansas City. So we've got about an 8 hour difference. I appreciate you making the time. Sometimes it's challenging. Nimrod, I'm going to jump into your first question here. Your journey spans from performing mentalism on global stages to leading a virtual production company. How did your background in mentalism influence your approach from to technological innovation?
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You know, basically a mentalist, let's face it, a mentalist is kind of a magician. So we are in the illusion business and this is what I've been doing for a living. You know, I created illusions, mind games, mind illusions. But basically it's all illusion. Illusion is just you see something and you believe that it's real. And the distance between this and creating a virtual company or virtual technology is very small because this is basically what we are doing in Game Changer, which we are creating illusion and we are making influencing actually the audience, the viewers to believe they are real.
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That's amazing. Thank you so much for sharing. And I know building a career as a mentalist is amazing. First of all, you have to be really good at it. But I know that if you are good, you'll do some great things. And of course we're going to talk about some of the other things you're doing that really wows an audience or makes an audience believe a certain thing. So your Game Changer is known for its groundbreaking virtual studio technology. How do you see this technology transforming traditional television production and content creation?
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So maybe the first step is to understand what the technology is and I'll try to do it very briefly because, you know, without in my business, seeing is believing. So you need to see how good it looks in order to understand what we do. But in a nutshell, we are creating virtual environments, actually virtual dynamic environments. Those environments are interactive. They interact with the, in our case, game shows or the shows that we are shooting. And this is. It creates the feeling that the show was shot in a huge studio with tons of lighting. And for example, I don't know, let's say in what we did with Bingo Blitz in Mexico, we did a huge bingo machine, you know, like 30ft high. So this is something that you look at and you say, oh my God, how it's possible? You know, this is the biggest studio I've ever seen. And still it looks so real and so like you can touch it. This is sort of an illusion. And unlike virtual studios, and there are many kinds and many kinds of virtual studio, I think the most known one is green screen. When you think of a green screen studio, it always looks like green screen. Let's face it, every show, every shot in green screen looks like green screen. Unless you are going to spend hundreds and thousands of hours of post editing correcting every pixel like what they are doing on, I don't know, on the Star wars films, but otherwise it looks like green screen. There is a reason why you won't see green screen on primetime TV or on American TV at all. Because it doesn't look good. After all this year, it still looks like green screen. Not with our technology, because we are not shooting in a green screen studio. We are shooting in real studios, just empty studios and small studios with minimal set. And we have a technology that can take all the surrounding and upgrade it or turn it into this magnificent, beautiful studio. And all those spectacles, it can be huge bingo machine. It can be moving pods that the contestants are sitting in and so on. So this is what we're doing. And the idea here is to make the viewers believe this is real. It's very much like watching a Marvel film. Okay? If you are watching the film and you know, and the film is done good and the effects are good enough, you are not thinking about the effects. So you think, okay, Superman can fly. Thor, hammer can, goes from here to there flying, and he can catch it and throw it and you don't think about the effect. And this is our main goal, you know, this is what we do. We don't want the viewers to think, okay, this is cgi and in order to do that, we need to bring something to the table that is 10 times stronger than green screen. We need to work with the level of precision that it looks totally real. You know, we are paying attention to how much dust we put on the elements in the studio because you know, in every studio there is dust. So we need to put some dust on, on the elements there. It's all about creating a perfect illusion. And once this is done, this can transform production, you know, from turn them upside down. Because think about the biggest TV production that you can think of. If you can take those production and you can shoot the same thing in a small studio without spending hundreds of thousands on dollars on huge and complex and very complicated set and all those lighting and all those cameras. If you can do that in a small studio, we are going to save you so much money. And at the same time we can let you upgrade the show, make it bigger than. Because for us it doesn't matter if you build a bingo machine that is 5 meters high, 15ft high or 13ft high. When we heard the show in Mexico, for example, they were so blown away. This was the best show ever hit the Mexican tv. For example, Family Piggy bank was the best show. When I say best show, the best looking show ever hit the Portugal TV. It aired in Portugal. We had more than 300 episodes there and it was the cheapest show to produce. This balance between how much you are going to pay for the show and what you get on screen, this is where we change the game because you're going to pay much less and you're going to get much more.
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Thank you, I appreciate that. And really I like how you start out first understand to what you do right, Especially your background as a mentalist. But seeing is believing and your background has brought such a creative idea around an interactive game show using this virtual studio technology. And, and you're right, I think green screen was cool, but I think it's now a thing of the past. So I appreciate you sharing that. And Nimrod, in shows like Inconceivable and Psycho, you explore the boundaries of perception. How do you integrate elements of illusion into virtual production and your work with Game Changer to enhance viewer engagement?
