Image credit from left to right: Yangos Hadjiyannis, Mariana Cadenas, Ilan Cohen, Marion Burger, Omid Zarei, and Anne Jeppesen
In this episode of SIGGRAPH Spotlight, join SIGGRAPH 2024 VR Theater Director Yangos Hadjiyannis as he engages in a dynamic conversation with contributors Mariana Cadenas, Ilan Cohen, Marion Burger, Omid Zarei, and Anne Jeppesen. Together, they uncover the cutting-edge innovations showcased in this year’s VR Theater and share their forward-thinking perspectives on the evolution of XR technology. Discover what makes VR at SIGGRAPH 2024 unique, highlighting the distinctive features that set this year’s experience apart from the rest.
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Experience the VR Theater and other cutting-edge programs at SIGGRAPH 2024 in Denver from 28 July–1 August! Secure your spot today and get ready to be inspired! Use code SIGGRAPHSAVINGS to unlock exclusive SIGGRAPH 2024 savings with a complimentary Exhibits Only pass or $25 off any new registration.
About Our Guests
Mariana Cadenas Sangronis is a Venezuelan journalist and filmmaker based in
Belgium, with master’s degrees in documentary filmmaking “DocNomads” at LUCA
School of Arts and in Ibero-American studies at KULeuven. She previously worked as a video journalist for AFP and as a field producer, assistant director, and editor for “Women of the Venezuelan Chaos” (2017), an award-winning documentary shown at CPH:DOX, Hot Docs, and Movies that Matter, amongst others. Her first documentary VR experience “Draw for Change: We Exist, We Resist” world premiered in DOK Leipzig, and has been competing in various festivals such as Fipadoc, Thessaloniki, GIFF, Clermont-Ferrand, Sheffield DocFest, DocEdge, SIGGRAPH, and DocEdge. Currently, she works as a freelance filmmaker on an animated project about migration for children.
lIan J. Cohen graduated from Emerson College (Boston) in 2006, Ilan returned to France and started working in the film industry as a translator and set technician. After working as on-set translator and second assistant director for Lodge Kerrigan (Rebecca H., Cannes 2010), he began a career as first assistant director on over twenty shorts, and six feature films (including White Shadow, award winner in Venice 2013 and Treat Me Like Fire, Cannes 2018). During this time, he also wrote and directed a mini-series for Arte and has been directing music videos for Partizan Films. Ilan has written several screenplays, including EMPEROR, with Marion Burger.
Marion Burger, born in France in 1987, is a production designer who has worked on many feature films, including “Divines” by Houda Benyamina (Caméra d’or – Cannes 2016), “Gagarine” by Jérémy Trouilh and Fanny Liatard (Cannes 2020), and more recently “Mother and Son” by Léonor Serraille (Cannes 2022), for which she won the CST Young Film Technician Award at the Cannes Film Festival 2022. As a former graduate of the Duperré design school, she has always been attracted by the transversality of creative media. EMPEROR, an empathic VR experience co-created with Ilan J. Cohen (Venice Immersive achievement prize 2023), marked her directorial debut.
Omid Zarei is an XR producer & technical director on the quest to explore alternative ways of storytelling. In 2016, Being a film school graduate & working cinematographer in Paris he got interested in experimenting with narrative ideas in VR & went on to develop the “VR Workshop Helsinki” held in Helsinki Aalto University, a hands-on workshop aimed at brining creatives together to experiment with storytelling in VR. In 2019 his VR project “Songs of future past” was finalist in the “Opera Beyond: Memories of the Future” XR competition at The Finnish National Opera and Ballet. ‘A Vocal Landscape’ presented in this year’s SIGGRAPH VR Theater is his latest VR film. It has won an EPIC MegaGrant & a special prize at VIFF Immersed for a production partnership with Microsoft Mixed Reality Capture Studio. Followed by its world premiere at Venice International Film Festival 2023, it was presented at NewImages 2024 Festival in Paris among other festivals. His upcoming project “Tuner|AR” is a continuation along same ideas of expanding storytelling in XR, this time via generative AI. It aims at creating tailor-made close-encounters for the audience in mixed reality format.
Anne Jeppesen is a Copenhagen-based producer with a focus on audio
documentaries. She has produced audio productions for national radio, as
well as immersive audio experiences for museums and theater. With a
background in classical music and musicology, Anne is driven by a never
fading fascination for the richness of the human voice and is constantly
seeking out new ways to work with vocal expressions. Her work in XR focuses on a human approach to the cutting-edge technology where the hi-tech is invisible and feels close and familiar.
