Since 2018, CityLights has pursued a pioneering path, investing in premium virtual reality experiences and bringing these stories to global audiences. With a passion for elevating VR storytelling to the professional level of traditional filmmaking, co-founders David Ganek and Joel Newton look back on their first five years of activity – between experimentation, success and patience – marked by a real post-COVID revival.
CityLights, at the crossroads of immersive creativity and commerce
Can you talk about your professional journey in VR?
Joel Newton – My background is in traditional Hollywood, serving stories and scripts, as a producer, writer, director, manager, entrepreneur. In 2014, I experienced an early Oculus prototype, and like many, I had a real epiphany. It was a leap into the future at that point and I wanted to make movies like that! Putting the audience inside the story has been a passion ever since.
David Ganek – When I met Joel, I saw the early prototype on his desk and it piqued my curiosity. I’d spent many years investing in technology and the more I learned about VR, the more excited I got that this would be a major new product cycle.
Were you involved with VR before CityLights?
Joel Newton – I co-founded The Virtual Reality Company (VRC – link) in 2015. At that time, the market did not exist! That “first” virtual reality boom brought in a lot of VC investment – we were lucky to have Steven Spielberg on our advisory board as we set out to build an industry from scratch.
What was the impetus to founding CityLights?
David Ganek – I felt a lot of the VC funding was moving too early for companies that needed a market of users to succeed. Joel and I talked a lot about the “chicken and the egg” problem of people only caring about these headsets if there was content that really compelled them, but that making content without an audience was going to be un-rewarding.
Joel Newton – From the start, we understood that we needed to create innovative and disruptive content told intentionally in VR, experiences that would become “must see” to a general audience. But the venture capital model – selling equity in a company in order to have the budget for a project – just didn’t make sense. The need for production capital and real business models around monetizing VR drove me to seek out someone who could look at the market like an investor, seeing the big picture and trying to discover a strategy that could break the chicken and the egg issue. That was David. Being able to provide capital to better support the creators around me was a mission – but even more important was finding pathways to make those stories profitable and those filmmaking careers sustainable.
David Ganek – We needed to imagine new modes of financing with more advanced expertise through a dedicated structure: CityLights (link). When you go to the film festivals that have embraced VR, it’s exciting to see the passion and creativity of the artists who make up the community. But very few distribution outlets exist outside of the festival circuit, and that is not rewarding enough for the teams involved. It’s a thrill and an honor to show immersive experiences to real audiences at these prestigious festivals, but these artists also need to find a satisfactory business model for this type of work to become sustainable. As a team we have this great balance of my business background and Joel’s creative background. That right brain/left brain tug of war is at the heart of art meeting commerce, and VR is just the newest manifestation of that issue. I’ve served on boards of major art museums, I collect art myself, and every generation in every medium has this challenge of expressing something singular and original, while also wanting to give that to a large audience in a way that celebrates it without ruining it.
Who should drive the market: the audience or the content?
David Ganek – It’s a balancing act of both. We’re focused on stories that 100 million people would want to experience, the type of project that would motivate people to try on a VR headset for the first time. This feels like a solid way to engage and grow the market, at least until there are 100 million VR headsets in homes that can provide a distribution base for new stories that look more like the current world of software or streaming television.
SPHERES, an adventure in LBE
Can you talk about your first project, SPHERES?
Joel Newton – The best example comes from our first investment, SPHERES, which premiered at Sundance New Frontiers in 2018. I had met the director Eliza McNitt prior to Sundance and loved her vision for the full 3 episodes beyond the initial piece they were planning to showcase at Sundance. It worked out that we were able to close our deal at Sundance, and announce CityLights for the first time on a pretty big stage. Darren Aronofsky, who had been a driver for the project as an Executive Producer and mentor to Eliza, had suggested the parallel between selling his first film “Pi” at Sundance 20 years earlier in a seven-figure deal, and now we were doing the first-ever VR deal in the same way at Sundance. That narrative got picked up by WIRED and a lot of other press and suddenly SPHERES was the world’s first VR movie to get acquired at a festival for a 7-figure sum. Our investment allowed Eliza to finish the next two chapters, both of which subsequently premiered at the two festivals embracing VR the most – first Tribeca and then Venice where we won the Grand Prix in VR. It was also the first VR project to ever screen at Telluride and has won many awards at other festivals all over the world.
What was the consumer reception to SPHERES like?