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First, I must say, and I'm happy to say that in Game Changer we have two mentalists, two illusionists. One is me and the other is my partner and my and the co founder of Game Changer and my, one of my best friends, Yaron Yashinsky. And he is a genius. He's a master in creating CGI illusions. Okay. He worked with Beyonce and Maroon 5 and YouTube on other clips, other video clips and he knows how to deliver TGI assets, CGI elements that looks Totally real. So the technical part he's in charge of, I'm in charge of meshing, of connecting the technical part to the creative part. Because every time you use a CGI asset and you want people to believe in it, the CGI element, you need to create some kind of an illusion in order to do so. So one thing that I told you, for example, is, you know, paying attention to the smallest details, like how much dust you're going to put on on the element. But there are many other ways to do it. And I think this is a term from the magic field. It's called too perfect theory. Too perfect theory means that if something looks too perfect, you won't believe it. You won't believe it because it's too perfect. Because we know the world is not perfect. So there are many ways to, you know, to make things a little bit dirty. To put dust on them is just an example to somehow to play with the perception of the studio and draw the CGI element into the real set. Because in our shots, half of the shot is real set and half of the show is cgi. But if you can somehow, you know, mix them together and the audience won't be able to know when the physical ends and where the virtual begins. Or for example, let's say in one of our shows called the Big Picture, we had to find a way for the viewers to interact with the show, which is a pre taped show. So how you can create an online live interaction with a show that was filmed and edited more than six months ago, how can you do it? There is a way to do it. This is, it's called dual reality. Actually, listeners, whoever listen to us can Google dual reality mentalism and they will see how you can use dual reality to create two realities. One is the reality of the viewers at home and one is the reality of the contestant and the host and the people in the studio. And this is actually what we do with every show that we have. Because if you think about it, the players, the contestants and the host in the studio, they are not aware of all the magnificent, all the spectacles we are going to create around them later on, after the filming is, after it's a wrap, they don't know. So we need to create some illusion to them in the studio, something impressive for them in the studio. And we need to create something for the viewers at home. And the viewers at home are not experiencing the same experience the contestant at the studio are experiencing. But our job is to create. There has been no difference. So the viewers at home and contestants, the studio. It's very difficult to explain it without seeing it. I encourage the people just go and write game changer, look at our website, see how this is done. But this is a very, very delicate, you know, complicated work we need to do. So there won't be any gap between the reality of the studio and the reality of the people at home. These are all mentalism methods that I brought from my experience into the CGI world. And Yaron brought his experience and together we created something that you must see to believe. And once you see it, you'll believe it.
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B
That's amazing. I love that. Two illusionists at work, right? One in CGI and one obviously you as a mentalist you must create an illusion like you mentioned, to pull off that perfect shot. And I like the two perfect theory. Obviously it doesn't fool people, but you've done it. So where you blended and mixed that reality in that virtual environment, as you mentioned, that dual reality, bringing that home environment and the studio environment together so they both have that experience. And again, that illusion is just amazing. I appreciate that. And Nimrod, the last question I have for you today. With rapid advancements in technology, where do you envision the future of virtual entertainment heading in the next five to 10 years?
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You know, if you ask that question five or 10 years ago, I would say I have no idea because it looks like virtual studios are something. It looks good, but not good enough. And you know, for the past 10 years they always look like something that is not. It's nice, but it's not prime time quality with our technology. And there are other technologies in the market. For example, the XR screen, you know, the ones they use to shoot the Mandalorian, for example. This advancement in technology is going to change the industry. The key point here, the thing that we need to understand that in order to change the TV industry, things must be way, way, way cheaper. You know, you need to pay less because there is a reason. And think about it, Brian, you can't even name one show on TV that is unscripted that use cgi, like really CGI based. I think we are the first shows in the US that use CGI and you know, we crack the code, the system, because we deliver something that is affordable. So as long as virtual sets are going to bring something that looks as good as real sets, but you are going to pay for them 10 times less, these are the sets that are going to change the industry. And I think this change has already begun. You know, we already have two shows right on there right now. And more shows are coming. And this is something, it's not even a war. It's not something you need to fight, it's something you need to join. Because we are bringing broadcasters and production companies that couldn't afford big shows. We bring them the opportunity to do it. And this is something that is going to create more jobs, more shows, more TV shows. And this is just in the U.S. think about the rest of the world. You know, once you sell a show of US to, for example to the Czech Republic or to Greece, they are going to bring to the screen the same level of production value as the US show. And right now the US shows are the best looking shows on the market. This is going to change the equation. All shows are going to look so good because once you're using the virtual, you don't need to invest so much money to create big sets. You know, two years ago I thought it's going to be something between going to take five to 10 years. But just from the past three months I'm thinking this is going to take between a year or two that you are going to see virtual sets like ours and others everywhere. As long as it looks good, as long as it looks impressive, there is no reason to choose physical set.
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Thank you Nimrod, I appreciate that. And you're absolutely right. With the newer technology, it's really changing this industry and it's going to be bringing improved entertainment on a fraction of the cost. What I really like is I know that especially Hollywood, right TV shows, they set the bar for the quality of the best shows. But leveling the playing field with your technology and platform is going to make it very competitive in all countries and all markets. And I can't wait to see it. So thank you and Nimrod, it was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
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Thank you so much. Look for our shows on tv, it's going to blow your mind.
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Absolutely. Bye for now.