David Ganek – Accolades at Festivals are great, but our thesis as a company was to bring SPHERES to the world with a real business model for artists. We began with a 6-week experimental pop-up at Rockefeller Center, before the pandemic. We quickly became one of the hottest tickets in NYC, selling out within a week and a half. SPHERES is such a strong experience, more sensory than educational, and attracts a wide audience. The casting of the voices also helped us a lot: Millie Bobby Brown, Jessica Chastain, and Patti Smith give voice to the universe through the three chapters. The results demonstrated that VR could compete as an entertainment option in a very entertainment rich market. NY has so many attractions and competition that we felt the saying “if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere” would really apply to LBE VR.
What other distribution strategies did you use for SPHERES?
Joel Newton – We had a really strong partnership with Oculus on SPHERES and released it on the Rift that same year. That was its own experiment: the price for one ticket in NY was much higher than the price for a full download of the entire series. The early adopter who owned a Rift at home appeared to skew heavily towards gaming, where content is measured in hours, not minutes. During Covid, with the launch of the Quest and the growth of a real at-home audience, we again partnered with Oculus on the re-release of SPHERES for Quest. The price for online was still significantly lower, but the reviews from Quest users being so positive has continued to drive online sales to this day. Even though SPHERES is technically five years old for the VR enthusiasts, mainstream audiences picking up VR for the first time are finding SPHERES and it’s brand new to them. Obviously, the pandemic shut down our ability to replicate the success at Rockefeller Center during 2020 and 2021, but now as we are coming into a post-COVID world, we’re seeing audiences enjoying SPHERES at similar pop-ups all over the world.
David Ganek – SPHERES is probably the most widely distributed piece of VR content in the world – with real business and tickets sales happening from NY to Paris, Mexico, Asia. In China alone we’ve grown a small post-covid test from two sites to a dozen, and now we’re about to roll out to 30 locations.
Spheres is a very rich, deep dive across the three episodes. We’re in the early stages of planning a much larger roll-out of a ticketed attraction that will have SPHERES at the center.
What does LBE distribution mean to CityLights and the expansion of mass consumer XR content?
David Ganek – The response from audiences who have experienced our VR content in a dedicated LBE environment is consistently very positive. Audiences really get hooked on an immersive experience – if it’s well produced, told, and distributed. The Chinese market is fascinating. All of our projects are very popular there. The real challenge is to reproduce what works in all territories. It’s a call to investors and enthusiasts alike: the world needs VR tours, dedicated places, theaters and venues for VR stories. When these are available, audiences truly show up and are blown away by the experience. I come back to this chicken and egg story: when we proposed SPHERES in New York, we were not an event producer. We don’t produce exhibits or ticketed shows, and that’s a real skill. But we tried something that would allow us to go and talk to those types of exhibit producers and promoters, proving to them that it could work. Obviously, what CityLights brings to the table is a very specific expertise on storytelling in VR. For the businesses that are very good at selling tickets to LBE events, we want them to see how powerful a well-told VR story can be with their audience and we want them to come partner with us.
How will CityLights expand?
Joel Newton – For us, the focus remains on building our library of evergreen, attractional projects that leverage the power of VR. Taking audiences to impossible locations is an exciting way to make the most of this medium. That can mean an ancient cultural site like King Tut’s tomb, a majestic natural wonder like Yosemite National Park, or even a specific fictional world that fans want to go inside of. There is a real promise here, and that’s what motivates us every day. We hope to soon see more tours, museums, more distributors, more places to offer content and reach the public… We know that people want these experiences, they just need the opportunity to purchase tickets.
David Ganek – In every product cycle, there’s the three “I”s: Innovators, Imitators, and Idiots. We’re committed to being innovators in this very large cycle. We’re learning from every investment and, honestly, we’re probably aiming for a quality of experience that is a bit ahead of what the market demands. We don’t want to be the only company investing in this – we need to inspire much larger companies and venues to see this opportunity. If we can prove consumer demand, that will attract imitators. That’s attracting capital, and that is what will build out real LBE distribution for VR.
How is technology adoption / innovation impacting the market?
David Ganek – We’re seeing online sales grow. Interest outside of AAA gaming titles is beginning. The upcoming calendar for hardware and technology is very exciting with Apple and Pico launching in the US market in the coming year or so. Standalone headsets reduce the drawbacks of the medium, and better resolution in the hardware unlocks the quality of the content. For example, there is photogrammetry we’ve produced of these priceless artifacts from King Tut’s tomb. The limitations on the viewer to see each detail on these assets, when we first released it, was the resolution of the headsets available. Now we’ve seen these same assets on next-gen hardware, and the exact same content, without any re-mastering, looks so much better and feels so much more real. Each generation of VR headset becomes easier for audiences to engage with, and the simplicity allows for scenarios with high throughput that couldn’t be achieved 5 years ago. The ability to “pop-up” a VR theater is truly plug-and-play now for anyone, not just the techy early adopter.
Who will be the best creators in VR?
Joel Newton – Creativity and story, as ancient impulses and rhythms, are not really altered by technology. We need to learn techniques, and develop vocabularies, but the most surprising thing to me is that the VR projects that have moved me the most are being created by artists who knew very little about the technology. Or they simply learned along the way – but the story and the experience of a world they want to bring you into is the driver. I have had the fortune of exposing VR to some of the world’s greatest filmmakers, and their instincts and ideas change very rapidly as they learn what VR can do. I’m excited to see more of the world’s greatest artists jump into VR, like we saw with Alejandro González Iñárritu’s CARNE Y ARENA. For him to create that in 2017 was a big risk, and was definitely limited by what the technology could do. I’ve seen a lot of other filmmakers shy away, in some ways worried they couldn’t make something as polished or perfect as their traditional films. This is a shame because we miss out on what they would learn, what breakthrough in VR storytelling they could have introduced the world to.
David Ganek – Well, that exact issue is a big part of the thinking behind the gift my wife Dani and I made to the USC School of Cinematic Arts. We’ve established the Ganek Immersive Studio (link) which will provide some infrastructure and guidance and funding for students to create VR films that really push the boundaries of what’s been done. That fear of it not looking perfect, that a lot more established professionals have, thankfully these young students are completely fearless. Some of them won’t even know what “rules of cinema” they’re breaking as they try stuff and get results that are truly innovative. I’m really excited to see the work that comes out of this initiative.
Developing a Catalogue
Can you talk about TUTANKHAMUN: ENTER THE TOMB?
David Ganek – The next project we tackled after SPHERES was TUTANKHAMUN: ENTER THE TOMB. This was an incredible opportunity to leverage the technology of photogrammetry to bring audiences to an intimate, personal encounter inside of King Tut’s tomb and all of the artifacts that were discovered there 100 years ago. The project was produced in partnership with the Egyptian government. It was a VR attraction added to the official artifact museum tour that was booked all over the world to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the tomb’s discovery. Our team was given unprecedented access to capture the photogrammetry of the tomb itself, as well as the artifacts.
Joel Newton – Some of the artifacts were already on tour in Paris, so I had a really fun “Night at the Museum” experience working at night with our crew shooting photogrammetry of these incredible artifacts that a record-breaking crowd of more than a million Parisian’s were visiting every day. The next stop on the tour after Paris was London, and that’s where we built the first VR theater and debuted Enter The Tomb. Unfortunately, the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in the UK government closing all museums in the Spring of 2020, and the tour ultimately had to shut down. However, we’ve been fortunate to license this VR project to other King Tut-related tours and attractions and those opportunities seem to be growing every day.
Can you talk about EXPERIENCE YOSEMITE ?
David Ganek – EXPERIENCE YOSEMITE is a 22-minute immersive experience that takes you through the history and stories of this iconic California National Park. This opportunity originally opened up because of a theater at Yosemite wanting to add a VR attraction just as the King Tut tour did. Once we got into production, however, we realized that VR could play such an important role in the appreciation and preservation of natural spaces. We produced some photogrammetry of an area that was destroyed by a fire only a few months later – suddenly our VR experience became a time capsule of what that area used to look like before the fire. Now we are talking with many institutions and associations to produce new content in VR with this preservation idea as the driver. These conversations are expanding the type of product from these LBE short films (even if I love a good film) into “metaplaces” that provide totally immersive exploration and learning about a precious natural wonder, or cultural heritage site, or really any world that audiences want to visit.
Can you talk about AREA MAN LIVES?
Joel Newton – During the pandemic, our LBE business was clearly going to be paused for a while. Quest began selling significantly, and games were clearly the product that was selling. As we looked at possible game investments, it really became a process of both identifying a game where we could bring our instincts around storytelling and production, but also finding creators we wanted to build long term partnerships with. AREA MAN LIVES represented that perfectly. Obviously, investing alongside Cyan, the original producers of Myst, was a unique opportunity to work with legends. Plus I had personally been a big fan of the team at Numinous Games ever since I first met them and their incredible story around their game That Dragon Cancer ( link ). We were able to help secure an incredible voice cast (Joel McHale, Max Greenfield, Ronan Farrow) and think the way the game uses voice commands puts it on the cutting edge of what VR games can become in the future. Fans love it, we just need to get the word out about this unique narrative experience because, unlike our other projects with global recognition built in, we made a long term bet on a completely original IP. It was really fun to premiere the game at the Venice Film Festival last year amongst so many innovative projects. The “immersive island” at Venice represents this incredible global snapshot of all the innovation happening with VR and storytelling. I came home very inspired, and I’m excited to see what this year has to offer.
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